Students & Faculty: We Are Floating In Space

Last week I received a call from the New York Times Op-Ed page (especially exciting as it had been a minute since we worked together) with a typically thought provoking and challenging piece. A favorite client for almost 10 years now, I'm almost always incredibly pleased with the finals from Op-Ed gigs. Blissfully this one was no exception.

The article (penned by the fantastic Claire Vaye Watkins, look her up) dealt with the issue of dwindling opportunities beyond high school for rural midwestern students: slighted by the standardized test bureaucracy and all but ignored by prestigious coastal schools, these students often take on enormous loan debt, turn to a salivating military thirsty for new recruits or simply self-short change their dreams and ambitions altogether. Though the writing was by turns poignant and humorous, the passages concerning the aggressive and almost greedy military recruitment practices were especially striking and seemed ripe with bold and graphic imagery. I produced the following sketches:

Though I believed the boot-on-desk sketch could be read as either specifically military related or taken as a more general metaphor for the trampled opportunities of these students, both editor and art director wanted something with a lighter touch that dealt with the remoteness and isolation of these schools. Also the headline had been added by this point, "The Ivy League Was Another Planet." Aha. Cue up Shatner, or you know what, and better yet,  Sir Patrick Stewart. There I said it. High school boldly going where etc etc... - engage (ugh)!

A quick gender flip for the student (credit where due: a subtle but inspired bit of art direction from Matt Dorfman), and voila, one of my favorite finishes to date for 2013:

Thanks to Matt Dorfman and the rest of the gang at the Op-Ed desk for the typically engrossing assignment, and as always, thanks for reading!

Undead Illustration #3: (Almost) The Cover Of New York Magazine

A little over a week ago I received a late email from New York Magazine asking if I had time to kick around sketches for a possible cover. That's a no brainer. The following morning I received the brief: it was a write up about a new mental health study that explores the possible and varying degrees of psychological trauma inflicted upon almost every adolescent American in the name of their basic education. Taking a slightly lighter approach to the art, I'd been asked to create "angsty teenage" typography that said "high school sucks!" and populate the negative space with scribbly doodles of a notebook variety. The designers at NY cobbled together the following comp for me:

As a high school slacker whose mind was often lured away from AP chemistry by his unflattering drawings of faculty members and, somewhat less-straight forward, Batman and Boba Fett in a variety of mundane everyday situations, the prospect of this job actually going through felt slightly incredible, and I had a brief visceral thrill at the possibility of getting paid for the very thing which I was told time and again would dash what little hope I had of any semblance of a career against the merciless rocks of some boho cum Reefer Madness like descent into a hazy drug fueled life of low level misdemeanors and rakism, these distracted doodles but the first tentative step down the proverbial slippery criminal slope perhaps culminating in some sort of anti-art after school special aimed at dissuading impressionable youth from the same treacherous path.*  I grabbed my copy of The MC5's Back In The USA and dug up some old high school notebooks for reference and inspiration...

I think those original Star Wars rereleases had just happened, this is probably early 96?

Yeah...

And I think this IS actually my chem teacher, sci-fi horror brain only slighty exaggerated if memory serves...

...and quickly cranked out the following sketches. Because time was short, I was advised to let the designers comp in some "doodly" drawings from my website until they were sure we had approval. I drew several versions of the words as quickly and loosely as possible, then started pairing up the more successful treatments of each.

Ultimately however, the editors chose to walk back the cavalier language of the original art direction and go with a more ambiguous, serious and i believe authentic actual high schooler drawing. C'est la vie. On the other hand  I can totally appreciate the Twombly black hole / physics class scribble-out action happening here:

Thanks to Tom Alberty for thinking of me in the first place as these were a blast to knock together even if they never came to full fruition. And as always thanks for reading! You can never hold back Spring...

*things were probably not that harsh or dramatic, I was just trying to get back to the 17 year old brain, maaaaan.

Every (Good) Illustration I Made About The 2012 Election*

Weeks later, we're still picking up the proverbial pieces. I'm sure I speak for a large number of folks the world over when I say the palpable feeling of relief that the election is just over has lingered well past the closing of the polls late on November 6. And now, as members of both parties, elected officials or not, begin to plant their fingers in their ears and run deaf and screaming headlong into the holidays, an increasingly unlikely Mayan Apocalypse and hopefully not off the "fiscal cliff**," here's a quick trip back into recent history, from the Republican primary through election night via a bunch of election related illustrations that I've scarcely had time to post - please enjoy:

Remember Rick Perry? A piece for Bloomberg View from Nov 2011 contrasting his general approach to that of eventual Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

The spectre of Florida circa 2000 as well as voter fraud and polling place catastrophe was raised by both parties as early as January of 2012. For Bloomberg View.

A favorite piece for the New York Times Op-Ed section about the art of spinning arguments and facts to reinforce any position. The New York Times, September 2012

A poster image for 30Reasons.org, a group of 30 artists and designers who contributed visual representations of arguments for re-electing the president. This was (loosely/abstractly) related to his stand on social issues, which for me was the single largest reason to vote Obama. 

A chart by Kim Bost and I as JMBOTRN breaking down the accuracy of some "non-conventional" national polls, including but not limited to a donut chain, 7-11 and bourbon distillery. For The New York Times, November 2012.

Finally, and you know, most importantly, which candidate would be best equipped to handle a zombie apocalypse? November 2012, Bloomberg View.

Though I'll miss the savory rapid fire illustration gigs like the above, again, regardless of party affiliation, I'll happily raise a glass to the election cycle's end. As always, thanks for reading!

*There were some stinkers too, but i'll leave that to intrepid googlers and schadenfreude aficionados.

**Hip-hop side project somebody? But make it cool. Please.

Seth Macfarlane For NYLON

I'm not always the best portrait illustrator out there, but for some reason whenever i do them for NYLON they turn out pretty alright. This one is Seth Macfarlane, creator of "The Family Guy" and professional bro behind Wahlberg CGI and dude humor vehicle ted. If i sound excessively snarky
about this right out of the gate, please know that it comes from years of childhood ridicule rooted in such late 80s/early 90s ted prefixed fare as "Teddy Grahams", "Teddy Ruxpin" etc, or public luminaries of the Bundy, Danson, Kazinsky and Turner varieties (i'll never forgive him for colorizing Casablanca). Gonna be damn near 100 outside today kiddies. For those about to rock...etc...

The (Questionable) Effectiveness Of The Death Penalty for Bloomberg View

Bloomberg View is a relatively new entity in the world of news opinion and commentary, but even in that short time they've become a favorite illustration client of mine (and I'm sure many other illustrators and designers as well). The pieces are almost always thought provoking, there's a lot of leeway in terms of available imagery and aesthetics, and I love the double edged challenge of the short deadlines and uniform scale for each piece. 

Recently I was contacted by the good folks at BV to illustrate a piece dealing with the (lack) of effectiveness of the death penalty in deterring homicides, and how both sides of the argument have based their cases far more on conjecture, faith and skewed figures rather than hard data. It's a great piece of social commentary and analysis and I was eager to respond with what I hoped would be an equally compelling visual. 

The problem inherent in many of these types of assignments, however, is (for lack of a better way to put it) "getting away with murder." Dealing with such weighty content, it's a slippery slope navigating between pandering via gratuitous overbearing illustrated violence (I'm rarely a fan) and something that comes off as too much of soft second serve, treating the subject too delicately or not seriously enough. Having been burnt a few times in the recent past on a few pieces related to congressional bickering (look out!), I initially opted to tread lightly, before being asked not to ignore the darker elements of the piece. That direction produced the following sketches:

I thought the deflating black balloon or death about to flicked off page by the giant hand of either bureaucracy or crime were shoo-ins, but somehow the skull profile/question mark ended up being the winner. 

This was exciting because A: it was far and away the easiest to execute effectively under the time constraints, and B: because there were a few hours to kill before the deadline it meant I could experiment with approach a little bit. After messing around with some ink and graphite washes with predictable and corn-ball results, i found that a clogged spray paint cap and documentation via a 2 generations old, grossly inadequate when it was new iPhone 3G camera did the trick beautifully. Some mild photo shopping later and I had 2 finals that I was more than excited about, as it's rare that I'm ever so totally, overwhelmingly pleased with something conceptually and as a drawing on its own:

Ultimately the inverted version won out. You can see it in context and read the story (and typically entertaining comments section) here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-11/the-death-penalty-debate-represents-a-market-failure.html

Thanks for reading!

Two Recent Posters For Union Pool

Happy Friday everyone. Real quick, here's 2 recent posters for i show i just played on May 16th and an upcoming one that some friends are playing on May 30th, both at Union Pool. Super happy with how these turned out. Cheers!

Holiday Mixerrr / Holiday Party

 Holiday Mixer 2 by ted mcgrath

Once again, somehow, the holiday season is upon us. 2011 has breezed by at an unprecedented pace, the sense of temporal dislocation only heightened by todays weather of 70º and foggy... on December 6. In Brooklyn. Spooky? You bet.


But in lighter news, here's another round up of holiday sonic chestnuts for your seasonal entertainment - some are well-worn favorites, songs long canonized by the gods of pop culture and half-remembered office party slur-alongs, while others materialize warbly and weird like Dickensian ghosts of 45rpm crate diggers past. As with last year's offerings, i think they stand up to the "proper" work of the artists involved, and somehow balance holiday novelty and actual listenability quite well. The amateur edits and fades are back too, but hell, it's still better than that She & Him record. Just sayin. 


ALSO: for those of you so inclined and in the NYC area, the cast and crew of The Pencil Factory Studios will be having our annual shin-dig at The Diamond in Greenpoint this very Friday, from 7PM-? Last year's party was a total blast and it'd be great to see any and all of you if you're around. The Diamond is located at 43 Franklin St. Brooklyn, NY 11222, G to Nassau/L to Bedford. 

Happy Holidays Everyone! And here's to fantastic and Mayan Revenge-God free 2012!

-t.

A Recent Sketch Book Drawing...

Death By Audio Mural

So this has been a hell of a summer - many things afoot over in would be sleepy Greenpoint as exemplified by the last 96 hours' metropolitan tremor and the first hurricane of the season that i'm watching drift in over the roofs of North Brooklyn as i type. So yeah, lots of action over the last 3 months in the art, music and miscellaneous departments, much of which will show up here with the attendant and typically verbose write up. Werd. 

One of this summer's projects that i'm super excited to finally share is the mural i painted over 2 days at Brooklyn's Death By Audio, one of the all-time great DIY art and music venues. A few years ago, the fine folks who manage the place began commissioning artist friends, (mainly from bands who play there often) to paint murals on the walls inside the space, and i was invited to contribute something to the walls opposite the stage that adjoin the back room to the main performance space. 

As a lot of the other pieces are relatively colorful, i knew right out of the gate that i wanted to do something stark and black and white. I was also keen to free-hand the piece with some India ink in the vein of some large pieces i'd completed almost 10 years ago at the tail end of art school but had seldom revisited since. 

Content however, was a problem. I find that a lot of illustrators and designers (myself very much included) can get both very excited but also a little gun-shy when confronted with a piece that's not only well beyond the scale of your typical editorial illustration or book jacket and also not quite as disposable. And on an old-timey Catholic guilt level, friends of mine run and maintain the venue: i wanted to be sure i created something that they (more than anyone else) wouldn't be repulsed by, sick of in a few days etc.  After hemming and hawing over ideas one of my friends who looks after the place remarked that he liked the Hokusai-derived waves i often  incorporate in my work, which was the suggestion i was looking for. A lot of the other pieces have kind of a monstery quality to them and i definitely wanted to tap into that without getting contrived. Adding a subtle, sinister eyeball to the sketch below solved pretty much all issues.

From there it was just a matter of executing the final piece. I spent a day on each side, having to prime the wall first and let it dry, then going back in with some pretty thick Japanese brushes and some ink. Thanks again to Edan, Gavin and everyone else at Death By Audio for the gracious commission and the chance to contribute some art to my favorite music venue!

Notes: Death By Audio is far and away one of the best DIY music venues going. If you're a music fan and find yourself in the greater NYC area with a night to kill, i highly recommend it. It's one of the last great venues where on any given night you can be utterly clueless about any of the bands on the bill and probably see and hear something totally unexpected and amazing. It's located at 49 S2nd between Wythe and Kent in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Check out the calendar here.

Also, please pardon the lofi iPhone photos, it was all i had available at the time. Better shots coming soon, i swear! Thanks for reading!

Priming the walls.

In progress, the fills were done with ink as well to keep the black consistent and give it a more painterly feel.

The finished piece. 

Happy Father's Day!

Hey All - Happy Father's Day weekend. In the spirit of the event, here's a sketch book portrait of the old man (speaking figuratively) drawn back in 2007, dude's doing the crossword puzzle and holding still, uncharacteristically. Happy Father's Day to you and yours! Cheers!

David Sokol Feature For Bloomberg Business Week Or "Yes, I Will Make Your Magazine Feature Look Like My Zines, Sure."

Once in a weird while you get called for what literally qualifies as a dream job - the kind of gig that you play out in your head every now and again that you know the odds of something like that actually going down are completely slim to nil. But once every election cycle or so (and i swear there must be a ancient and deeply uncool Aztec calendar for predicting this sort of thing somewhere in the seldom seen Stonecutters-esque subterranean vaults of the Society Of Illustrators), one of these assignments dings over your email and reminds you why you spent so many hours making endless revisions to that fascinating spot series about the evolution and mysterious disappearance of the spork for European mini mag Blaine Westway Presents: CUTLERY. That having been typed, somebody please, if you're out there, i'll draw yer sporks, actually sounds kinda cool...

Anyhow - in late April i received one such email from Richard Turley over at Bloomberg Business Week. Much and justifiably lauded since its relaunch last year, the new Bloomberg prefixed version of Business Week really is quite the wonder in this age of protracted panic about the future of print based media. Strictly from a design and illustration standpoint, they've been a complete joy to work for as i've seldom been hired for freelance projects where my role in the process and what i could bring to the table seemed so thoroughly and specifically considered. For this project, i was asked if i'd like to illustrate and embellish a feature story about David Sokol, the should've been heir to Warren Buffet currently suffering from a snowballing fall from grace that had finally started to captivate national news attention in spite of the best efforts of all parties involved not to make a scene. Richard had a copy of an older zine of mine called "Health & Science Center" and asked if i could apply a similar treatment to the pages pertaining to the Sokol story. Some images of the printed zine:

With this aesthetic in mind (black line on red background, hand lettered titles, xerox battered photos) i set about attacking sketches given the rough layouts and some photo options:

Originally the story was to be titled "The Latest Temptation of David Sokol" and the only real direction i was given was to avoid direct Biblical imagery to the best of my ability. Also, Buffet was to be shown as "protected" or "sheilding" himself from the fallout. Upon further reading of the story, Sokol was cast as a more ambiguous character than the initial headline suggested, portraying him as a generous philanthropist capable of ruthless and even bullying behavior in business deals, an honest and devoted family man very much in line with Buffet's own public persona but whose behind the scenes actions don't necessarily place him above a few minor crooked deals even though the actual financial gains would be a pittance to someone of his net worth.  

Given all of this i started thinking about the work of Max Beckmann (a long time favorite of mine who often painted from a personalized mythological vocabulary) and Rauschenberg's "illustrations" of The Inferno, works that communicated universal weighty themes by reconfiguring and recombining, or updating mytho archetypes. Corrupting black cloud ripped from Japanese woodcuts is certainly obvious enough, but i was really happy to get the accidentally toppled trash can full of vipers through. As for Buffet, couldn't resist giving him Odin-esque lightning bolt eye-brows (and for the record Thor was a great, stupid popcorn movie, way to make those Kirby costumes look totally believable) as well as a brickwall, moat, and psychedelic forcefield. Ultimately the 70s muscle dude bouncer and the dog got cut, but there was a lot happening in that shot already. With sketches approved, it was off to a 12 hour scanning and drawing marathon that ultimately incorporated scans from my sketchbook to fill in the margins and add to the zine-like feel. Finals and print version below:

Thanks again to Richard and the rest of the gang at Bloomberg for what was definitely one of the most fun and rewarding projects i've ever worked on!