Another of the ‘Who Was’ series that I did in 2016 was “Who Was Milton Bradley?”. This was the 11th title in this series that I’ve been involved with. I’ve shared the occasional sample illustration on this blog, but this is the first time sharing all of the illustrations from the book. Stay tuned, as I’ll be sharing the illustrations from “What Was The Eiffel Tower?” next month.
This week we are taking the ‘way back machine’ to 2010, and this personal favorite illustration that I did for the Chronicle of Higher Education in January of that year. I forget exactly what the article was about, but I imagine it was something to do with college professors writing detective fiction in their spare time. I especially liked the subtle elbow patch on the trenchcoat.
Above is how the illustration for Hudson Valley turned out, which I finished up this afternoon. I’ve also been working full tilt on the Vietnam book, trying to get it done early, in anticipation of our trip to Ireland in about a week’s time. Below is a sneak peek at one of the Vietnam illustrations (this has definitely been the “Year of Nixon”, with no less than 3 separate books so far this year with multiple Nixon illustrations).
Which also reminds me, it has been a while since I’ve shared work from these Penguin ‘who was’ books, so I may put together a post along those lines either next week, or when I return from our trip.
Below that, I have five more rough sketches for the Xmas card project that I talked about in the last post. After the client looked over the first batch, they had some suggestions and modifications to the prior group of sketches.
And some more sketches, for a quick turnaround piece for the Chronicle on the suppression of a diversity of viewpoints on campus.
Most of the workload today was sketches for upcoming projects. I had a holiday card project that needed 6 concepts (bravery in the face of criticism was the theme), plus a magazine illustration for Hudson Valley (the one in color).
Since today’s workload is mostly made up of rough concept sketches, I thought I’d share some old sketches from many years back, that I saved for one reason or another (I actually should be saving a lot more of the unused concepts, who knows, they may come in handy someday).
One of the clients I am currently working for does an annual Xmas card based on an inspirational quote. Some of the sketches from this batch are from previous years’ rejections. I always find it daunting coming up with concepts from what seems like ‘thin air’, but somehow I manage to eventually come up with something that works. The first five sketches in today’s ‘Throwback Thursday’ are from 2015, and the following three are from 2014 (all for the same Xmas card client).
These next sketches are from various sources (mostly rejected ideas for clients), and the years were as follows: Gas Pump (2013, Unknown Client), Light Bulbs (2013, Chronicle of Higher Education), Huddle (2007, Unknown Client)
