I spend too much time on Facebook, there is lots there that I am interested in, such as posts from friends showing me things that inspire, or hearing about career or personal milestones. But a lot of mundane crap as well, some well meaning I suppose- and I guess I'm guilty of a cute kid post now and again, but lots of plain old waste of time nonsense.
I see lots of illustrator friends on FB and I comment on your posts there. Drawger however can be and is a much more indepth format for what we do, such as Tim Obrien's and Yuko's long and well thought out posts on process-that stuff takes time. I know many link the Drawger posts to FB but it would be great if somehow the FB posts were added to the comments here, a two way street...Zimm? Many have said that Drawger needs a LIKE button or similar, I agree. I think we all like an deserve thoughtful responses but cumullatively there is just so much we are bombarded with. I need time, I want to work on new ideas, play with animated illustration, Bicycling had a great little animated spread for the i-pad version this past month. But when the paying work is done, I have no energy. So I guess this rant is simply about time and energy, not enough of either and social media is a time suck.
Let me add that my wife Melissa is now my assistant, does all my job sheets and billing, contracts and w-9s, without her I'd be sunk. Thanks M! And she loathes FB.
Now here's some recent stuff.
Recent piece for the New Yorker. Terrible history but I want more work like this.
Here are the series of roughs I did for the New Yorker piece. This was a book review of HHhH, which focus on a real motherfucker of a Nazi, the Blonde Beast I think he was called among other things, Reinhard Heydrich First off it felt odd to be drawing a swastika-though I guess that shape is strangely enticing and suits my drawing style and mechanical approach quite well. I enjoyed the typographic approach of C and G. I wanted to do something really nasty with the portrait like just a mass of meat, perhaps later.
This was also done last week for the WSJ, article on refraining from giving your baby an online identity.
Curious Capitalist article on the tech industry replacing Wall street as the new industry to hate.
I've been doing a regular weekly to semi weekly piece for TIME mag going on a few years I think. It has gotten increasingly difficult to get ideas past the editor, but Andree Kahlmorgan is such a pro to work with and we get it done.
I put these sketches in to show how much needs to somehow be done to get to the final. Not sure I'm happy with the final choice, but that's the way it goes and I'm cool with that. The article is obviously about the political intrigue in China, but in the end the direction changed to China doing a U turn.
Taking time away from the studio can be tough as many of you surely know. Jobs need to be completed before leaving and inevitably jobs will come in while your gone that if you can't put off you have to pass on. But you have to go. I did indeed go, to Florida for a week of cycling with friends, great time, sun, smiles and miles, what could be better?
The week before I left was one of those weeks where things just keep mounting, you get calls for jobs that you just cannot turn down, this New Yorker full page was of course one of those, in addition there was a TIME mag full page/cover that I did roughs for but alas it went another direction. No worries, my plate was full with my regular jobs for Time and others. The last job I worked on was for Bicycling, very appropriate.
These are fortunate days for me and I recognize that, being busy is good and it's never guaranteed to last, so I savor it. In addition to my good fortune with business my personal life has been looking up. My son Ian has been accepted into an acting program at a small liberal arts school in NYC, he's pumped, I'm proud, and I know in my gut and heart that it's right. I of course love NY, I feel more at home there than anywhere else and so now I get to live there vicariously through Ian and of course visit more often. All of this is of course contingent on financing.
life is full of tragedy and triumph, last year I was posting about losing my sister, now I'm posting about my son flying high. Funny thing with me, I am told this is a reaction to growing up in an unsettled home as a child, that I expect doom to lay waiting around every corner. Don't get too excited if things are looking great, and life is sweet, because you'll get thumped for sure. This of course is not always the case.
Anyway, here is my New Yorker full page and a few other things. I did a bunch of roughs for the NY full and it was a pleasure working with art director Jordan Awan. The job involved a bit more art direction and editorial input than I'm accustmed to but in the end all worked out, I did have to gently apply the brakes a few times : )
Thanks dear audience for allowing me intersperse personal with professional, it's not like we're accountants. No offense CPAs.
PS-I was also happy to get an e-mail yesterday announcing that I have two pieces in the American Illustration annual. One is that vein piece that everybody has seen, second is a book jacket for Harper Collins, it's not published yet so I'm just providing snipets. I look forward to posting the whole process when it eventually gets published.
The New Yorker article was a long piece, it's the New Yorker, about the Daily Mail, a London tabloid. The article delved into their history, recent trends etc. The newspaper is all over the place as far as what they publish, crime, scandal, political malfiesence, a lot to distill for an illustration. Jordan wanted me to keep it simple and graphic and so I did. I chose the teacup as an available cliche for British snobbery and moral high ground, which the paper takes on ocassion, mixed with some rather unsavory or sinister imagery. I liked the snake in the teacup, but I just like drawing snakes.
I played around with a few of these newspaper collage approaches, I had done something similar for TIME mag with pretty decent results. I imagined them much more refined and constructed in final. They liked them and you can see a bit of it in the final published illustration.
These two nearly finished version were kind of the high water mark of detail and content, we reeled it back in a bit from here.
And here are a few slices of the book jacket. I really enjoyed working on this and want to do more, but not sure what.
Over the past few days I have been using my spare time to dredge the years work and see if there is anything I would enter in AI or 3x3. Well, it was one of those years where I was incredibly busy, made some dough, but still had a hard time picking out even a few pieces that I liked. I don't think this all a reflection of the quality of work but rather the blackness of my soul : ). But so this is what drives artists, not ever being good enough or entirely happy with any given piece for very long. I'm sure I'm not alone in that feeling, the trick is to keep going and knowing the best work is yet to come. I also spent a few moments just messing around with shapes and organic forms, thinking I would enter some unpublished work. These images are a result of that. That first image was done for my regular article in TIME Mag, a departure from my style but what they've been asking for over at TIME is a different solution, so I don''t mind coloring outside the lines.
This one was done for Soojin, kind of represents direction I would like to explore a bit more. Yah, I know you're going to see lots of veins and branches coming from me.
I have neglected you Drawger. It could be that I just don't want to post unless I feel I have something meaningful to show or talk about. Well, it's a new year with lots of new things happening so here I am.
2012 marks the first year in many where I will not be represented by G&C Rapp for editorial work. We all have our own opinions of reps, like we all have our own opinions on stock, and there certainly are some reps out there that are just no good. G&C Rapp is one of the good groups, my realtionship with them has been nothing but great, a truly productive, symbiotic five plus years. Never was I forced to take work that I didn't feel right for me, they always fought for more money, and they always had my back. I would say that I will miss them but we are certainly still in touch and working on commercial work. Yes, this is sounding like a love letter, eyes are rolling, but true.
Some of you who know me well or have known me for a while anyway (like a real long while) know I have a need to turn things upside down - like every five years. A sort of self imposed state of risk, jump off and you either hit the ground or you fly. Move all your chips to the center of the table so to speak. What I do now in illustration is a high point in my life, truly, I did not "get" my illustration career until I was 40, before that I worked in New York for over ten years jumping from job to job, some great and some not so good. But I have no regrets, fond memories of those days and I miss NY terribly. Those jobs, specifically my stay at Nickelodeon transitioned into my first illustration career, some may know the work and others I hope you don't. It was a lucrative career but the work really wasn't me, said nothing about me, I had it down and it paid the bills.
So enough of all this. Here are a few recent pieces.
Happy New Year everyone!
Recent Newsweek cover. Pleasure working with Lindsay Ballant on this.
Wall Street Journal cover form this past weekend. Article is on cutting the cord, getting rid of cable. Funny that this job came in just as I was cutting the cord and going with a combination of Apple TV etc.
These two are from a recent group of illustrations for Bicycling. Most know I Iove cycling so is this really work?
I ma have posted this already but it's one of my two winning entries into the Society of Illustrators, editorial category.
This piece probably represents my thoughts behind jumping off, starting new things, new ways of working. Also chosen by the jury for the Society of Illustrators-book category. This makes me very happy.
And this is just a tease, a very small snippet from a book jacket I'm working on. Another direction I'm excited about.
