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.

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

Men's Journal - Chuck Yeager & Jon Voight

Here are my two most recent portraits for Men's Journal. The Chuck Yeager piece was in the last issue (January), which may still be on stands. Shaquille O'Neal is out next. Each of these portraits are appearing on the very last page of the mags, in the "Exit Interview". I especially liked Chuck's answer to the question Who's the toughest guy you know?: "In my profession, it'd be the guy who kills you."

End of 2008 Update!!

I realize that's it's been quite a while since my last update. Thankfully, it's due to a huge amount of work in November and December, and not just complete laziness. In November, I worked on a project for Nike & Footlocker making artwork to be animated for 4 TV commercials. The work was added to live footage that had already been shot, with the animation going on in the background, but unfortunately the job was killed right before starting on the 4th spot. It's a long story which I will cover later when I post some of the work.. but it was still a great project to work on. For now, here's a teaser image:


On top of this project, I've been creating much more work for Key Bank to go along with the current campaign I created over the summer. I've been doing collateral work for in-bank posters, brochures.. even for the backs of ATM displays, as well as getting tons of requests from individual banks for direct mail pieces. One of the coolest applications of this collateral work will be as large-format banners inside the Key Arena in Seattle. All of this Key stuff has worked out to be around 24 illustrations in 2 months, many of which I will post soon.. but here's a couple to start with:


Also, in the past 2 months, I've created an ad campaign for IBM, made another 2 Men's Journal portraits, 2 more Spirit Magazine portraits, a piece for Dwell Magazine, a couple portraits for Walden University, and started work for some Patagonia t-shirts. More on all of these later...

Happy New Year to everyone!
- Tim

Spirit Magazine portraits

Here are my portraits from the last 3 issues of Spirit Magazine - Dean Kamen, Cathie Black, and Yvon Chouinard. I actually pitched them the idea of using Yvon Chouinard, the founder and owner of Patagonia, since he's an incredibly inspirational business man. (I also happen to be good friends with his kids.. Fletcher and Claire.) Patagonia is one of the most environmentally-conscious companies around, and they basically started the trend of using organic or recycled materials in their products - like using recycled plastic bottles to make fleece. Oh, and Yvon pretty much invented ice climbing and modern climbing tools. Here's a cool interview of him (though it is a bit old): http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/22/little-chouinard/

I do have a disclaimer to make on Yvon's portrait, however. I'm given the list of words for each portrait from the copywriters, and in this case I protested a bit about the word "Advertising".. but still had to keep it in. It's sort of misleading out of the context of the magazine, with the accompanying interview, because Patagonia actually tries to avoid advertising whenever possible: "We hardly advertise. In the late 1980's, we grew as much as 50 percent a year, and it nearly destroyed us. Now we grow by word of mouth, or between 3 to 10 percent a year."

Spirit Magazine portrait

This is the first of a monthly illustration assignment I'll be doing for Spirit Magazine. It's the in-flight magazine for Spirit Airlines. Each month will feature a different, prominent business-person (mostly company founders, I think), and some of the history and philosophy of their company represented by a sort of brain-map. The brain-map was the art director's idea, and took some time to get to work.. but I think I've figured out a good process for future portraits.

Friend & Johnson announcement

I did these portraits of Matt and Joe -- the dapper new agents at the NY office of Friend & Johnson (my reps) -- to accompany their welcoming announcement. Good to have you on the team, guys! Thanks to Rafael Macho at Propelo for the design.

Institutional Investor Magazine

I did these portraits a few weeks ago for Institutional Investor Magazine. The article had to do with some sort of round table discussion involving some sort of investor types. The group portrait almost made it on the cover, but they had to run with a larger story about the tanking economy. Gee thanks, economy!

Rolling Stone Illustration

I did this portrait of REM 2 weeks ago for Rolling Stone Magazine, which is out now in their April issue (Chris Rock is on the cover). It's for the Reviews page to go along with the review of their new album "Accelerate", which is supposedly "one of their best records ever". I'm not really able to agree (or disagree) with that since the preview CD they sent me was watermarked and wouldn't work for anyone but the Art Director. I did manage to listen to a couple songs on their website, though. Based on their faster, more energetic songs, and the title of the album, I decided to reference this new speed and acceleration with the motion lines. Those lines were actually sorta fun to draw. I didn't have a t-square though, so I improvised one with a ruler and a piece of cardboard!