The Mysterious Author

I worked with Wes Bausmith at the Los Angeles Times on this extremely fun assignment.
The article was about a new novel, "O" and its anonymous author. In the past, publishing novels anonymously has resulted in strong book sales, as people read the book trying discover who the actual author is. We have some instinct to reveal hidden identities. These hunts become so intense that handwriting experts and prose analysts must get involved, as was the case with "Primary Colors."

Some silliness

I've gotten a lot of time in the last month or two to finish some personal work. Plenty of random, zany drawings to satisfy my need to draw random, zany things. Here are some of the highlights...

What started as the execution of my friend James' idea for a political cartoon ended up as something completely different. Sometimes flies just can't be caught (except with chopsticks, by the Karate Kid).

I like to think this draw summarizes my difficulties in exercising these last few months. I've been pretty lazy when it comes to physical activity...

I'm not really sure where this idea came from... the triptych is an underrated format.

More to come...and with more cohesion.

American Express comes to St. Louis

Last spring (I'm just now posting this now...I know) I worked on an illustration for American Express. Working with art director Tom Grillo at Siegle + Gale, the job was to create a small decal for points of purchase around St. Louis. Something that captured the spirit of St. Louis (no pun intended), and something that wasn't just a big picture of the Arch.

I'm just posting this now because I just saw the decal at the Chase Park Plaza movie theater, making me ridiculously happy.

Here is the final decal. It appears much smaller (roughly 3x3") in print.

Here is the image in context. I didn't even notice it posted on the window until somebody pointed it out to me. At that point, I held up the line to take a picture. 

Here are some sketches. There were about 20 sketches in total. Fortunately for me, St. Louis has a lot of great landmarks and history to go off of. Unfortunately for me, this all had to fit into a 3x3" space.

We ended up going with a concept that represents St. Louis' rich history. St. Louis is a city that takes a lot of pride in its past. Hopefully, the rest speaks for itself. 

More AARP

I've been working with art director Cathy Kelley over the last two months on these Two more Hear Ye! Hear Ye! assignments for AARP.

The Case of the Defamed Friend - a legal battle ensues after one woman bases a very unpleasant character after her friend, in her novel The Red Hat Club

The verdict? The woman wins some money, after her name and image are slandered by implications arising from the alcohol abuse and sluttiness of the character.

Click here to read the full story

The Case of the Misused Corpses - a particularly gruesome case about a medical researcher mishandling donated bodies; he would chop them up into pieces and sell the pieces to different companies and labs.

The families, who were supposed to receive the cremated remains of their loved ones after the experiments had ended, had no way of knowing whether or not the ashes actually belonged to their relatives. Furious and heartbroken, these people received no compensation or justice, as the lab was protected by legal documents.

Read the full story here

Rams football: A Visual Essay

A few months ago I got tickets to a preseason Rams game from my landlord. It was the first pro football game I'd ever gone to, and besides the overhead speakers that were way too loud, it was a great experience. The Vikings played the Rams, and the crowd was in good spirits...until the Vikings started winning by a huge margin. Anyway, here is a short visual essay I drafted in response to the game:

I was quickly enamored with the yard markers; they were like big, orange idols, worshipped and respected by the players, refs, and fans.

Football game, or Less Than Jake concert? Football is probably less dangerous.

The refs mull over one of the countless disputes of the game.

We had the great fortune of sitting a row behind two insane Viking fans (twin brothers). Completely, utterly insane. Upon each touchdown they screamed with joy, despite the grumbling of the Rams fans sitting around them.  It didn't matter that they were in enemy territory: they would turn around and face the crowd, yelling in their faces. "Thank god for the Rams, giving us so many easy wins!" They didn't shut up until the third quarter, after a nearby Rams fan compared the Super Bowl victories of the two teams (the Vikings have none, though if they ever do win one, I'm sure the world will never hear the end of it).  

An on-location drawing

From where I was sitting, the action of the game was always framed by the action on the sidelines: cameramen buzzing around, cheerleaders dancing, coaches discussing, referees measuring and scrutinizing, and players idling - waiting for their chance to enter the fray. 

Another zany on-location drawing. The space doesn't make a lot of sense, probably because I wasn't paying close attention to anything besides the cheerleaders and their gyrating magic.

St. Louis Magazine

St. Louis magazine! It was great working with Kevin Goodbar and Jeannette Cooperman on this article about a mental health care crisis in St. Louis. 

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

I recently had the pleasure of working with Eric Seidman from AARP on a pair of illustrations for their feature: Hear Ye! Hear Ye! The article was about a court case between a woman who wanted to cremate her boyfriend according to his wishes and the man's brother, who wanted to bury the brother according to Orthodox Jewish law. 

This image illustrates the conflict...

...and here is the resolution. Hopefully, you can tell who won the case.

Besides that, here is some zany personal work I've done in the last few days. In both, I just started by drawing a face...then they got out of hand, fast. 

The Ballad of Frederick

A great tragedy happened recently. Frederick was a possum in my neighborhood that I'd grown quite fond of. He was huge and he'd fearlessly run across the road at night, staring into my headlights with his big, shining eyes. He was probably a father.

But now Frederick is somewhere else. Apparently, not every driver appreciates his fearlessness as much as I did. Here is my homage to Frederick.

And on another note, here is an updated version of an old portfolio piece:

This was an illustration from a book I made about my time living in India. This spread was about the horrendous bugs that terrorized us daily.

Album covers and broomsticks

Quick update: I had the pleasure of creating an album cover for Mouth's Cradle's new mixtape: Mouth's Cradle vs. The Hype. I relish any opportunity where I can draw evil ninjas. Here's the final print version.

New Statesman and more

Got a nice little editorial assignment a few weeks ago that I can finally publish. It was a half-page illustration for New Statesman magazine; a political magazine that runs in the UK. The entire issue was about Pakistan, and this particular article involved two old men, a retired colonel and doctor, discussing the current state of the nation. I had about a day to do it...good times.

Here is some personal work. This is in my quest to get better drawing landscapes.

More personal work. This drawing was based on some drawings I did at the Missouri History Museum. They had these awesome lifesize statues of dock workers that I couldn't resist drawing...

This is an old Student Life illustration that I revisited...for the third time.

Some new things

I've had a busy summer with lots of new work; I was debating whether to hoard it in my secret illustration lair, or share it with the world...I think I'm going to post it in the next two or three entries.

Here is a personal piece celebrating the joys of spoiled children. I took a page from my sketchbook and ran with it.

Wedding invitation, direction card, and RSVP card for the Bruchs-Levy...hopefully the weather will be as nice as on the invitation.

I had the pleasure of doing the cover for Eleven magazine about a month back. The picture is about LouFest - St. Louis' very own gigantic music festival that will be held in Forest Park for the first time...unfortunately, I'll be out of town for it.

A lot more to come!

New Studio

I moved back to St. Louis about a month ago - now I'm living in the Central West End and working from home. The apartment is great; it's the servant's quarters of an 1894 mansion. We're up on the third floor, with plenty of space. Those servants must have lived well.

Here are some pictures of my studio space, where I sit for hours a day slaving away.

My desk, bulletin board, and supply drawers...I have a chair, too...just not in this picture.

The wall of art and design

And here is a wonky panorama of the whole space.

I also found out that two of my pieces (Soccer Riot and Spectating) will appear in CMYK no. 48! I'm honored that the judge, Penelope Dullaghan (a terrific illustrator whose work I love) liked my work enough to include two pieces. 

Back in St. Louis

After a few months living home in Massachusetts, I'm back in St. Louis, for good. It was tough moving everything up three flights of narrow stairs, but my new studio is set up and everything is good to go. 

First, a new piece. I attended 3x3 Magazine's First Annual Nuts & Bolts conference in NYC this past month (which was great!), and one of the biggest things that I took away from it is that my portfolio needed some trimming. There was just way too much in there. As I was looking through it, making the painful decisions of what to hide from the world forever, I happened upon two portraits that I very much enjoy, but weren't really strong enough to stand in my portfolio. They were just standard portraits...they didn't offer much besides style. 

                                          

So I decided to combine them into some sort of narrative. Something that would still highlight the stylistic decisions I made in each piece, but something that was more than a static portrait. Here is the result. 

My daughter...?

So, if you look through my website's illustration portfolio, you might notice that it's about a third of the size that it used to be. Well, I hope you can still enjoy the piece that's left.

Finally, here is my new business card, coming to a wallet near you:

More work, more fortune

I want to address three things with this update. First, I want to post some new work. Please enjoy:

First: I don't really know what this piece is about. It was just practice, mostly.  Second: Colored/redrawn version of a Student Life illustration about elderly people enjoying life. 

 

In junior year of college I missed an opportunity to draw a badass dragon with a nuclear power plant embedded in it...I was bitter. Senior year, I missed an opportunity to draw a giant robot made out of musical instruments...I was bitter. I drew it anyway.

Secondly, I have exciting news! My piece "Soccer Riot" was awarded with Merit in 3x3 Magazine's Student Show No. 7. It'll get published in their upcoming annual and I'm pretty stoked. I've been a fan of 3x3 magazine for awhile now and I love the stuff they publish. I'm honored to be in the mix. Congrats to Jon Rothenberg on his award, too! WashU representin'.

Lastly, I just set up the Links section of my website. I've put in links to friends' sites...that I know about! (Blogs don't count) If you have a site, tell me about it...perhaps link mine back? (eh?) And if I know you, like you, and respect you, I'll put you in the listing. Sorry if you feel overlooked right now...it's probably just because I didn't know you had a website. But you can change that...

Robert Weaver Award

During the graduation ceremony I was honored with the Robert Weaver Award for Excellence in the Visual Essay....something I'm very excited about because 1) Robert Weaver is easily my favorite illustrator and one of my favorite artists overall, and 2) I love visual essays. I think it might be difficult to start going out and creating visual essays with nobody telling me to...but I'm going to try my hardest to initiate visual essay projects on my own. Any ideas?

I believe I did about 6 visual essays throughout the Communication Design program, and here is one from John's Narrative Sketchbook class, drawn on location on The Loop.