Gold in 3x3 Professional Show No. 8

Found out my "Memphis to Boston" piece won Gold in editorial in the latest 3x3 Professional Show

This piece has also won Silver in the Society of News Design and 2nd place in the AltPick Awards.
Which made me feel good, especially since I had done 28 color studies, and probably a half dozen compositions for that piece!

I also received a distinguished merit award for "Evolution of China"

Which also made me feel good, because I painted it completely once, wasn't happy and trashed it, and started over on it. Which at the time bummed me out, because that was alot of hand painted hairs to throw away.

And a merit award for "Dodger's Divorce"

http://blog.3x3mag.com/2011/06/3x3-professional-show-no-8-winners.html

Creator or Copycat of a Copycat

Got a call from ESPN the magazine, not to spoof Roy Lichenstein of course, but to illustrate the Seattle Mariners rebuilding their baseball team and possibly trading their star players Felix Hernandez and Ichiro Suzuki. The editors suggested a garage sale scene or the player's sitting on a pile of dynamite, which I explored.


But after doodling the Mariner's logo over and over, I saw that I could turn it into an explosion, to go with the expression "blow up the team".

And the explosion I was drawing kept reminding me of my favorite Roy Lichenstein painting "Explosion" 1965.


Of course I could have easily drawn my own explosion, but I thought how fun would it be to spoof the Lichenstein, and maybe, just maybe, some readers would enjoy the spoof as well.
I knew the art directors would, and Oliver Yoo who art directed this, went for it, thanks Oliver!


I love spoofing famous artworks, just for the fact alone to closely study their compositions.

Of course I didn't want to hide this fact, so I wrote "Apologies to Lichenstein" along the bottom of my illustration, like Bob Staake wrote "After Escher" on his brilliant New Yorker Cover last July.


Later while researching the painting, I stumbled across this website "Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein" put together by art historian, David Barsalou who has spent 25 years (looking through 30,000 comic books!) to find examples like these:

Which made me realize that I should have actually written "Apologies to some unknown '60s comic artist, because unfortunately, the original source of "Explosion" I spoofed wasn't on his site. Perhaps Mr. Barsalou needs to look through a few more comic books ; )


Of course everybody knows Lichenstein was inspired by the comics but I had never realized how directly he drew from them, including the text. I figured he had and but never really thought too much about it, because I got what he going for. But after seeing these maybe he should've have written "Apologies to Tony Abruzzo, John Romita, Jim Pike etc etc." under his paintings....

Here's "my" piece in print. My little acknowledgement at the bottom ended up being removed by the magazine, as unnecessary or distracting, which is probably correct....but it was necessary for me! It made me feel better.




And the Boston Globe article of which I spoofed their headline:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/10/18/lichtenstein_creator_or_copycat/

http://davidbarsalou.homestead.com/LICHTENSTEINPROJECT.html

AI30 Selected

Just found out this piece I did for Ed Mann and Siung Tjia at ESPN got into American Illustration 30.

Thrilled because I mis-read the entry deadline and didn't enter anything, so I'm so glad the art directors at ESPN did, thanks Ed and Siung!

Which is cool, because they included the whole spread with the typography which isn't typical of AI.


http://www.ai-ap.com/slideshow/AI/30/?status=selected#174

Cover for Emory

How to illustrate 'Ethics' ?
That was the challenge Emory magazine Art Director Erica Allison Endicott gave me.

The issue was about how Emory taught ethics and character.

Inside she needed a full page for more specific story on Web ethics.

Erica took my roughs to the committee. The very word "committee" struck fear into my heart.
But when she returned with this idea approved, I knew she could have a second career as an corporate negotiator if she wanted.

Any art director that can take sketches on such an abstract subject as ethics into a committee meeting and emerge with an idea not being completely destroyed or 'frankensteined' could work at Camp David in my opinion.

And here's the instead spread in with my color sketch, last I saw of it.

The web story mentioned, among other things, how people can behave differently online.

Double Page Spread for APlus

This was for a Chinese magazine APlus about whether property tax will put a dent into soaring real estate prices in China and create an opportunity for homebuyers.

Raymond Ho, the art director on this, liked the bicycle one, but it needed more exploration.

Trying out some possible layouts and developing the idea a bit more.

Raymond sent me this layout to look at when I painted the final which was helpful.


A bit of detail from the center.

China's Split Personality for TIME

Story was about how dealing with China, diplomats never know which China they are dealing with, the business side or the military side.
Art directed by Emily Crawford.
Some roughs, one of my favorites was the panda. I had to throw some quick photo color into to see if it would work.
But we went with the dragon which was fine.


Here's a color sketch Emily put on the page and showed me, which was very helpful, because it made me realize it was a bit too symmetrical.

So I added some arms and body, which seemed to do the trick.
The illustration ended up running only in the international edition, which I don't subscribe to so I'll post the finished layout when I get a copy.

ESPN cover process

After a super busy 3 months (where were you last october?) I finally took off a whole day off to go skiing last week and nearly missed a call from ESPN to take a shot at their Fiction Issue cover. I say "take a shot", because they commission 6 artists/photographers for their covers. Which I like, since there's less pressure knowing if you air-ball your shot, there's 5 other balls in the air and somebody is going to make it.

I had tried before about a year ago and didn't make it. Honestly I didn't think I had much of a chance because their covers by nature are rarely illustrated and when they are, it's vector or 3D. But since this cover was so conceptual and needed a different feel, I felt my chances were better.
When I first heard the subject "Sports Fiction" I thought what in the heck am I going to do for this! Seemed impossible, cause it's not about a specific sport, has to be general, and general is pretty hard to illustrate. But I came up with few ideas I felt could work.


Apparently one of the other artists was Edel, who I'm sure won't mind me posting his piece, since the dang thing is funnier and more memorable than mine! I'm guessing the only reason it didn't get picked was maybe the editors thought the mag's demographic (18-30 year old males, sorry guys), wouldn't identify Shakespeare or maybe only associate him with plays. That's my guess anyway. I wish I would have thought of drawing famous writers.... maybe something with Mark Twain's likeness..... hmmm next time.

But this is another example of why illustration rocks, the solutions are so original and varied.

Anyway Siung Tjia, who art directed this, thought the stadium vendor guy was worth going to finish on, and he came up with the brilliant idea of putting the cover lines on the books.Only tricky part was he wanted me to do the type! I knew he was right and it would look better that way, but man! Me doing typography for some of the BEST typographers in the business,
freaked me out! I appreciate great typography, in fact I've actually commissioned multiple art directors to do custom type for the 10 or so random splash pages on my website, but I never really studied the art myself.
And I didn't have much time, so I just stayed up hand lettering it over and over until I got something tolerable.


This is issue is chock full of illustrations by Jeffery Smith, Heads of State, Eddie Guy, Andy Rementer, Mike Bertino, Matt Owens and Shonagh Ray.