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.

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.

What's your waterfootprint?

I'm always amazed, it seems the biggest way to reduce your carbon footprint AND your waterfootprint is too eat less meat. Too bad I like meat, but my wife doesn't so I'm a semi-vegetarian by default. I've gotten used to it though, and actually like it. About twice a year I'll eat a steak and it tastes good but since I'm not used to it, feels like a brick in my stomach.

Full page for Mother Jones.

The roughs. I went alittle nuts, but I'm a sucker for environmental stories.

The "final". Art direction and design by Carolyn Perot.

Locavores

Locavores for the Boston Globe Magazine.
Art director was Grant Staublin. Who let me really push the textures on this one, which I really wanted to do so I could repeat the patterns of the rows of soil.

Here's the approved sketch. Grant had the idea of a family in a garden, so I compacted the space a bit. But obviously it needed a ton more work on the composition.

Since Locavores try to limit themselves to locally grown foods, like a 100 miles radius for example, I wanted to hint at the effort that goes into this voluntary self limiting, that why I have the figures contorting themselves into the square space. Initially I had a green dotted line around to symbolize the radius, but I dropped it. Also I don't usually stylize figures this much, but the idea called for it, and I enjoyed doing it.

Stab at Stalin

Got to take a stab at Stalin, in an illustration for the NY Times book review of "Secret Speech" by Tom Rob Smith, author of "Child 44" which is soon to be movie. Art director was Nicholas Blechman.

The novel is set during the process of de-Stalinization, set off by Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956, during which some of the hunters and executioners became the hunted and executed.

In the illustration I wanted to show the Stalin driven murders and the cycle of revenge afterward.

I'd actually had a similar idea for some personal work I've been meaning to do on the bloody history of communism. In those sketches Stalin moustache's was a grim reapers scythe which I simply switched to a knife to better fit this assignment.

So I was thrilled when Nicholas gave me the job and ended up picking that idea.

Here's the sketches, I spent a bit too much time on them, but often when I'm really loving a subject I can't help myself.

Naturally I had to base my drawing of one of Stalin's posters, but as portraits go the best I've seen is this one by Ernest Hamlin Baker on the right, which is much revealing of the true Stalin.

Preliminary drawing, likeness still bad at this point.

A photoshop color study. I ended up pushing more distance between the figure and the background in the final, but I'm still unsure which is better, closer and flatter or a bit more atmospheric space.