new work & events

Nation Fall Books, Lapham's Quarterly

2009-12-01T21:34:00.003-05:00

Two illustrations on the newsstand this week: The cover illustration/design for The Nation's Fall Books issue, and an illustrated map of religious sites for Lapham's Quarterly. Both were done by combining drawings, photos, and layered paint textures in photoshop.

Vanderbilt

2009-11-16T21:44:00.003-05:00

This illustration for The Nation was done for an article about Cornelius Vanderbilt titled "The Misunderstood Robber Baron" written by Steve Frasier, which discusses the changing portrayal of Vanderbilt by his biographers over the last century. I chose to show him as both threatening and celebrated, and used a combination of vintage print material collaged with my own drawings so that the image would suggest both past and present points of view.
Editor: John Palattella

Hobbes

2009-10-01T22:32:00.004-04:00

This photo-collage appears in the Oct. 19, 09 issue of The Nation. It was made for an article written by Corey Robin titled "The First Counter-revolutionary", about the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. One of the points that interested me most was that Hobbes supported a strong central power, in his days that would be the king, but also believed that the central power should be an extension of the will of the people. So, his politics can be claimed by both modern left and right movements. Ché is about as left as you can get, while the crown and scepter represent the right. I put the illustration together from about 10 different sources, from historical paintings and different photos and textures. This was one that I thought worked best to just use collage and let the combination of source material express the concept without much traditional drawing.
As always with The Nation, I had great art direction from John Palattella on this illustration.

Sarasota

2009-09-06T11:25:00.004-04:00

I've moved! Last month I was offered the chance to teach illustration as a visiting full-time faculty member at Ringling College of Art and Design, in Sarasota, Florida. It was such an amazing opportunity that I pretty much just packed a suitcase and moved. After seven years in Brooklyn it will be a huge change. These photos of the sunset last night at Lido Beach, courtesy of George Pratt, are about as different from New York as it gets. I'm loving it.
I'll be staying with my friends Nikki and Dennis Heil until the the end of the month, then I'll be up in New York for a weekend to pack it all up and move back down with my wife, Nicola. As soon as we get settled I'll have a lot more to share about the move and everything that is happening at Ringling. Thanks for checking in!

The Secret Shofar of Barcelona

2009-07-27T01:35:00.013-04:00

I'm happy to announce that my 5th illustrated children's book, "The Secret Shofar of Barcelona", written by Jackie Greene, has hit the stores this month. I finished these paintings back in January and I've been anxious to see them become a real book. It has been published by Kar-Ben Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Lerner Books. My copy just arrived and I wanted to share some of the spreads from the book here.
The story is about a musician and his son who find a way to secretly celebrate their Jewish faith while living under the inquisition. The setting is 1500's Spain, so I looked to Renaissance and Baroque painters like Titian, Vermeer and Velazquez for inspiration. I wanted to have something of the mystery and moody, soft light that they have in their paintings. I looked at Piero Della Francesca as well, I love his simple forms and the spiritual quality they convey. When I'm working on a book I like to dive into old and new influences that I find relevant to the subject matter and which help me find colors, textures and shapes that evoke the mood and setting of the story. I hope you enjoy the results!

Illustration Academy 2009

2009-07-19T22:04:00.003-04:00

Illustration Academy 2009 held at Ringling College of Art in Sarasota, Florida has just come to a close. My head is still spinning from 7-weeks of non-stop action and amazing stuff done by the students and visiting artists there. I taught full-time again this year as a core instructor along with Jon Foster, George Pratt, John English and Brent Watkinson, and on top of that we had Mark English, Gary Kelley, Sterling Hundley, Anita Kunz, Robert Meganck, C.F. Payne, Barron Storey, Sam Weber, Jillian Tamaki, Francis Livingston, Natalie Ascencios, Terry Brown, Andrea Wicklund, Robin Eley, and Ed Kinsella all teach as visiting instructors. I'm not sure how to begin to describe the amount of information that was exchanged, for a great impression take a look at Academy Guy's podcasts, there is one for each week posted on you tube.
I miss everyone already!
But...there is a new academy website that was launched last week and it is an incredible tool. It is an unlimited-use subscription site that lets you stay connected to the instructors, member artists at large and fellow students through discussion forums, member galleries, and instructional videos. Take a look at the visual literacy program site if you'd like to get more information, or write me or any of the other artists on the site if you have any questions about it. There is already a ton of activity on the site, as the community grows it I think it will become an unparalleled online resource for artists and students.
Thanks to everyone who took part this summer! Below I've posted a few of the drawings I did along with the students during the 2 hour figure drawing session held twice each week.

The Nation, Spring Books

2009-05-21T13:14:00.005-04:00

The cover of The Nation's spring books issue doubles as an illustration for the lead story about "Literary Evolution" by William Deresiewicz. The editor and I decided that it would be good to poke some fun at the notion that reading, or art, is an extension of biological evolution. I wanted to give the illustration a vintage feel, as if this were something out of a science text book. I did the type by hand to loosen it up and make it less mechanical. Click on the image to get a closer look at the figures.
I also did a piece for an interior story of this issue called "The Kundera Conundrum" written by Jana Prikryl, which takes a look at the controversy around Milan Kundera's possible involvement in informing the Czech communist regime in the 60's about a suspicious fellow student.
Editor: John Palattella

Summer Sketchbooks

2009-05-08T23:51:00.003-04:00

I wrote a lengthy post on the Illustration Academy blog about keeping a sketchbook. If you'd like to read it, click here. Hope you enjoy it!

Sites Updated

2009-04-25T22:18:00.006-04:00

My editorial page is updated with a lot of new work and a tweaked design with larger images. I hope you enjoy looking around! Thanks again to Alec for helping me out.
ALSO! The illustration academy is only a month away, it gets going Monday, June 1. I'll be teaching there again full time this Summer with a line-up of great artists, including Mark English, John English, Jon Foster, Sterling Hundley, George Pratt, Brent Watkinson and MANY OTHERS (Gary Kelly, C.F. Payne, Anita Kunz, Robert Meganck, Natalie Ascensios, Barron Storey, Sam Weber, Ed Kinsella...plus scores of amazing, hard-working students. That about does it for the line-up!). It's not too late to sign up if you are looking for a heavy dose of inspiration and knowledge. Take a look at their new site, it was just launched a couple weeks ago. The academy blog is also now active, that will be one to keep up with.

True Crime

2009-03-19T15:46:00.003-04:00

This was done for a review in The Nation titled "There will Always Be Blood" which discusses the book "True Crime: An American Anthology". Like the last post, this one also needed diverse sources to reflect the range of material in the anthology. The idea was to use different distinct styles to evoke separate time periods. If they had mugshots in the 15th-18th centuries, maybe they would have looked like this. Each is pieced together with my own drawings and different print material, except the last shot- that man was executed for murder in the 70's, in Indiana. For the bloody fingerprints I dipped my finger in oil paint and colorized them digitally.
Editor: John Palattella

Lincoln Anthology

2009-03-12T15:11:00.003-04:00

This one for The Nation accompanies a review of the new “Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy From 1860 to Now.” The book is huge at over a 1000 pages, representing Lincoln through many different lenses. The idea for the illustration was to create a single composite image from many sources to reflect the diversity of the anthology. I tried to use as many different styles in the piece as possible, photo, line, paint, graphic shapes, 3D, anything that would add to the impression of diversity.

Kafka(esque)

2009-02-13T20:40:00.007-05:00

This article written by Alexander Provan in The Nation, takes a look at the Kafkaesque mystique of Franz Kafka. Most of us have an impression of the Kafkaesque (futility, overwhelming burocracy, impotence, a bit of the surreal, the fantastic, the mysterious). Actually, it's vague. Kafka's biography often plays a large role in how his work is interpreted. Even Kafka's face seems to be a stand in for his work. Our prejudices of his work form a large obstacle to reading him. Here in the illustration I've included many of Kafka's best known characters- Gregor Samsa climbing the curtain, the hunger artist in his cage, the talking chimp, horses from "A Country Doctor," Liberty with her sword instead of a torch. I wanted to make the picture weird enough to qualify as Kafkaesque, but it also needed to illustrate the term in a deliberate way. It's kind of a curtain call for all things "Kafkaesque".
Editor: John Palattella

The Nation: Back Talk

2009-01-29T13:52:00.003-05:00

This small illo is for the Back Talk interview in the Feb. 16, 2009 issue of The Nation. In the interview, Christine Smallwood talks with Artist/Curator Nato Thompson about "Experimental Geography", including his recent production of Waiting for Godot in the still-desolate Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

R.I.T.

2009-01-25T17:55:00.003-05:00

I'll be talking to Bob Dorsey's illustration class at Rochester Institute of Technology on Thursday, Feb. 12. Bob was my professor back when I studied at R.I.T.and he runs a great class. If you are in the area it would be a pleasure to have visitors.

Children's Book for '09

2009-01-07T19:46:00.004-05:00

Over the holidays I finished up the paintings for my 5th children's picture book, which will be published by Lerner Books in August this year. I'll post some of those paintings when the publication date gets closer, but in the meantime here's just a little fragment from one of the illustrations.
Happy New Year to you!

Society of Illustrators

2008-12-07T18:11:00.004-05:00

These three were accepted into the Society of Illustrators annual exhibition this year. The first two, "Labyrinth" and "Ajax" will be in the editorial and book show, and the third, the Neer's cd cover, will be in the advertising and institutional show. When I did each one of these I experimented quite a bit to get to the final, so it is especially nice to get recognition for work that is new territory for me.

Handmade Portfolios

2008-12-01T11:36:00.003-05:00

Over the last month or so I've slowly been making these handmade portfolios with huge help from Cat Glennon over at Booklyn. I finally finished up the slipcases over the weekend. The drawings and my name on the cover were done by printing on to the fabric first, using a letterpress, then glued down after the box and binder were built.
I've also got a bunch of new work updated on the editorial page thanks to Alec Longstreth's web assistance. Have you seen Alec's work?

Signale aus der Bleeker Street

2008-11-30T12:54:00.002-05:00

Signale aus der Bleeker Street (Signals from Bleeker Street) is the third volume of texts by young German speaking writers to be published with the support of New York University's Deutsches Haus and edited by Bernd Hueppauf. This latest edition came out this month and includes three of my drawings from the SPREE exhibition I had at NYU last December.

The Nation, Fall Books

2008-11-20T15:12:00.005-05:00

The Fall Books issue of The Nation is out! The idea for the cover was to do a Macy's parade kind-of-thing, with just a bit of strangeness thrown in. I did it as a pencil drawing and colored it digitally. I haven't done a plain ol' pencil drawing in a long time, and it was great fun. The composition went through a few rounds of revisions before we hit on the right feel. Below is a small cast of characters that didn't make the cut.
Editor: John Palattella

City Wide

2008-10-23T23:06:00.000-04:00

These are just a few from a journal project I've been working on the last few months. I've got a box full of drawings from the last year that I've been scanning when there is time. Its a big box, about 1000 drawings. I like to stockpile like that then just throw out the junk later. The drawings are mainly of random city stuff and street scenes from around New York, so for now I'm calling it CITY WIDE. It's kind of like SPREE but with some color and with fewer pictures of people drinking beer.

Ne'er Do Evers, End Up Records

2008-10-12T12:51:00.000-04:00

Ne'er Do Evers, led by my friend Chris Buckridge, has a new record out on End Up called 100% Wrong. It rocks. End Up has a great list of Brooklyn talent including Balthrop Alabama, Caithlin De Marrais, and Kyle Fisher. I also did Kyle's cover art last year for Black Milk.
The Ne'ers describe their music as "fifty percent heavy thoughts and fifty percent knee-jerk reactions with a sound best described as full-on in-your-face visceral mooning, a distillation of art, alcohol and attitude—not only intoxicating but mind-numbing in a good way". I put on the rough mixes, started drawing, and this is what I came up with for the cover art.

No Exit

2008-10-02T18:19:00.000-04:00

"No Exit", an article by Daniel Lazare in the Oct. 1 issue of The Nation, begins by asking "What does the constitution mean?". This review discusses Laurence Tribe's new book and considers which rights, if any, are specifically guaranteed by the constitution. We are left to wonder if the constitution is anything more than a vague labyrinth in which any meaning can be found.
Rather than "draw" something, a more graphic approach seemed right this time.
Editor: John Palattella

The Nation: Cold War Comics

2008-09-12T10:32:00.000-04:00

I had the chance to take a shot at a comic strip for an article in The Nation this week (Sept. 29 issue) titled "An Inky, Well-Paneled Place" about the development of comics during the Cold War. The author reviews two books that discuss the development of comics in relation to cultural fears and anxieties. The concept was to mix comic icons and Cold War imagery in a strip, like Superman saving the day from Russian Nukes and the fear of Communism, or the connection between the Space Race and the fascination and fear of U.F.O's during that time. I also did the title type by hand to give it more of a pulp look.

Fletcher Hanks

2008-08-21T00:44:00.000-04:00

There is a book out on the strange, raw comic artist Fletcher Hanks. I had never heard of him until I saw the book at Strand but his stuff is great. It sounds as if his work has been rescued from obscurity by editor/artist Paul Karasik.
This panel is from a story in the book called "Big Red McLane, King of the Northwoods." The drawings are bold and simple and he sure doesn't waste many words telling the stories. Apart from Big Red there is also "Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle" and "Stardust the Super Wizard".

Faces of Bob

2008-08-11T21:13:00.000-04:00

I started off playing around with doing a portrait of Bob Dylan and it turned into four. Each one has the same face, but the rest changes to capture a different period or record. Here I've got "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan", "Highway 61 revisited", "Blonde on Blonde", and "Blood on the Tracks". The Todd Haynes movie about Dylan's music, "I'm Not There", covers those periods too, they are some of the best. Dylan fans will know this well, but if you haven't seen the documentaries "Don't Look Back" and "No Direction Home" they are great.