posted: July 2, 2009

Editorial illustration has it's challenges in 2009.  Advertising buys are down and many publications have had to fold in the aftermath.  Still through it all, there are places out there where talented Art Directors and Editors collaborate to produce amazing issues filled with illustration.  I have a pile of old FORTUNE magazines in my studio.  I used to flip through them and marvel at the use of illustration in years past.  I don't do that anymore.  I live in the current market and have come to appreciate places around today that champion our craft and do so with style.
(Perhaps I can do this on a regular basis)


Tim J Luddy, creative director at Mother Jones assigns great illustration every month.  He's a wonderful guy to work with and each issue is like a little portfolio of illustration today.

Here's to Tim and the rest of the folks up there.



For this cover I had to paint a joint made from a 100 dollar bill.  I had to find one on the internet...I'm no Lenny Dykstra. (wink)

The thing I learned in this one is how to paint swirling smoke.  There is a sort of formula to it.  I never knew.

http://www.motherjones.com/toc/2009/07

Tim provided the smoke reference and I painted this realistic cover in short order.


INSIDE is where the real show begins...

For any of the artists included here, if you want me to swap out the page I shot with a good file, send them on. 

posted: June 23, 2009

Neda Agha-Soltan 

 
Born in 1982, she was a philosophy major, took singing lessons and hoped for a better future for her country.  I hope her death captured on video and spread across the internet changes that country for ever.

According to her fiance, she did not support a candidate in the 2009 Iran elections.

Update.
Great outpouring of emotion from our Iranian brothers and sisters over Neda.
Drawger is a collection of artists and illustrators and recently, several offered their reactions to the Iranian election and it's aftermath.
Here are a few:

This was covered over at DART and the Utne Reader


http://www.ai-ap.com/dart

http://www.utne.com/Arts/American-Artist-Inspires-Iranians-with-Neda-Portrait.aspx

posted: June 10, 2009

This is the last week that you will be able to plug in a TV and get an image.  Of course I would never watch TV like that anymore, but it's a technology that will end.  If you take an old tube radio, and I have a few, and plug it in, you can still hear music and talk.  Broadcast television and the ubiquitous rooftop antenna will become relics.  I have always found a cloud behind an antenna visually interesting.  I think it's the majesty of a cloud and the clunky inventions of man in contrast with eachother.  The clouds will still be there.


Seeing them, I think of a memory of my father, our antenna and the 1973 northeast ice storm.  The swirling winds that night pelted our new house in North Haven, Connecticut.  One of our prized new possessions was a rotary TV antenna.  You dialed a box to turn the antenna on the roof and all 10 channels came in fairly clear.  That night a tree in front of our living room window split  down the middle and on our roof, the antenna bent over and collapsed.  We all arose to the calamity and watched our dad consider the problem and fix it.  He passed weeks after that.  
The antenna is long gone and the tree healed itself and matured with odd twists and turns in it's trunk.  Kind of like all of us.

So long antennas.

posted: May 28, 2009

I love fast turnaround jobs.  The client knows what they want, they might really need me, and though it will blast a hole in my day, the fallout is relatively minor.  I most often say yes, and then make my calls.  If I have work pending I call my agent to clear things for me and keep me in a protective bubble, and I call my wife to tell her I am going to be a nut for the next 24 hours.  MORE of a nut that is.
Time Magazine's Arthur Hochstein called on Tuesday and asked if I would do a cover.  The subject was Judge Sonia Sotomayor.  The photos of Sonia are quite varied and as she spoke at the White House during the announcement, photographers were clicking away.  In a way, THEY are my competition.  However, Sonia was NOT doing a photo-shoot, she was speaking.  She smiled broadly when speaking of her gratitude and was emotional when speaking of her family and mother.  It's great theater but not the best for a photographer hoping for an iconic pose.  I started this with reference provided by Time.  For the most part nothing was good on it's own but could work provided I piece it all together.  A black and white shot for her face that had a wonderful yet powerful smile, a great color shot for her updated hair, though not in the exact angle I needed, and finally I needed to put her in a judge's robe.  The last hurdle was the age she was in the black and white shot.  
She is a bit younger and her face was slightly less full.  
I worked like crazy Tuesday  and got approval by around 6 PM and worked all night and finished around 10 am.

Here is a trick I will divulge.  I hope it helps some of you out there who work in oil and hate when parts of your work go matte while it dries.  As I paint a portrait, I work  on the likeness first and stay on that until it's perfect.  The hair and robe can be off and rushed a bit but you can't do it with a likeness.  So, when I do that, as the night goes on, the face can start to go matte.  This would mean by the time I'm ready to start photographing the work in the morning, it looks odd on lacks depth.  My darks would photograph weak.  What I do is shoot the face WET then put the painting back up on my panel and paint the other parts.  I then would photograph the robe and hair WET as well and merge it all in photoshop.  
Perhaps this is no secret but there you have it.
Many things have to be aligned for a cover to run.  First, the art has to be stellar.  Next, photography has to be difficult to find or find the right shot.  If the cover is of people Time just can't have access to, you have a better chance.  
Finally a quick call when the painting is due in 24 hours is a good sign.

Time is a dream to work with and I've done many covers for Arthur.  He's super positive and always has smart advice as I go along.  One skill that he has that I hope I have learned is his ability to choose the right shots to work from.
Arthur also tells me what I'm up against always (I think he tells me all?) and always calls to let me know he's received the art.  That's a class move.  I hardly ever am able to take that call as I'm usually sleeping.
Yesterday I woke at 2 p.m., went for a run, then dinner in Battery Park with the family.  When I got home Arthur had called to say I got the cover and Rick Stengel will be revealing it on Morning Joe, MSNBC in the morning.


I love when I do something that gets on TV.  I got a nice nod here.  Good for illustration in general I think.

I think I forgot to paint her ear in, which is hinted at near her ear ring. Shhh.

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