Food Safety

Here's a project I was working on in May while I was in Tanzania.  It was for Good Eggs, a farm-to-fork type grocery store, kind of like Fresh Direct.  They have 4 hubs, and Brooklyn is the office with which I was working.  It was a fun spot illustration gig and I was bummed to find out the project was cancelled. I went ahead and added the captions which weren't part of the original drawings.

Casa Enrique

Back in mid September I was contacted again by Jesus Diaz, associate art director for The Village Voice.  He wanted a spot illustration for a Robert Sietsema article about a restaurant called Casa Enrique in Brooklyn.  The restaurant's logo is a shaggy dog wearing a sombrero and Jesus wanted the dog incorporated into the illustration.  After reading the article I was practically drooling all over the place because the dishes sounded so tasty.  These are the final illustration and the sketches.  Personally I loved the cooking ones and so did Jesus, but the team at The Village Voice didn't quite like the idea of a dog cooking.

First published editorial illustration!!

About a week ago I got a call from Jesus Diaz, the Associate Art Director at The Village Voice, a free newspaper in NYC.  Jesus told me about a Michael Musto article about the hot rental market in NYC and asked if I wanted to do the accompanying illustration.  I agreed and had about 5 days to work on the illustration, which came out in print on Wednesday, April 18!  It's also viewable online.

In print:

Pinnacle: Reinvent the Icon

Recently, I was approached by Joshua Katcher of The Discerning Brute. He wanted to feature my "Furocious" poster on his website Pinnacle: Reinvent the Icon. The website is dedicated to providing awareness and critical commentary on the fashion industry in regards to fur.

Check out the feature here.

"Biblioburro"

Pen, ink, digital
8.2 x 4.5 inches

Luis Soriano is a primary school teacher in the Magdalena region of Colombia.  Some decades ago he realized many of his students weren't completing homework because they didn't have access to books.  He started Biblioburro (Donkey Library) with his two donkeys, Alpha and Beto.  He rides Alpha and Beto carries the library.  Together they travel twice a week from village to village giving children, and adults, access to books.

Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse
3D Illustration - fabric, Paperclay, wire, paint, wood, other stuff, Photoshop
10 x 7 inches
actual figure - 15 x 8 x 8 inches

Project #3 in Illustration Markets was to interview an illustrator working today and make an art piece for the same market that the interviewee works in.  I interviewed Chris Sickels a few weeks ago.  He works in a lot of different markets but primarily editorial illustration.  Since Sickels works in 3D, I chose to the the same.  I made Amy Winehouse.

She was a TON of fun to make.  Making the accessories and clothing was the best part; it was a bit like grown up paperdolls.  The purse is my favorite part.  It's made from a furry leaf or seedpod I found on the street.  I soaked it in water to soften it to make it easier to sew.  After it dried, it stiffened up and held the sewn form.  I stuffed it with a tiny flask I made and a bag of coke (corner of a ziplock bag filled with salt, then sealed).

I photographed her with the help of Megan Berkheiser, Drawing For illustrators professor, and her husband, Mike.  Megan works three dimensionally too so I was able to get lots of feed back from her on how to go about working on the background.  I drew and painted the background on paper with watercolors, scanned it in and worked it up on Photoshop, playing with color saturations, levels, and textures.

In Character - A Journal of Everyday Virtues

In Illustration Markets last week we submitted our editorial assignments.  The assignment was to create three illustrations - one cover, and two spots - for In Character magazine.  Each issue of the magazine is about one virtue.  The few that got picked by other students were honesty, generosity, wisdom, and one more but I can't remember the word, something to do with selflessness.  The issue I chose was the Grit issue.  Grit means "stick-to-it-ness," perseverance, not giving up.

I read a few articles and decided to go with one about Seabiscuit the racehorse from the 30s/40s, and an article on Albert Einstein and how he never gave up even though his peers often did.

The Einstein article talked about how he never gave up or lost hope, Einstein was determined to find results.  The article quotes Einstein describing himself as "an ostrich with [his] head forever buried in the sands of relativity."  This quote stuck to me and lead my to the final drawing.  Since I had to have consistency in the images I created, and this one had lots of ostriches in it, it only made sense to carry the animal theme through out the rest of the pieces, which also worked out well since Seabiscuit is a horse.  I also had to continue using the element of type so the text didn't seem random. 

Pen, ink, watercolor and digital color
8 x 7.5 inches

The Seabiscuit article describe the horse as, to put it in one word, awkward.  The article had a whole list of characteristics that were wrong and not beneficial for racehorses, all characteristics that Seabiscuit seemed to have.  Seabiscuit apparently lost every race for two years, or something like that, apparently it was because his trainer didn't care much for him.  There was a change of trainer and the second one gave poor awkward Seabiscuit some TLC and the horse went on to become one of the greatest racehorses in racing history.

This is my spot illustration for the article.

Pen, ink, watercolor and digital color.
7.5 x 5 inches

And finally, the cover.  The cover was a bit of a challenge.  I had to show "grit" but not really reference any of the articles but just illustrate what the word means.  Plus I had to use animals and text.  I researched sea turtles, humpback whales, penguins, and hammer head sharks.  All these animals have to go on long, hard voyages in order to reproduce/eat.  But I felt that they were too obvious a solution.  I ended up choosing African termites!  They build mounds that can sometimes be over six feet tall!  They've definitely got some grit.  The cover illustration became the only one without text that I created, but it has the journal and issue name so I think that counts as type.

 Pen, ink, watercolor and digital color
10 x 7.5 inches


All three are dated April not May.