William Burroughs

The William Burroughs paperbacks that I illustrated earlier this year along with Naked Lunch just arrived from the printers. Because the art director liked the style of the Silky Shark print in my portfolio for the initial Naked Lunch assignment, I continued the process using a silk screen-style approach and a limited palette throughout the sketches and finals. The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and The Place of Dead Roads all followed the same process as Naked Lunch, including two or three layers of drawn tones, which I attempted to keep in tune with the style of each book and as a set. The final layouts and text were done by Jo Walker at Harper Collins and I think they did a nice job of pulling the artwork together. (Below is a bit of a process breakdown of the finished covers.)

Initial sketches for The Soft Machine, The Ticket that Exploded, and The Place of Dead Roads (columns L to R respectively.)

The selected sketches with some adjustments in the saturation and color to help balance out the group as a set.

Ink and brush on Bristol Board drawing for the Soft Machine shadows layer.

Ink drawing for the Soft Machine mid-tones layer.

Finished colors on the background layer with some separations for black.

Finished cover illustrations and designs:

Washington Posts

Here are a couple new illustrations that have run in the Washington Post Style section this week. The image above is for a piece by Hank Stuever about the finale of "Lost", and the image below is for another piece about the evolution of the mockumentary format into today's TV sitcom landscape. (The "Lost" one should be on stands today.)

The Terrorist Next Door

My first OpEd illustration for the New York Times is out today, alongside Michael Sheehan's piece about the challenges of preventing lone-wolf terrorism. Much thanks to Aviva for the call.