Independence Day for The New Yorker

New piece in this week's New Yorker– illustrating a review of Independence Day: Resurgence.

This was a really cool assignment to work on of course… buildings that are being sucked into the sky by a giant space ship!

You can see the original sketch below, as well as the finished ink drawing, along with the published piece in this week's magazine.

Thanks so much to Creative Director Nicholas Blechman and Art Director Chris Curry for working with me!

Warby Parker Buttons Live Drawing MYOB

 My final project of the year 2015 was a two-part live drawing session at Warby Parker SoHo, drawing and painting buttons per customers' requests. It was a fun and challenging assignment. I ended up doing a lot of tiny watercolors of family fotos, but also comic characters and funny concepts.

Thanks to Jamell and everyone at Warby Parker for inviting me and for making it such a fun experience, and to everyone who came by to visit. Hope everyone is enjoying their buttons!

Eurotrip Sketches

I've traveled in Europe throughout the last month, have visited friends, family, colleagues and clients. I especially enjoyed re-visiting London and Berlin. Here are some sketches, all done on location…
EDIT: American Illustration has done a feature about these, with some additional drawings

St Paul's as seen from the Tate Modern, London

View of Museumsinsel / Berliner Dom

View from the steps of the Altes Museum, Berlin

Markstrasse, Ravensburg

Friedrichshafen / Bodensee

Backyard of my friends in Karlsruhe

'The Truth And Other Lies', for the New York Times

I've got a new piece in the New York Times Book Review, this time it's about Sascha Arango's new crime novel The Truth And Other Lies. 

The "sociopathic antihero" of this crime story is a famous writer who lives a rich life, but he has a secret: All his book are really written by his wife, who despises publicity and just wants to write.
He's not a good guy. When his mistress reveals she's pregnant, he decides to murder her, as not to jeopardize his comfy arrangement.

Joseph Finder, the reviewer, is also a best-selling novelist and I recently had the pleasure to illustrate a review of his latest book, The Fixer. I have to admit, I do enjoy working with crime and noir in these assignments!

Many thanks to Art Director Nicholas Blechman, who's about to leave the Grey Lady for greener pastures… always to pleasure!

Last Boy at St Edith's by Lee Gjertsen Malone

The cover I did for Lee Gjertsen Malone's debut YA novel, The Last Boy At St. Edith's, has just been revealed and I'm excited to finally post about it! As the cover shows, the story is about a young boy stuck in an all-girls school, and his adventurous attempts to get himself expelled.

It was great fun to illustrate this long crowd of characters wrapping around the entire jacket, and to letter the title by hand. I'm also really pleased with the palette and limited color.

Here's a look at the original drawing. All line-work is drawn by hand, though I did make numerous digital tweaks afterwards and redid the type several times till we had it right.

Thanks again to the awesome folks at Simon & Schuster, especially Art Director Laura DiSiena, and Lee Gjertsen Malone for her great story! Now we have to wait till the book comes out in February of 2016!

New York Times Book Review: The Fixer

Here's my latest piece for the New York Times Sunday Book Review, illustrating a review of Joseph Finder's new thriller, The Fixer.

In a mundane setting, a former investigative reporter looks into the mysterious past of his father, after finding a pile of money in his home's crawl space.

After my the initial scribble, I added the flashlight effect, which really made the image. The final consisted of two drawings overlaid.

You can read the whole text on the New York Times' website.

Many thanks to Art Director Nicholas Blechman!

Children's Story for Johnson & Johnson

A while ago, I had the pleasure of working on a project with Johnson & Johnson, for their Care In Action initiative. They asked 5 children to tell them a real life story about caring. With the help of author Patricia Larkin these were shaped into five short picture books, and I illustrated one of them. Here are some of my spreads.

In Matthew's story, he saw some firemen in action, and it inspired him to also become one, in order to also help people.

You can download a pdf of all the stories here. Thanks to my friends at JWT / Hogarth, especially Hugo Fitzgerald, for arranging this project, and the nice folks at Johnson & Johnson. I hope the project inspired a lot of care!

Illustration for National Journal

I had the pleasure of working with the National Journal a couple times recently. In the most recent issue, I have a piece in about the Heels And Helmets movement, which is using sports to empower women in the business world.

 I used a little more ink wash on this one, to make shapes more organic and painterly. Trying to mix things up!

Here's the original sketch we went with. There was still some tweaking to do.

And here's the printed piece. Thanks so much to Art Director Erin Aulov!

Jaeger Painted Posters

I had the pleasure of creating some paintings for the clothing brand Jaeger in the United Kingdom. For the launch of their latest collection, they wanted to reconnect with their rich past, with painted posters evoking those which fauvist artist Raoul Dufy had done for them in the 1930s. Both images were created 100% by hand, which was a fun challenge.

Here you can see the pieces in their application, for the launch of the latest collection, in London.

Thanks so much to all the great folks at Jaeger, and to AD Claire England for this great project, and to Corianton Hale and Mikel Folcarelli for recommending me.

Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream

I created this large sequential illustration for “Little Nemo– Dream Another Dream”, an anthology of tributes to Winsor McCay’s seminal strip by 118 contemporary artists.

I'm very proud to be part of this project, as this large book includes some of the finest artists working today, such as Paul Pope, Mike Allred, Yuko Shimizu, Andrea Tsurumi, Matty Hunh, Gregory Benton and so many more esteemed colleagues and friends.

It was  conceived and published by Locust Moon Press and is a beauty– the large proportions really allow to admire all the details of the fabulous pieces people created.

There will be a show of original artwork from the book at the Society of Illustrators from February 10th - March 28th, 2015.
The Opening Reception is on Wednesday, February 18th.
Hope to see you there!

Edit: The comic also just got accepted into the Society of Illustrators 2nd Comics and Cartoons Annual, whoo-hoo!

Within the context of the book, we decided to use an (almost) b/w version.
At the Society, you'll be able to see the actual original, warts and all.

Illustration for WallStreet Journal

I have a new illustration in today's WallStreet Journal, about Quasi Franchises. Here's the article. 

This new proposed direction for franchises supplies the infrastructure and backbone for the individual franchisees, while they can brand the place their own way and have much more independence. From the outside, it looks like a stand-alone business.

Here are some of the other sketches. The kitchen scene would have been fun but perhaps too complex for a small spot. I also liked the octopus franchise, but it was perhaps a bit negative.

The astronaut was a nice iconic solution that would be a lot of fun to draw. The biggest challenge was how much or how little detail to give to the astronaut's face.

Thanks so much to Art Directors Orlie Kraus and Sheryl Dermawan for the fun assignment. Always a pleasure.