Grantland: Hagler v. Leonard

 The new issue of Grantland, McSweeney's sports quarterly is on stands now with a huge amount of really nice artwork and essays. I had the good fortune to get to work with Juliet Litman on an illustration for a piece by Eric Raskin recounting the hotly debated oral history of the 1987 Hagler vs. Leonard fight. The crux of the piece being how subjective the calls were depending on perspectives and tastes of the judges, and how far from clean-cut the final decision was. Below are a few of the steps of the process, beginning with thumbnails done while reading the article, followed by sketches on the idea of conflicting viewpoints, and then the ink drawing layers.

Brush + Ink: May

Some new excerpts from the daily drawing exercise.

Mother Jones: Nuclear Truckers

I got a call from Tim Luddy at Mother Jones to illustrate an article by Adam Wienstein about nuclear trucking routes through major cities and across the US. The security safeguards and trainings were interesting to learn about, but for the sketches I tried to come up with some scenes that conveyed the ominousness of these unmarked trucks and their radioactive cargo against the roads and cities we use every day. The issue is on newsstands now, much thanks again to Tim Luddy for the assignment.

Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin: Destinations

A few months ago I had the opportunity to work on a series of illustrations for Birthe Steinbeck at the German Newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. It was a travel feature on extreme destinations around the globe (the deepest cave, the flattest place, and the steepest stone wall) and an interesting challenge to work primarily without figures.

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.