Month: January 2017

Where Was the Panama Canal?

Penguin

Continuing with my monthly posts on the series of ‘Who Was’ books for Penguin that I’ve been doing for the past four or five years. This was from 2013, around the same time that I was working on the ‘Wright Brothers’ book. I’ve posted a few sample illustrations from this book in the past, but this is the first time I’m posting every illustration from the project. The ‘Where Was / What Was’ books are slightly different than the ‘Who Was’ biographies, in that they concern themselves with an event or a specific geographic place. They tend to be more work than the biographies, involving more two page spreads and more complex illustrations, and they pay slightly better than the biographies. Sometimes the book will also include a section of reprinted photographs along with the interior illustrations.










Paper Dolls

Dover

Been working on a Paper Doll project for Dover this past month, and starting on samples for another one that I’m scheduling for March. Here’s just a sample, and, since I’m frankly sick of looking at these people’s faces, I’ll just let the outfits speak for themselves. I’m also starting on sketches for another ‘Who Was’ book, and I’ll be doing several finishes for another ‘Witches Companion’ book over the next few weeks that I’ll be sharing here.

28 Years with Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

AHMM

This morning I finished up a fiction assignment for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. This was for a story about a robbery at a Catskills resort and involves a lot of old time jewish comedians. This magazine is currently my longest continuous client relationship, with my first assignment for them being in my first year of business, back in 1989. You can see other samples of my work with this magazine here at this link. I love working for them, as they are one of the last surviving ‘pulp fiction’ digests, and, for me, it feels like a romantic link to the past, to a long list of forgotten illustrators going back to earliest days of the pulps.

I’ve been diligently saving every issue that my work has appeared in, and I’ve got a nice stack of old AHMM magazines on my bookshelf, but I’ve misplaced some of the earliest years, and would love to get my hands on some old copies of this magazine from 1989-2003. So, if you should happen to read this, and have a box of old back issues in the attic, drop me a line, and perhaps we can work out a deal.

Martin Luther

Baker Book House

This was a book cover for a book on Martin Luther (he’s apparently having a big anniversary this coming year) for Baker. This is an early draft, the final version had some changes to the ‘crowd’ in the background. Below is the black and white version of the same art.

Starting Year 28

Green Prints

Been working on sketches for an upcoming book project, and paper dolls for an upcoming paper doll book over the past few weeks. The year has started out reasonably well (mostly thanks to holdover projects from the end of 2016), but the new work has been slow coming in so far. Some resolutions for the new year, going to try my hand at more personal work, and I’d like to get back to animation again, and as far as my ‘day to day’ work, I’m going to resolve to be a little ‘looser’ in my style (I sometimes feel as if I’m too stiff and ‘controlled’). These pieces here are a couple of story illustrations for GreenPrints. I’ll be working on a book cover illustration today and another project tomorrow, but then heading south to the Caribbean for a week to escape some of this winter weather.