Young Conservatives

Intellectually exhausted (see republican campaign in 2008), conservatives need some new thinking, and some young conservative thinkers are emerging, like W. Bradford Wilcox, Luigi Zingales, Megan McArdle and Reihan Salam. For the Boston Globe, art direction by Greg Klee.

Here's the roughs, Greg went for my favorite, my second was the elephant skull.

Ironically for a story about the need for some new original thinking, I spoof an 100 year old Rodin.

ESPN

How would it feel to be traded for 10 bats? A bit humiliated? So did the late John Odom. This was for a tragic baseball story for ESPN the Magazine which gave me the sweet chance to do a conceptual portrait, something I really enjoy but rarely get to do.

When I was 15, I got a job drawing caricatures at "Casa Bonita" a tourist trap/restaurant in Denver, Colorado, which I did there and all over the West at fairs, festivals and rodeos through my college years. So in a way doing portraits takes me full circle to my first paying work.

Half way through concepting they told me the headline would be "punchline", so I made sure to cover that base as well.

Art direction by Tjia Siung

Tight sketch and color study. Having the sketch in layers was helpful to be able to move the bats around.
I think the designers at ESPN have an incredible handle on typography. Beautiful design by Siung Tjia.
Here's a quick summary of the story:

John Odom was good enough to be drafted by the San Francisco Giants out of community college and play three seasons in their minor league system. But when he was traded in 2008 from the Calgary Vipers to the Laredo Broncos for ten maple bats he became a punchline. A punchline he apparently could not live with being. Five months after the trade he was found to have overdosed on heroin and barbiturates.

Cheaper Solar Power

Although solar power is expensive it's getting cheaper, for LA Times. Art direction by Derek Simmons.

After I sent this rough to Derek, I realized I could consolidate both figures. So I told him and he said "go for it", without even asking for another sketch.

Here's the tight preliminary drawing. For solar nerds the line pattern on the panels is mitsubishi. Last summer I got to start concepting some ads for their solar panels, but like many ad jobs, it changed direction halfway through. I was bummed though, I had asked to be paid in actual solar panels, which would have been awesome.