Tuesday, April 17, 2012

So long Draft Magazine...

...in which once again, parting is such sweet sorrow. For the last four years, i've had the distinct pleasure of illustrating the "Beer Me" section of Draft Magazine, a bi-monthly. These were usually humorous off the cuff anecdotes from readers that of course featured beer as a central component/plot device/"character" etc, and by and large i had carte blanche when it came to the illustration. Being a beer nerd who also bar tends at a very beer-centric bar, these jobs were always a lot fun.

As is often the case, new art directors mean, well, new art direction, and so i was recently informed that March's piece would turn out to be my last. To mark this changing of the guard, here's a round up of some of the good, the bad, & the bizarre: some pieces from this series that still grace my portfolio proper, some totally failed but hopefully interesting experiments, some complete snoozers, some easy winners. In some cases, i haven't looked at these images since emailing them off to the magazine 2, 3, 4 years ago, and there are some thought provoking/embarrassing aesthetic choices going on in a lot of these, most notably the 2008-9 4th quarter ill-advised "digital trash" phase, shout out to the original cast and crew of studio 410, heh heh... Somewhat strangely and more thoroughly than i expected, they're an (hopefully) interesting little window into the changes in my work and process over the several years.

In closing, my deep and sincere thanks to Jessica Daynor and the staff at Draft for allowing my drawings to populate the back page of the magazine these last four years. Cheers!