ESPN the Magazine

Got to illustrate the "Messiest Divorce in Sports", yeah even messier than Tiger's...
That of the owners of the LA Dodgers for ESPN the Magazine. Art director was Ed Mann.

A few days after I finished the piece, I got to see Dodger Stadium for the first time when I was in LA for ICON6.

Had fun with the roughs, I even gave them a typographic option. Why? I just couldn't help myself and got obsessed seeing if it would work. Fortunately Ed picked the more compact solution.

Whenever I'm lucky enough to do a spread for great designers, I'm so excited to see what they come up with after I turn in the artwork. I love being surprised and at ESPN they always deliver.

George Steinbrenner killed my NY Observer cover

Well actually not him exactly... his death did.
Last week right when I was almost done with this conceptual portrait of notorious developer Shaya Boymelgreen, for the cover of the New York Observer, news came in of the Yankees owner's passing. Which was much bigger news. Actually, I've been in this business long enough to be totally used to things that happening.

Here's my tight color sketch in the mockup. And the cover that had to replace it.
Kudos to Kathryn Rathke for cranking out that portrait of George in probably less than an hour!




Here's my final art that did run inside for the same budget, thanks Nancy!
We didn't want to make fun of his features so the caricature aspect is toned down and Nancy wanted the buildings in his beard to be subtle, which was really nice to do that way.

July Progressive Cover

Got to tackle the complicated issue of the Arizona immigration law for Nick Jehlen at the Progressive.

Some sketches...




Some reference....



Apologies to Georgia O'Keefe, I know you worked in New Mexico.


And this is why Nick Jehlen, is my favorite art director in the whole world!
Because he let me do this spoof of those kitschy southwest lizards, for the inside.

NY Times OpEd today

For today's OpEd in the NY Times on talking to terrorists.
Writer argues that, engagement over time can change terrorist groups to be more mainstream like Nelson Mandela's ANC, which was once listed by the US as a terrorist organization.
Maybe... but the article's mentioned group's goals seem a bit more specific, achievable and platable than say Al-Qaeda's. But the writer does acknowledge this.

I finally got approved on this job late in the day and was worried, but Sen. Byrd's passing bumped it back and gave me a extra day for the finish.
Aviva on the other hand never sounds worried, how she does that with all those tight deadlines is beyond me.

First set of roughs, when I thought the article was mainly focused on talking to terrorists in order to understand them better in order to kill them.

Second set of roughs after I got the focus right.

Energy Biz Cover

Got to do a fun job on one of my favorite subjects: green power.
I know it's a power hungry world and green power still seems like a fantasy, but here's to hope!


Art directed by Jürgen Mantzke who is also an illustrator. He had the interesting direction of trying to show the future by hinting at the past, which was fun to explore.

Here's a smaller piece I did for inside.

Some color studies, they preferred the dark blue, better for the loads of typography.

Ironically immediately after I finished this job we went on a kayak/raft trip down the San Juan river (4 corners area) and found this petroglyph. There is something cool about sticking your nose right up to 4,000 year old artwork and no alarm going off.

I considered putting this one in the SI:EARTH Fragile Planet show, but went with my original entry.

I'm actually going to fly out for the show, hope to see you there! You won't miss me... in order to neutralize the carbon impact from the jet fuel I'll burn, I'm going to wear a loincloth I weave en route out of opaque plastic shopping bags.

And after the show I'll recycle the loincloth it by giving it to my petroglyph friend above.

ai5000 "Mr. Responsible"

Forgot to post this last month, finally got to work for the venerable SooJin Buzzelli!
It was a portrait of James Gifford for Asset International.

Basically this guy goes all around the world partly with the UN, showing that socially and environmentally sound investment practices pay better in the long term.

I've been doing more portraits lately, although it's not my specialty, I've draw thousands of portraits as caricature artist when I was a teenager, so that helps me not be so rusty at it.

On the page.

Killed Microsoft Campaign

These were for posters and ads mainly to be used for a international Microsoft anti-piracy campaign, mainly in China and Russia. The ad agency thought my textures would appeal to that audience (basically potential chinese and russian illegal software purchasers) Don't know if I should be proud of that though.

Well apparently it didn't appeal to them, because it got killed in the end.

Or perhaps someone at Microsoft read Chris Anderson's book "Free: The Future of a Radical Price"
where he argues that piracy is free publicity and enough pirates eventually become customers to make it a net positive.

Here's a link to the book, but don't buy it, just snag a pirated version somewhere, I'm sure the author won't mind ; )

Some alternate compositions.

And the color options I sent them.