Washington Post: Glucagonoma

Medical Mystery series illustration in today's Washington Post. This story followed a man whose skin condition symptoms misled doctors for nearly a decade. The sketches below were based on one point in the article when a seminar of 20 medical specialists were brought in to consult on the situation. This apparently included a lot of "head scratching." Art Director Brad Walters.

The New Yorker: Thank You for the Light

Illustration for an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story in this week's New Yorker.

Nike: Jordan Trunner Dominate

Last fall I started working with Nike to illustrate a series of comic-book-type cityscapes designed to be staging backdrops for large-format displays for the just released Jordan 'Dominate Training' campaign, featuring photos of Chris Paul.

The sketches emphasized familiar, but not-quite-recognizable, cityscapes and alleyways, balancing dark corners and highlights to show early morning light. The left top and bottom sketches were selected, with some adjustments, and the addition of a basketball court.


Here are a couple of the details from the finished line drawings (developed at 1200 dpi for the sake of enlargement) and below are the layouts from the Nike design team and some shots of the finished displays. Much thanks to David Frank and the whole team at Nike for the great collaboration.

The New Yorker: Doctor Who

Getting assignments to work on something you're a fan of is always fun, but getting to work on something that you become a fan of while working is especially cool. I got a call from The New Yorker to illustrate a Doctor Who piece by Emily Nussbaum for the Sci-Fi issue and immediately regretted having put off watching the series. However, there's a lot to be said for being immersed in an entirely new subject while sketching and, in the case of the Doctor Who series, the only real visual struggle was editing down the wealth of great locations and monsters. Below are some of the unused rough sketches and the four sketches I cleaned up to submit. Thanks again to Chris Curry for the consistently fun assignments, and to the BBC for an exceptionally smart show.

Washington Post: GSD

May Medical Mystery illustration for today's Washington Post. Art Director Brad Walters.

Grantland: Hagler v. Leonard

 The new issue of Grantland, McSweeney's sports quarterly is on stands now with a huge amount of really nice artwork and essays. I had the good fortune to get to work with Juliet Litman on an illustration for a piece by Eric Raskin recounting the hotly debated oral history of the 1987 Hagler vs. Leonard fight. The crux of the piece being how subjective the calls were depending on perspectives and tastes of the judges, and how far from clean-cut the final decision was. Below are a few of the steps of the process, beginning with thumbnails done while reading the article, followed by sketches on the idea of conflicting viewpoints, and then the ink drawing layers.

Brush + Ink: May

Some new excerpts from the daily drawing exercise.

Mother Jones: Nuclear Truckers

I got a call from Tim Luddy at Mother Jones to illustrate an article by Adam Wienstein about nuclear trucking routes through major cities and across the US. The security safeguards and trainings were interesting to learn about, but for the sketches I tried to come up with some scenes that conveyed the ominousness of these unmarked trucks and their radioactive cargo against the roads and cities we use every day. The issue is on newsstands now, much thanks again to Tim Luddy for the assignment.

Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin: Destinations

A few months ago I had the opportunity to work on a series of illustrations for Birthe Steinbeck at the German Newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. It was a travel feature on extreme destinations around the globe (the deepest cave, the flattest place, and the steepest stone wall) and an interesting challenge to work primarily without figures.

The New Yorker: John Carter

Last week I got a call to illustrate the John Carter film review for this week's New Yorker. Not having seen the film at the time, I pored over the (surprisingly) great selection of early teaser previews and clips from the movie while working on the sketches below. Ultimately we went with the giant monster attack scene, which was (not surprisingly) super fun to work on. Much thanks to Jordan Awan for the call.
 

Brush + Ink

Brush and ink sketches from the past week.

Washington Post: PBA

The February Medical Mystery is out in today's Washington Post. The piece is about a man who was struck by a drunk driver, sustaining a severe brain injury that left him with aphasia, and suffering from random, uncontrollable emotional outbursts.

Below are the quick thumbnail idea sketches, where I was trying to think through different scenes and explore how to connect the elements of the story clearly. The tricky part, I discovered, was how to illustrate the context of the severe crying episodes, which were inexplicable, and often unrelated to the surrounding circumstances. I submitted the two refined sketches below, and ultimately we went with the elevator direction, which was drawn up on paper with ink and then painted digitally using Corel Painter and Photoshop. Art Direction by Brad Walters.

The New Yorker: Chronicle

I got my first call from The New Yorker last week to work on a quick turnaround illustration for a review of the new film Chronicle which opened this weekend. The films found-footage style seemed like an interesting and grounded take on the superpower origin story, so I tried to play off the 'character' of the camera lens' in the sketches below. After the first round of sketches, I refined a couple of them, adding in more characters in the fourth sketch, which was then chosen for the finish. Ultimately, the piece didn't see print, but it was a blast to work on.

Washington Post: Dravet Syndrome

The January installment of the Medical Mystery column in The Washington Post is on stands today. The story is about an infant in Centerville Iowa that began to exhibit severe seizures shortly after being vaccinated at six months. As the baby developed, the seizures became so severe that she was placed in a medically induced coma for a short period, and medevac'd to nearby Des Moines or Iowa City hospitals multiple times. Ten years later she was finally diagnosed with severe mycolonic epilepsy of infancy, known as Dravet Syndrome, an inherited genetic mutation and completely unrelated to the vaccination. The sketches below were interesting to work on because of the amount of travel that takes place in the story, but ultimately we opted to go with the intensive care scene, since it touched on both the severity and inexplicability of the situation. Art Direction by Brad Walters.
 

Washington Post: FMD

Above is one of the finished illustration from the Washington Post Medical Mysteries series I had missed posting last year. This particular piece was about an young woman whose undiagnosed Fibromuscular dysplasia led to years of dizziness, chronic headaches, vertigo and dangerously high blood pressure before finally being diagnosed as the cause. The sketches below were roughly based on the idea of her athletic marathon running life colliding with the physical effects of the disease, and ways the internal symptoms of hypertension and vertigo might be expressed in an externalized, two-dimensional way. Art Direction by Brad Walters.

New York Times: Twenty Eleven

In September when the imprisoned hikers in Iran were nearing release I was in the process of moving and got a call from Aviva Michaelov at the New York Times to illustrate an Op-Ed by the co-founder of Lonely Planet Tony Wheeler. It was an interesting piece about the perceptions of the dangers of traveling the world. Ultimately the article did not run, but the quick turnaround provided the opportunity to go completely brush and ink which is always fun.

 I've really enjoyed working with the Times on illustrations for some significant events of the past year. Below are some of the letters pieces for revolts in Egypt, the torture debate, solitary confinement, and the withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Iraq.

St. Nick

Broke out the quill and ink for a series of concerned Santa drawings on postcards. Happy Holidays!

Granta: Bonfire

The upcoming "Exit Strategies" issue of GRANTA has a short fiction piece, entitled "Bonfire," by David Long that I got a call to illustrate. The story traces the narrator's memory of a passionate but fleeting Fourth of July rendezvous from years earlier, leaving the reader with an interesting mix of exhilaration and loss. The sketches below were my first impression of the story, but after discussing it with the art director and editor, we revised the composition so as to touch on more of the fading embers of the memory of love lost than the night itself. Also, I did an interview with Daniela Silva about illustrating the Roberto Bolaño stories which is now online at Granta's site.

Granta: Horror

Over the past year, I've had the opportunity to illustrate several short fiction pieces by Roberto Bolaño for the literary magazine Granta. A few weeks after working on the watercolor illustration (above) for the short Bolaño story, "The Colonel's Son," art director, Michael Salu, asked if I would be interested in collaborating on a motion comic he had in mind to tie the short story and issue in with their digital readership. Time was short, but having already read through and sequentially visualized much of the story, it sounded too interesting to pass up.

The animation is now live at nothingbutamovie.com, and here are some samples of the finished layered illustrations, which were all inked digitally using Manga Studio (which I've just recently begun using inspired by the amazing illustration work of Asaf Hanuka).

Many thanks to Jocabola, David Bonas, Sorgerune and the visionary Michael Salu for the collaboration.

Seattle Met: "Diary of a Deadly Year"

Last month, I had the opportunity to work on an illustration for the Seattle Met Magazine's November Issue on an article about a sudden spike in murder rates in Yakima County, Washington in 2010.  The illustration's job was to both narrate a specific attack as well as convey the tone of shock from the string of 29 killings in a population of only 89,000.

Below are sketches we worked through to develop the direction (the first couple thumbnails in this case were done on my phone) and the final artwork and headline treatment from the magazine by André Mora and Chris Skiles, which is on stands now.