Summer Doldrums

AHMM, Barrons, LA Times, Miami Herald, WSJ


Still keeping fairly busy, but you can tell that summer is here. The above project was for an article in Barrons about avoiding ‘committee investing’. Originally had goldfish in the sketch version, but they wanted something a little less ‘cute’. I was mostly just thinking about keeping it colorful. Bluegills were a nice alternative. Probably pointless though, because there is often the chance that the finish will print in greyscale. A little ‘T&A’ for the usual ‘health care’ spots for the Wall Street Journal (pictured below). The first one was about cellulite removal devices, and then a tricky one on breast self exams, but that they didn’t want to actually show a breast.


I had another illustration for the Miami Herald a few weeks back, this one about rising gas prices. Below that is another fiction assignment for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. This one was set in a New Orleans brothel sometime in the late 1800s. A bit tricky on the police costumes, as I had no reference.


I had another op ed graphic piece appear in the Los Angeles Times last week. This one was a humor piece on the ‘christian license plates’ available in South Carolina. One of the plates is pictured below, and more can be seen in the link here. There were actually a few more than these that didn’t get used. This was more of a ‘graphics’ job than an illustration assignment, dealing with typestyles and layouts, something I really don’t feel comfortable doing.

Back to Normal

Barrons, ChronicleHE, Far East Economic Review, WSJ


After what seems like a solid month of working on the same project day in and day out, it has been nice the past week to get back to spots and quick deadline work. The above spot was one of four that I did this week for the Chronicle of Higher Education. These are for an ongoing series of articles about election issues that I’ve been doing over the past several months for this publication. The other illustrations in the series are pictured below, and were on subjects such as: Nuclear Proliferation, Pre-emptive Conflicts, Promoting Democracy and the Unipolar World Power Structure. And speaking of the Chronicle, I received a ‘fan email’ from one of their readers last week, which happens so rarely, that it is always a special treat. Hard to believe that I’ve been contributing to this magazine for over 15 years now. Where does the time go?



 Over the past month, I’ve also had a few illustrations in the Wall Street Journal. The two color pieces above were for a semi-regular feature regarding dubious health claims (they don’t always appear in color, but I finish them out that way routinely just in case), and the black and white piece to the left was for one of the Weekend Edition charts, something about certain stocks doing well in this current economic downturn.

Another illustration for the Chronicle that appeared a couple weeks ago is pictured below. Something to do with ‘quality control’ for european college degrees.


Over the past weekend, I had a couple illustrations for the Far Eastern Economic Review, a portrait, and a travelog piece on a certain Korean landmark.


Then most recently, I had an assignment from Barrons on China’s debt load (above).

Big Project for May

CRC


Been a while since I’ve updated here, and not because I haven’t had any work to post. I spent most of May working on a large project of about 60 illustrations for the Christian Reformed Church (a few samples posted here to give an idea of what most of them were like). I also had a few projects here and there for other clients, but will post them in another entry in the next few days.

Also, the other day, I was browsing at our local Barnes and Noble, and I was tickled to see two books that I had provided cover illustrations for sitting side by side on one of the central ‘impulse buy’ tables. I received a complimentary copy of one of them a few months ago, but hadn’t yet seen the other one (perhaps it will arrive sometime this week). Links to each on the B&N site can be found here: Skeleton at the Helm, and Adventure!