The New Yorker: John Carter

Last week I got a call to illustrate the John Carter film review for this week's New Yorker. Not having seen the film at the time, I pored over the (surprisingly) great selection of early teaser previews and clips from the movie while working on the sketches below. Ultimately we went with the giant monster attack scene, which was (not surprisingly) super fun to work on. Much thanks to Jordan Awan for the call.
 

Brush + Ink

Brush and ink sketches from the past week.

Washington Post: PBA

The February Medical Mystery is out in today's Washington Post. The piece is about a man who was struck by a drunk driver, sustaining a severe brain injury that left him with aphasia, and suffering from random, uncontrollable emotional outbursts.

Below are the quick thumbnail idea sketches, where I was trying to think through different scenes and explore how to connect the elements of the story clearly. The tricky part, I discovered, was how to illustrate the context of the severe crying episodes, which were inexplicable, and often unrelated to the surrounding circumstances. I submitted the two refined sketches below, and ultimately we went with the elevator direction, which was drawn up on paper with ink and then painted digitally using Corel Painter and Photoshop. Art Direction by Brad Walters.

The New Yorker: Chronicle

I got my first call from The New Yorker last week to work on a quick turnaround illustration for a review of the new film Chronicle which opened this weekend. The films found-footage style seemed like an interesting and grounded take on the superpower origin story, so I tried to play off the 'character' of the camera lens' in the sketches below. After the first round of sketches, I refined a couple of them, adding in more characters in the fourth sketch, which was then chosen for the finish. Ultimately, the piece didn't see print, but it was a blast to work on.

Washington Post: Dravet Syndrome

The January installment of the Medical Mystery column in The Washington Post is on stands today. The story is about an infant in Centerville Iowa that began to exhibit severe seizures shortly after being vaccinated at six months. As the baby developed, the seizures became so severe that she was placed in a medically induced coma for a short period, and medevac'd to nearby Des Moines or Iowa City hospitals multiple times. Ten years later she was finally diagnosed with severe mycolonic epilepsy of infancy, known as Dravet Syndrome, an inherited genetic mutation and completely unrelated to the vaccination. The sketches below were interesting to work on because of the amount of travel that takes place in the story, but ultimately we opted to go with the intensive care scene, since it touched on both the severity and inexplicability of the situation. Art Direction by Brad Walters.
 

Washington Post: FMD

Above is one of the finished illustration from the Washington Post Medical Mysteries series I had missed posting last year. This particular piece was about an young woman whose undiagnosed Fibromuscular dysplasia led to years of dizziness, chronic headaches, vertigo and dangerously high blood pressure before finally being diagnosed as the cause. The sketches below were roughly based on the idea of her athletic marathon running life colliding with the physical effects of the disease, and ways the internal symptoms of hypertension and vertigo might be expressed in an externalized, two-dimensional way. Art Direction by Brad Walters.

New York Times: Twenty Eleven

In September when the imprisoned hikers in Iran were nearing release I was in the process of moving and got a call from Aviva Michaelov at the New York Times to illustrate an Op-Ed by the co-founder of Lonely Planet Tony Wheeler. It was an interesting piece about the perceptions of the dangers of traveling the world. Ultimately the article did not run, but the quick turnaround provided the opportunity to go completely brush and ink which is always fun.

 I've really enjoyed working with the Times on illustrations for some significant events of the past year. Below are some of the letters pieces for revolts in Egypt, the torture debate, solitary confinement, and the withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Iraq.

St. Nick

Broke out the quill and ink for a series of concerned Santa drawings on postcards. Happy Holidays!

Granta: Bonfire

The upcoming "Exit Strategies" issue of GRANTA has a short fiction piece, entitled "Bonfire," by David Long that I got a call to illustrate. The story traces the narrator's memory of a passionate but fleeting Fourth of July rendezvous from years earlier, leaving the reader with an interesting mix of exhilaration and loss. The sketches below were my first impression of the story, but after discussing it with the art director and editor, we revised the composition so as to touch on more of the fading embers of the memory of love lost than the night itself. Also, I did an interview with Daniela Silva about illustrating the Roberto Bolaño stories which is now online at Granta's site.

Granta: Horror

Over the past year, I've had the opportunity to illustrate several short fiction pieces by Roberto Bolaño for the literary magazine Granta. A few weeks after working on the watercolor illustration (above) for the short Bolaño story, "The Colonel's Son," art director, Michael Salu, asked if I would be interested in collaborating on a motion comic he had in mind to tie the short story and issue in with their digital readership. Time was short, but having already read through and sequentially visualized much of the story, it sounded too interesting to pass up.

The animation is now live at nothingbutamovie.com, and here are some samples of the finished layered illustrations, which were all inked digitally using Manga Studio (which I've just recently begun using inspired by the amazing illustration work of Asaf Hanuka).

Many thanks to Jocabola, David Bonas, Sorgerune and the visionary Michael Salu for the collaboration.