posted: September 2, 2010

American Cowboy Magazine, which I confess I'd never heard of before they called, gave me a great assignment last week. They wanted a drawing of the famous "Fill Your Hands" gunfight from the John Wayne classic True Grit. As any illustrator might know, when you get the assignment that aligns with topics or content that you already LOVE, the resulting drawing is most assuredly doomed. You can't get enough distance from your obsession to evaluate it. (Like a surgeon operating on his own wife, or something.) True Grit is one of those movies that my dad taught me to love at a young age... like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters and The Sting.

 

Here is a link to the famous scene... 

With the bar set appropriately high- I watched the movie again. If you don't know the scene or haven't seen the film, it offers one of the immortal lines in the Western patheon. Perhaps even more memorable is the way he cocks the rifle one-handed, by spinning it around the cocking bar. Translating this into a drawing gave me an opportunity to goof around and try a few methods that might be more at home in my sketchbook. I've attached a few of the color comps and how my first sketch looked in their layout, which was also in progress.

After a few color comps, I wanted to treat the background like a two color silkscreen, flat shapes in a simple space. Of course, this could be done digitally, very quickly, but I wanted to do it all on the original board- because I think something changes when art is made in space where you can react to real colors and edges. Turned out to be a fun diversion for the week. And I did the whole drawing while wearing an eyepatch.

posted: August 30, 2010

The college football season draws near, and this year there is some actual thought that perennial underdog Boise State just might be able to win a national title. This drawing is for the College Football Preview in Sunday's sports section of The New York Times.

Who is that in the basket? It's the TCU horned frog, another one of a sportswriter's favorite outliers with a real change of going all the way. This is one of the rare occasions when the very first sketch I did was the one I couldn't get away from. The chance to do an OZ homage was too alluring for my steel-trap brain to forget. Always nice to see it in print in your local cafe on Sunday morning.

posted: June 16, 2010

Friday at 5pm, I got the biggest call of my editorial career- the cover of Sports Illustrated. Most of us certainly think of the cover of Time and the New Yorker as the crowning jewels of our industry- but Sport Illustrated hasn't had an illustrated cover in a long long time- according to their Design Director. Of course, with Sports Illustrated, a weekly magazine, you don't have much time. Final art due by Monday, they close the issue at 2pm. For the high honor of an SI cover I'd have to chain myself to my desk for the next three days- but it would be worth it if I could pose the following question to my friends at parties for years to come, "What do I have in common with LeBron James, Derek Jeter, Jacque Vaughn and Brooklyn Decker?"

With Colorado leaving the Big 12 conference for the PAC-10, and Nebraska leaving for the BIG TEN- the fate of the athletic college landscape rested with the University of Texas. They dramatically announced last week that they were leaving for the PAC-10 and taking four other with them. Goodbye Big 12. The concept for the cover was to illustrate the PAC-10 as a golden paradise- drawing all the great teams into the beautiful Rose Bowl.

I sent the first sketch on Saturday and we were revising the mascot placement every few hours as news broke about which teams were going where. I should have seen where this was going.
Saturday at 2pm 

Saturday 6pm

Sunday at 1pm

Sunday after 2pm was quiet and I spent most of the 24 hours drawing and painting on the final art- just hoping that Texas didn't get cold feet before the closing of the magazine on Monday. I sent in the final art, exhausted, right on time. Just as the email leaves, I see this story on ESPN. Texas is going to stay. Story over. The PAC-10 isn't the promise land, it is just another conference.
The cover is dead.

This is the point in the post where I write with great eloquence about the nature of our industry. Perhaps I will even evoke terms of poetry to describe how the tight deadlines and pressure-cooker editorial changes creates the very fiber of our business, which at the core, is thrilling to be a part of on a daily basis. This is the point in the post when I can say that pouring three days into something like this to have it flushed by a 3pm press-release just stinks.
Now, if you'll, excuse me, I need to get back to the drawing board.

posted: May 4, 2010

 
I'm happy to introduce the official ICON 6 poster by Heads of State. This limited, special-edition poster produced in two different versions, will be available free at the conference. It drops tuesday, but I wanted to make sure the folks at Drawger got a peek a few hours ahead of time. 
If anyone has any questions about the conference, head on over the our website for more info- http://theillustrationconference.org/

Hope to see you in California this summer... 

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