I was really excited to be asked to do these two interrelated pieces for the fall books issue of The Nation. The challenge was to come up with a cover concept that could have a feeling of excitement and anticipation, and also contain imagery that might be appropriate for the interior illustration. After a few rounds of sketches I hit on the idea of a high wire performer balanced by books. The circus imagery seemed to have a lot of possibilities for the interior article, "Deal Breakers" by Kim Phillips-Fein, about the derailing of democratic activism (donkeys) by the conservative movement (elephants). I had a lot of fun doing both of these. I painted both in a bunch of different layers and media, then assembled them digitally to get some vibrant juxtapositions in color and texture.
Editors: John Palattella and Christine Smallwood
3 comments:
hey Doug! these are great--YOU keep surprising me, too. i love the striped pants and orange shirt on the top guy and the concept. and the inside illo ROCKS. i LOVE the silkscreen feel of it--graphic line work over shapes of textures, plus the softer blurred crowd.think you hit on something with this one. your drawing style mixed with painting style. just feels really exciting to me.
Man, these are excellent! You color choices matched with your drawing is something that I envy in all of your work but especially with these two.
I keep racking my brain trying to figure out how you did these, which is another aspect to why I like them so much.
Hey, thanks guys! There are a lot of painted layers mixed with drawing and digital stuff here. Both pieces have painted backgrounds that I then scanned in and collaged on top of in photoshop. Some of the line work was also done by scanning pencil or marker drawings and pasting a painted texture (like a washy watercolor) into it. I will show you the Tiff files some time so you can see how the layers are put together. I'll be keeping an eye on your blogs for process stuff too.
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