Carraroe

Here is an illustration I did earlier this year for a Zombie compilation project. The parameters were pretty open, and for some reason the idea of zombies handling the ocean and uneven terrain seemed really unsettling to me at the time.

Kings of the Earth

Here is an illustration I did for the LA Times book review. The book is Jon Clinch's latest book Kings of the Earth: A Novel about the lives and deaths of a family on a rural upstate New York farm. After going through the first half dozen sketches based on the short synopsis available before the book's release, I realized the ideas were really just guesses at plot points and character descriptions. For the final sketches (the last three which I submitted), I tried to keep the themes broader and more symbolic rather than narrative.

Ultimately the obscured, voyeuristic family photo idea was selected, and the finished piece ended up running in black and white (below right). But as luck would have it on newsprint the black and white version gives off an eerie documentary feel that hopefully helps drive home the concept of the story's unsettling, incomplete history. Much thanks again to Judy Pryor for the assignment.

Watercolor sketchbook

I've been trying to keep entirely to watercolors in the sketchbook recently and it's been one of the toughest/best teachers in terms of letting go and reacting to the subject and paints. Here are a few pages from past couple months.

Rolling Stone: Eminem

Earlier this month, I was contacted by Steven Charny at Rolling Stone to do an illustration for the magazine's review of Eminem's new album, "Recovery." Interestingly it also turns out to be the same issue as the late-breaking McChrystal interview thats out this week.

Aside from heading away from drug references, the brief was nicely open, so the sketch ideas below were inspired mainly by the longevity of Eminem's career and his role as a veteran of fame. The scaffolding idea, which we went with, was based on the his role a cultural icon with a lot of baggage facing an uncommon amount of scrutiny at the release of his seventh album. (Also after roughing out the sketches I discovered the video from the first single off the album used a lot of the same elements of risk and vertigo, which seemed like a good sign.)

Overall it was a lot of fun to have such a flexible brief and the opportunity to work with Steven at Rolling Stone on such an interesting subject.

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.

Visiting

Getting the chance to illustrate short fiction has been such a pleasure that I'm actually starting to feel a tiny bit guilty about it. I received an assignment from the Atlantic last month for a piece by Stuart Nadler entitled "Visiting" which, after reading, had already conjured such an atmospheric picture of this quiet, slightly suffocating afternoon trip by a father and his estranged son that I really just felt like I was reporting sketches from the scene.

Below are the idea sketches mocked up on the page to see how they fit with the spread, and the finished piece above was done with ink and wash and then colored digitally, and should be available now on stands in the Atlantic's annual fiction issue. Thanks to Melissa Bluey for making it such an enjoyable project.

Symposium

Here is my latest Symposium opener illustration for the current issue of OUT, which is on stands now. It is accompanying an excerpt from the story by Helena Andews entitled "Riding in Cars with Lesbians" about witnessing domestic violence as a girl. Initially there was a sketch that touched on the fight itself, but ultimately the sketches of the moments after when she's tending to her mothers injuries in the bathroom seemed truer to the overall tone of the piece.

The Redhead

The spring issue of Granta just arrived and includes an illustration I did for a fiction piece by Roberto Bolaño called "The Redhead." A part of the Sex issue, the excerpt sketches the narrator's dreams and memories of a girl from his past and her relationship with a narcotics cop. I worked with the very cool Michael Salu at Granta who suggested we play on the author's style with an equally loose illustration finish.