Been kind of busy over the past week. Finished up a quartet of illustrations for AG Edwards (which I’m not including in the blog in deference to the usage nature of the agreement with the client), I also completed a quartet of spots for Barrons, all on different topics – deflation, entrepreneurs from India, hucksterism, and navigation in the digital age. I’ve been doing quite a few spots this year for this particular client, and I’ve usually been quite happy with the results. You’d think I’d be getting burned out from such an immersion in the ‘financial/business’ illustration world for the past 8 years or so, but I seem to be holding up pretty well, idea-wise. It is definitely a more satisfying rut to be stuck in than the religious rut I found myself rooted in back in the mid-90s.
(images) top right: the ‘deflation/interest rates’ illo from the aforementioned series. middle left: another spot from the same series, this one on ‘navigating the digital age’. middle right, below: from the same series, “entrepreneurs from India”. middle left, below: from the same series, “stock hucksterism”.
I’m not sure when these pieces will run, they usually save them up and run them over the course of the following month, sometimes in color and sometimes in black and white depending on whether the page is printed in color that week or not.
Also this week, completed a ‘semi-rush job’ for the Wall Street Journal (two day lead time is actually quite a luxury for this particular client). This piece was on Ethanol and other eco-friendly fuels. I sort of cheated and used a similar solution (corn cob on fuel truck) that I had used before, but this was a bigger illustration, in color, and also utilized a farm scene and pipeline (image to be found further down the page). I was pretty happy with how it turned out. I also finished up a project this week for a London based subsidiary of the same client, but I’m not including those illustrations here, because it doesn’t run for another month or so (perhaps I will include it next month some time nearer to when it runs).
And finally, I also completed a half page illustration Log Home Living. The article was regarding ‘storage solutions’, and the idea was suggested by the client. (while I like a certain amount of freedom in idea generating, I usually feel it is better to get a little bit of input from the client, sometimes, as I tend to work better as a ‘idea bouncer’ than as an ‘idea generator’). (image posted at the bottom of this entry)
Over the past week or so, I’ve been working on a large batch of black and white spot illustrations to fill out a book for Llewellyn Publishing on the wiccan religion. I’d done the cover earlier in the summer, and they contacted me later for some last minute inside work (I gathered that I would be among a number of other illustrators working on this project, in order to get it done in time). Many of them I finished while on the road, driving my Dad to Arizona, working at night in hotel rooms on my wife’s laptop. I’ve included only a few of them here (there were something like 12 of them total, on a variety of topics). After a long dry spell during the end of September, it was a relief to get a lot of work back on the docket, but at the same time, the drive that I committed to with my father made the timing a little stressful.
The subject matter was a nice change of pace, from my usual financial topics that I’ve been mired in the past few years. Nice to not have to draw a businessman’s suit, and in some cases, even got to do away with clothing altogether.
Also had another quick black and white daily for Newsday, this one on endangered New Jersey wetlands, and had to do a little research on a specific species of ‘Meadowlark’ (pictured at bottom). I liked how this one turned out. I always seem to prefer how the black and white pieces turn out over the color ones, not sure why. The color seems to dillute the power of the scratchboard technique just a little bit.
