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!

Carrier Pigeon 14

I had the pleasure of illustrating a short fiction story in the latest issue of Carrier Pigeon, a high-end publication of art and literature founded by fellow alumni of the SVA MFA Illustration program. The book has always some nifty print and print-making features.

"The Speck" is a story about a the passing of time, watches, and a speck on the carpet. It's written by Jonathan Philips.

I used the opportunity for experimentation, created three pieces of art for each of the five illustrations– detailed pen and ink drawings, collage, and expressive brush graphics, and composited all three versions together in a dense final image.

One of the original layers at the launch party / art show at Sugarlift Gallery in Bushwick.

It's a book! On of my spreads in Carrier Pigeon 14 (Volume 2, #4).
Order it here.

Thanks so much for making me a part of it, guys!

'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!

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!

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!

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.

New York Times Sunday Business Cover

Had the pleasure of illustrating a cover and interior spot for the Sunday Business section of the New York Times. Art Director Minh Uong, with whom I've worked since his time at the Village Voice, asked me to do something sequential.

The story is about Shanesha Taylor, who was arrested for leaving her children in a car during an important job interview. It's written by Shaila Dewan and you can read it here.

The challenge with sequential editorial pieces is that the image is a bit fractured and cannot be as bold as one single image.

After a first round of sketches, we tried to increase the graphic impact by using one large panel and a few smaller ones.

As the project progressed, we rearranged the panels several times, till everybody was content with the flow of the story.

For the interior, we did a simple comic-strip of 3 images. For the cover, we used one large, loud image and and four smaller panels.

Thanks again to AD Minh Uong and the New York Times!

Cover for 11 Freunde magazine

 A very exciting project I've worked on is no published and I can talk about it: I did the cover for the 150th issue of the German soccer magazine 11 Freunde. The cover story is about the current "super-coaches" in European soccer, and they were inspired by my BEHOLDER comics to draw them in an old-school Marvel way as comic heroes. I also did a few interior illustrations of more coaches.

After some sketching we actually ended up using a direct reference of a picture in Journey Into Misery 5, just replacing my "Mighty Protectors" with the aforementioned super-coaches. The final is printed with two spot-colors which will make the art-work pop nicely, and is also similar to the 2-3 color designs I create for my own comics covers. I can't wait to see it in person!

Thanks so much to Sabine Kornbrust and the entire editorial team of 11 Freunde for a dream project! Get your copy now!

Carlo Ancelotti and Diego Pablo Simeone for the interiors.

The original page from Journey Into Misery 5 that the cover was inspired by.

New York Times Sunday Business: A Friday Night Of Bartending, Without The Lights

 I had a new piece in the New York Times Sunday Business Section, a gripping text written by Nicole C. Kear about her experience bartending at the Village Idiot in NYC while partially blind.

I sent in quite a few sketches and this one made the cut. Right from the beginning I pictured the fuzzy vision / tunnel vision visualized with a water color separation.

After getting the piece approved, I tightened up the drawing with pencil, before going into the final with pen / brush and ink. The watercoloring was separate, and all was assembled on the computer.

Art director on the piece was Minh Uong, who's been a supporter of my work for many years now! Thanks Minh!

New York Times Op/Ed: The Forgotten Virtues of Tammany Hall

I had the great pleasure doing an Op/Ed for the New York Times last week, which ran the past Saturday. The article dealt with the landmark status for the Tammany Hall, the building that hosted the notorious and highly influential "political machine" that was synonymous with corruption in NY during the 1800s up until 1930s. But this article made the case that Tammany Hall actually helped some of the poor of New York City.

Op/Ed Art Director Matt Dorfman encouraged me to check out some of Thomas Nast's cartoons of that time, often ridiculing "Boss" Tweed and picturing him as a massive, over-sized figure, so I went from there. The first sketch shows the actual building and and a self-righteous Boss Tweed, as well as one of his underlings feeding the poor.

In the second version, I managed to make him more involved and boil the idea down better. And we got rid of the building altogether. All along, Matt and I went back and forth with layout screenshots, as this image plays with the page design in a subtle way, it's kind of open and not boxed in which is fun.

Here is the final result. Thanks again to Art Director Matt Dorfman for the great project and awesome collaboration!

ProBio for The New Yorker

This piece is in today's New Yorker, it's about a show at PS1 called ProBio. The show is about how technology becomes an extension of ourselves.

I went there to check it out, did some photos and scribbles on location, and did all the sketching in their cafeteria, from IPhone photos. The sketch to the left is what was picked, and it was fun to execute it. It's a terminator hand!

Thanks so much to AD Jordan Awan!

Full page for Canadian Business Magazine

This one is for Canadian Business magazine, a map to the best and worst"tax havens" around the world. So listen up rich people! You can read the corresponding text here.

For these kind of tasks, I love to have as much layout info as possible, so I can draw around the text and make it fit well. (Click to view the elements larger).

Many thanks to art director Glenn Taylor!