Rumbletoid

My friend and Philadelphia consiglieri Josh Longo is now posting for LostAtEMinor and was very generous in throwing up some of my Freddie Mercury portraits for the New Illustration section.  VIVA FREDDIE!! And thanks, Josh!  But enough about me - let's talk about Josh.  Josh is an industrial designer and teaches at Pratt in the ID studios next door to the Communication Design Dept and sometimes stops by my class on Mondays.  We share bus rides back and forth from Philly to Pratt in Brooklyn - and like schoolgirls on a sleepover, we say we should sleep and then talk the whole time.  

     Josh has a pretty amazing CV based mostly on his 3D work in Longoland, but for the past few years he's been doing what most of us illustrators talk about, but never REALLY do - and that's branch out.  He's been developing his 2D work and is doing some amazing stuff.  Not to say that Josh wasn't already great at drawing - he was - but moving from drawing as a preliminary for 3D work, and doing drawing and painting as a finish in and of itself is a really interesting difference.  It's been fascinating to watch.  We have a lot of similar influences and his stuff has inspired a lot of the more recent painting I've been doing and vice-versa, which is a blast.  The way he attacks pieces and compositions reminds that it's supposed to be fun - that the if a piece doesn't have intuition, that it's probably lacking in inspiration, too.  If you haven't already, check out rumbletoid - and check out his sketchbooks.

Citizen Conn

"Citizen Conn," The New Yorker, February 13 & 20, 2012

My first full page for The New Yorker illustrates "Citizen Conn," a new short story by Michael Chabon. I'm a big fan of Chabon's—The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay inspired my senior project at Pratt and a while back I did a few illustrations that ran in "The Escapists," a Dark Horse comic series sequel to Kavalier & Clay. This short story is a return to the world of comic book creators for Chabon.

I had longer for this piece than a typical NYer illustration and much of the time was spent conceptualizing. Here are the thumbnails:

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Four of thumbnails were chosen and developed into rough sketches:

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There was some debate among the editors as to whether to go with a literal scene from the story or not. As a result, two of the roughs were asked to be developed into final inks.

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The literal direction won out in the end (although I went back to the drawing board one more time!).

"Citizen Conn" appears in this week's issue of The New Yorker.