"Adrift"

Happy Halloween!

I think I've seen this skinny dude walking around Brooklyn..

Arrive Magazine Illustrations

Last week I worked on these 3 illustrations for Amtrak's Arrive Magazine. The article's headline is "You can go your own way", and the subhead reads "The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in these hard economic times." For the opener illustration, I wanted to come up with a metaphor that tied in with this. I thought that the visual pun of swerving headlights could suggest that entrepreneurs are thinking ahead and avoiding disasters when they seem imminent. The 1st spot illustration (with the butterflies) will be in a section that discusses how to get the word out about your (the entrepreneur's) product or service. And the 2nd spot (with the horse) will accompany one of the sidebar sections – "Are you running away from something or running toward something?" If you ride on Amtrak's Acela line in December/January, be sure to flip through the mag to check these out!

I included my sketches below. For the opener, I was actually kind of hoping they'd pick the sketch of the guy on the stilts avoiding the bear traps.. but it in the end I think the one they picked works better. That 3rd one shows a beaver making a dam out of all the "For Sale" signs out there (doing something constructive in a bad situation). As for that 3rd spot sketch, it would have been for the sidebar section titled "Can you sell your vision?" I think I was channeling Magritte a bit on that one..

Le Fooding d'Amour Paris-New York

I made this illustration for Le Fooding Magazine's upcoming event at P.S.1 this September 25th and 26th. The event, called Le Fooding D'Amour Paris-New York, will employ the talents of 12 renowned chefs from New York and Paris to cook some of their signature dishes on BBQ's for those attending. Tickets will be relatively inexpensive, and proceeds will go to the charity Action Against Hunger.

Each chef was paired with a graphic designer from their corresponding city to create a collector's menu. I was assigned to do the page for Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson from Minetta Tavern. They're doing burgers with beef supplied by the butcher Pat LaFrieda (presumably their now-famous Black Label Burger). I drew all of the elements for the illustration with pencils, and colorized and composed the whole thing on the computer. The idea for the frames came from the actual decor at Minetta Tavern, which is heavy on the wall-of-portraits look. Check the images below for better close-ups.

Some of the other graphic designers involved include: Ich & Kar, Change is Good, Gianpaolo Pagni, Helène Builly, Vanessa Verillon, Nicholas Blechman, Jan Wilker, Paul Sahre, Jeanne Verdoux, Christoph Niemann, Andre and So Me. For more info on the event you can read this recent article at nbcnewyork.com, or keep checking in on the Le Fooding website. I'm sure tickets for this event are gonna go fast... so act quickly once they're available! Eating amazing food outside at P.S.1, cooked by famous chefs on BBQ's, sounds like a party not to be missed..

Lurzer's Archive ads

I worked on these two promotional ads for Lurzer's Archive. The top one was made just a couple weeks ago, to be published in the near future.. and the bottom was in the vol. 4, 2008 issue.

The top ad was designed by Coco Connolly using some of the new branding for my agent, Friend & Johnson. The photo on the left was taken by Charles Shotwell, and I decided to make my page into a play off of his photo. I had free reign to do whatever I wanted, but thought it would be sort of funny to somehow use the missing chair from his photo. For some reason the first thing that popped into my head was a guy balancing a chair on his nose. So I went with that idea, and also pushed it to the more ridiculous side with the juggling of live grenades and the unicycle riding (which i've always wanted to try).

I designed the bottom ad myself, since I had the entire spread. And since I was extremely busy at the time, I used existing images: the left side being from a sketchbook, and the right side from a series of spots for Skiing Magazine.

IBM ad - "Connections"

Here's the first of 3 ads I did for IBM. I was asked to keep the people pretty graphic, so they're a bit different than the usual type of people I draw.. which ended up being sort of a fun challenge. I also needed to keep the color pretty graphic and limited, so I employed the same blotchy, loose look that I've been getting into lately (see the elephant down below)

The ads showed up mostly in magazines and newspapers in Europe. You can see some of the work done by other artists as part of the same campaign here. Click to the left or right to scroll through the gallery. I'm not sure what everything says, since it's in French.. but it's probably only interesting if you're an IT guy anyways. I'll post the other two ads I've been working on in the near future.

Spirit Magazine portraits

These are the last 3 portraits I did for Spirit Magazine - Howard Stoeckel, Richard Nelson Bolles, and T. Boone Pickens. The Howard Stoeckel portrait (top) is out in the current issue. Apparently he's the CEO of Wawa Food Markets, so he's got that going for him. My wife is from New Jersey, so I've purchased many a convenient snack from Wawa. Plus, it's fun to say.. Wawa!!

By the way, if you're thinking those words in their heads look sort of difficult to design and draw.. you would be absolutely correct.

wawa

Friend & Johnson - Promo

Here's the piece I did for the latest Friend & Johnson promotion (my rep), to be mailed out within the next couple of weeks. It's another group promo, and is being used to tie into a relationship with the non-profit 826 Valencia:

"Founded in 2002 by author Dave Eggers and educator Nínive Calegari, 826 Valencia is dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their writing skills, and to helping teachers get their students excited about the writing. Our work is based on the understanding that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success and that great leaps in learning can be made when skilled tutors work one-on-one with students."
– 826valencia.org

So in addition to this being a normal promotional mailer, it will be donated to the organization for use by teachers to show students how visual people respond to words. The concept was to show the inspiration of language based on the single word "Edge". So each of the F&J artists worked out their own illustration of the word..

I decided to turn "Edge" into an acronym, E.D.G.E: Effusively Dotted Golden Elephant. I didn't feel like being too literal with the word "edge", and thought this opened up some more fun words to play with. The string on his trunk is just a little joke about how elephants are supposed to have amazing memories, so they shouldn't need physical reminders like bows tied to fingers (or in this case, trunks).

The elephant, as well as the type, were drawn in ink and colored digitally. I'll try to post some of the other artists' solutions when I get the final book..

Key Arena Illustrations

These are the illustrations I did in December for the Key Arena in the Seattle Center. The concepts were conceived and approved before I even got involved, so I was basically executing existing ideas. They printed as large banners for a section of the arena that seems to be a KeyBank-branded sort of lounge area. Not sure if they actually serve any sort of refreshments there, but there are stools & tables as well as banking kiosks. If I make it to Seattle any time soon, I'll have to investigate it further. It would be interesting to see if you can actually mix some beer drinking with your banking.. seems pretty obvious that the two should go together!

They also used the campaign ads I made for mags and billboards around the perimeter of the lounge area. And they even used the wallpaper pattern I created for the TV spots on some portions of the walls, which is kind of cool. Check out some pics below that Key Bank sent to me: