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!

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.

Animals for the New York Times, With A Quick Word On Researching Your Reference...

Last month i completed the above illustration for The New York Times Travel section, about discounted safari vacation packages. Seemed simple and straight forward enough, i was super happy with the final, and actually arranged to trade the mandrill to a friend of mine for a piece of his own artwork to be decided at a later date. This assignment however, marked the first time i ever had to significantly alter an illustration based on poor photo reference research.  It's been about 2 years since i've taught at an art school but were i in the classroom presently, this would be today's lesson. Here we go, do as i say, not as i did:

The brief for the piece was pretty simple: Safaris are being discounted more heavily than usual due to the depressed economy, and while still expensive, they are certainly significantly less so than they've been in a long while. The client's direction was essentially animals and discounts. Done.  Above is the original sketch... i've used tigers A LOT  in my illustrations in recent years (i've been trying to cut back) but this seemed as good a place as any to trot one out without it seeming like forced illustrator bullsh*t circumstances ("doesn't this guy do anything but paint tigers? c'mon...") as well as expand my usual cast of non-human players for possible allegorical usage later. A quick editorial tweak of the "language" in the piece and the below final ensued.

The problems begin here. A failure to glean from the article that it concerned only African safari tours allowed for the inclusion of the tiger, as my father, the son of a prominent veterinary pathologist succinctly pointed out much to my shame, "There are NO tigers in Africa," a sentiment echoed with increasing snark and indignation in the comments section of the piece on the Times' website (to be fair, i was in the throes of a sinister sinus infection and suffice it to say, "medicated"). Additionally, some intrepid commenters took issue with the bird, which, while there's no way i'll even pretend to describe it's specific phylum, was definitely culled from a Google image search for "safari bird." Ugh. A toucan it is not, but sometimes there's no accounting for taste, artistic license and so on. The last thing i wanted to do was embarrass a favorite and loyal client though, so the switcheroo from tiger to lion and "toucan" (ugh) to mandrill was made. A printed explanation later and all was well, minus my own embarrassment.  Earlier sketches made with the mandrill in more provocative poses such that scrutinous viewers and safari enthusiasts would have absolutely no problem identifying the animal via its specifically tinted posterior have been consigned to my sketchbook and studio visits. 

Moral of story, kids: read the damn article carefully, especially when under the influence of Thera-Flu. And make sure your photo reference corroborates - even if you're going waaaaaaay out on some weirdo limb, better to ground at least a toe or 2 in fact, especially when you're drawing for the world's largest news organization. 

A happier ending: this week i made the below drawing for the Times Op-Ed section, applying some allegorical animal grist (vulture) to a modern Goya-worthy disaster (Arizona). Buried in the comments is praise for the draftsmanship in the illustration, which you'd correctly guess i seldom ever receive. Redemption? Sure, but at the end of the day it's just another lunatic buzzard screaming from a top a picked-clean bison skeleton in the Arizona desert. 

Thanks for reading!

"Super Flu": Undead Illustration #2

Last week i was contacted by The New York Times Magazine to do some illustrated type for a piece on fighting the super flu, a strain of the seasonal menace that's adaptable and resistant to conventional antibiotics. Over a few days i came up with 3 treatments, all of which i was pretty excited about and ultimately the client as well. Unfortunately, just as the art was approved the story ended up being cut altogether, so no ultra gross microscope type to ruin your Sunday brunch next week i'm afraid...
That said, it's always super fun to both flex the Ed Ruscha-worshiping part of my brain and work for the Sunday Magazine, as they're pretty much responsible for a large chunk of my career. Werd. Type treatments below, the bottom version is what would've appeared in the magazine. 

  

 

ZONE

During the last week of 2010 i had the distinct pleasure of ending the year with a favorite piece for a favorite client, The New York Times Book Review. The assignment was to illustrate the review of the novel Zone by Mattias Énard, a book comprised of an internal monologue presented as one gigantic run on sentence and containing only one period. Thematically the book uses this questionably reliable and fractured narrative voice to chronicle and embody the violence, confusion, suspicion and chaos of the 20th century's transition into the 21st. As such, the winding, circuitous "plot" covers and recovers a lot of ground and i immediately wanted nothing to do with a traditional "narrative illustration" approach for this assignment. 

Flash back a day before receiving the call from the Times. Back at the ancestral home for the holiday, my dad, ever a classic movie buff, graciously DVR'd Busby Berkely's "The Gold Diggers Of 1935" to show me from Turner Classic Movies (thanks dad). A gorgeous piece of arty, outlandish, deco musical cinema, its "Lullabye Of Broadway" sequence is completely breath taking, obviously for the lighting and super elaborate set pieces and choreography, but especially for the striking long shot of the singer's face framed alone in a massive field of black. Check it out below, it's incredible:

Inspired (obviously and very much so, heh) by Berkely's film i was already eager to try both something that went after a powerful minimalism and/or a dense and more maximal solution. I started sketching and quickly realized that to attempt something visually busy and loaded with detail seemed not to do justice to the review or the described tone and content of the novel. Reviewing the layout, i settled on the following sketch using the lone magnified period as Berkely's black void with a small slightly out of focus skull drifting in the background. Knowing that the "period" would be sitting in the center of the page i thought it would have a bold initial impact while inviting a second or third glance as the review unfolded. Also, as a piece of exaggerated punctuation, it would hopefully co-opt the entire page to bolster the concept. 

 

I also did the "safety sketch" below which is admittedly awful but kind of gets the same point across albeit in a far less interesting way. Blissfully the ADs were on board with the original idea.

From there the finish was a lot fun, mainly involving playing with textures that would feel like magnified print but also something evoking an abstract, out of focus sense of space. The final result was one of my favorite illustration pieces of last year. Thanks again to Nicholas, Catherine and Joon at the BR and Happy New Year!

Vans On The Run

In the last week of September I got a call from Alexandra Zsigmond from the New York Times Op-Ed desk with a (dare i say it) exciting job regarding the rise of semi-legal private transit services in the face of public transit cut backs across the city. As per usual with Op-Ed gigs, time was tight but thanks to the marvels of modern technology i was able to get most of the sketches done in a pocket sketchbook while waiting for Pavement to come on stage at Central Park.

Once i had a rough idea of how the piece was going to sit in the blissfully unconventional shape...


... it was then just a matter of populating it with buildings and vehicles...






...which were kept pretty clear and tame in the sketch phase. Once the sketch was approved however, the vehicles had room to get a little more interesting in terms of line and mark making.







I really, really used get bummed out when i had to draw cars or trucks. I lived in fear of having to draw machinery, a total drag... now however, i crave this stuff... Anyway, a slight tweak of the layout later and voila:



...one of my favorite pieces of 2010. The final piece is available in more detail here.