Fall Round-up

Here's a round-up of my illustrations from the past few months!

"Ox Mountain Death Song," The New Yorker, October 29 & November 5, 2012

Hunters, The New Yorker, October 15, 2012

"Wuthering Heights," The New Yorker, October 8, 2012

Julia Holter, The New Yorker, September 3, 2012

Saadat Hassan Manto, newyorker.com, August 30, 2012

 

"The Challenges of Adult ADHD," American Medical News, August 6, 2012

Crazy4Cult New York!

Crazy4Cult 2012!! In NY!!  So easy to get to from Philly!  And yet on that day, I am up in Vermont!  However, the day had many other wonderful things happening not in the general perusal of this little blog.  Let's just say it involved a change of the face book status:).   So I've been pretty disENGAGED with my blog over the summer, so much so that this piece for one of the biggest shows of my year, has opened without promotion from me, and the piece has already sold! I finished this about two months ago, and then had in the studio itching for release only to be late to the party.  Yarg!!  Anyhow, the show has done really well, and great to see the NY press coverage.  So here it is, "The Path of Shaun", 9" x 12", ink and gouache on paper.

Like the maps I've been doing of late, I think the dogged pursuit of simply following the character tells a lot about the movie.  In this case, a pretty intense back and forth between a few places, the Winchester, Shaun's house, Liz's house, and all of the zig-zaggier path come when the zombies come and Shaun gets out of his rut.  It's a sort of dry approach - but I think of them as doing two things: they allow the viewer to follow the experience of the entire movie in a really condensed frame, with some fun little details, and humor, and they also have a bit of an info-graphic/anthropological study feel.   I do try to shape them for clarity, but when you start connecting the dots, these patterns start emerging from the plot in a very simple stripped down way.  There not all that much control in these very controlled piece and that's really fun.  I'm working on more movie maps for a two man show in January at G1988's Venice location - and those are getting really crazy!:)

There's some fun little details around the Winchester.

photo by HalfBaiked

Apparently, the line went three quarters of the way around the block!!  Hats off to Jensen and Katie at G1988 for putting this all together and doing a lot of great promo work!!

Recent illos

"Wild Flag," The New Yorker, April 2, 2012

"The Dark Knight Rises," The New Yorker, June 4-11, 2012 

"When Key Employees Clash— Experts: Jim Southern and Peter Kelly," Harvard Business Review, June 2012

Here are some pieces from the past few months. "The Dark Knight Rises" illustration and the HBR portraits are on newsstands now. 

For fun, I put together an unedited, behind-the-scenes look at the making of a few illustrations. You can see the Wild Flag process here.

New Website Up and Running!

The new site is up, a little cleaner, a little easier, more work, more . . . pizazz?  Anyway, have a look - I'm still in sort of a beta testing period.  So there maybe some small changes yet to be done, but it feels good to have it up and working.

"North by Northwest Passage" for Alfred Hitchcock Show, "Suspense and Gallows Humor"

"North by Northwest Passage"

22" x 22" Gouache on paper

 I've loved "North by Northwest" for a since the first time I saw it - the visuals, the music, the tiny razor gags, but most of all, the urban/rural scene hopping, from New York, to Chicago, to South Dakota.  So - I thought I'd throw together a sort of scenic chart of all the actual locations in the movie - the only fictional one being the Northwest Airlines terminal, which no longer exists and I couldn't find reference for (but for "North by Northwest", I figured I'd take a little liberty).  Also not included are the 1212 Michgan Ave Auction house and the hospital in Rapid City, as they were shot on soundstage in Hollywood.    Even with that, it was a bit of a beast.  Lots of research, lots of windows . . . The cars are also accurate from the initial 57 Skoda 440 cab to the '51 White Freightliner the plane crashes into, to the '52 Ford Customline Cary Grant rescues the girl in.  I took color from the footage to get some of that "technicolor" feel, and blatantly ripped off Saul Bass' opening credit arrows to show the action.

Anywho - the show opens at the Gallery1988 Venice location on April 13th!

(detail)

progress - pencils to color blocking, to black line on top

The remnants of my notes.

"It's a Magic Trick"

This takes me back to my days at Pratt! Watch illustrator Lynn Pauley teach her signature line technique to students at Delaware College of Art and Design in the video below. The actual drawing starts at the 3:45 minute mark.

Figure Drawing class for Animators and Illustrators from eatmysocksoff on Vimeo. Filmed March 2012.

jasharawan.com 4.0

I just revamped my website—check it out!

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.