Orphans

For Suffolk Law School on creating more permanent family solutions for orphans, like adoption.
Art director was Kaajal Asher.
The roughs ideas.

Tighter sketch and color studies.

New York Times OpEd

Did the OpEd for the New York Times yesterday, on Obama on Iran and how his policy is in a free-fall. Art direction by Kim Bost.



Along with the usual ideas, I was thinking of Obama dropping the ball as a visual, but the problem is he's actually really good a sports. Then I remembered him throwing some gutterballs trying to bowl on the campaign trail last year and bingo something a bit more fresh.

Luckily the editors picked up on it as well and choose that one.

Regifting revisited

Ok I love it when I come across a great illustrator who has illustrated the exact same obscure subject as me. I love to see their thinking, since we had to chew on the same material.

I was a bit reluctant to post this, because my piece is about 6 years old and it shows!
But I couldn't resist.

Here is Daniel Hertzberg's version.
The variety is better, and his color is infinitely better!


And here are my roughs, sent to Josue Evilla at the Boston Globe back in 2004.

Progressive cover

For an article by Wendell Berry on returning the economy to long term sustainability. Painted with alot of extra bleed to give Nick plenty of flexibility in designing the cover. Ironically this figure has a very similar pose to last month's cover by Zina Saunders of former Gov. Palin, which well illustrated, in part, unsustainability.

The roughs. I really enjoyed concepting for this subject, it's dear to my heart. I try to live conservation minded as much I can, but I do live with a beautiful but normal north american wife and kids, so sometimes it's a balancing act not to become the "green nazi" of the house.

Preliminary drawing and color sketch.


Some details of the painting.

Piece that ran inside.

In print.

Green Scams

It's been interesting watching the, so called, environmental movement grow.
It must be gaining some adherents, because it's attracting some scam artists preying on people's green goodwill. This was an AARP Bulletin article about green scams. Art directed by the wonderful Cathy Kelley, whom I've had to the pleasure to work with for years.

The roughs, I was secretly hoping for the snake or the arrow thief.


The piece actually had to run silhouetted, but I liked the more ominous feel to the black background which I added later.

Patriot lovers and (haters)

I was surprised to get another job from ESPN, since the paint on the last piece for them was barely dry. The story was examining the lack of success in Bill Belichick's coaching tree. Art direction and design by Siung Tjia.

The roughs. Their favorites were the logo spoof and the hoodie. Siung opted for the logo spoof, which was my secret favorite as well.

Some reference ESPN sent me. I'm always amazed with doing portraits, because if I don't exaggerate the features a bit it, it doesn't look like them, and ESPN was keen on a likeness, so I was a bit nervous.

Line drawing and color study. I ended up changing to more blue to make your eye go to the branches first rather the Belichick's head, because that was more focus of the story.

Some detail.

In print. Should be on the newstands sometime this Labor Day weekend.

2010 Calendar

This will be for The Progressive's 2010 calendar, for the month of April.
It will be printed in 2 colors blue and black.

The event: April 8th, 1966 Last poll tax outlawed in US.

If you are unfamiliar with the poll tax, as I was, it was a fee to pay at the voting booth or to register to vote, basically a way to keep poor blacks from voting in the South.
I was a bit worried taking the assignment, just because the physical act of voting is so un-dynamic whereas the struggle to get there was so dynamic.

A few years ago I had done some roughs on voting in Iraq for TIME, for Edel actually when he was there, on democracy spreading in the middle east. So I think this idea of the river curtain must have come from this unused rough.

For roughs, this was all I sent the AD Nick Jehlen, a tight skethc and color study. I've never done that before, but I really liked it and wanted to see if Nick would go for it. He did.


For some reason I was thinking about John Hendrix's "John Brown" book when I was drawing these little KKK hoods, maybe his really cool use of scale I don't know.