Society Of Illustrators 54

I found out that I got 2 pieces in to Society of Illustrators 54! Woo! I'm honored to have both my 1200 Posters contribution (Institutional) as well as my Savoy Affair drink recipe illo (Uncomissioned) accepted! Thank you, judges!

Since Sam won the silver in Institutional, we will definitely be showing up at that exhibition--I hope we see you there!

Squares Squared--

--also known as "The Anti-Social Network" and "I Lied to Stephen King", both assignments done for my great AD Ryan Huddle in different issues of the Boston Globe!

"The Anti-Social Network", about an avowed introvert struggling with the constant barrage of people and accessibility in internet social media.

"I Lied To Stephen King", a humorous essay about a struggling writer lying to Stephen King on the phone and feeling so bad about it that he made the lie a truth and changed his writing career for the better.

(Any day I get to include some film noir melodrama in an image is a good day)

I don't get many square assignments, and they present a unique compositional challenge...to offset the staticness of a square canvas, one trick is to use a lot of diagonals to lead the eye around the page and create a more dynamic space. Squares also lend themselves more easily to centralized images (which I took advantage of in the Stephen King piece)

Introvert sketches & color studies:

As you can see, I had a tough time figuring out what sort of coloring choices I wanted to make! Sometimes you just have to keep starting over again and get all the crummy stuff out of your system. It wasn't until the last image that I realized what was really missing was a lightsource to tie everything together and create a basis for complementary colors.

Stephen King sketches & color studies:

I had a poll on twitter for which color study I should use.... I was leaning towards A, but C is more classically Film Noir and I liked some of the blue tones in B. In the end the majority voted for A, but with some verrrrry close results for B & C! Ultimately I felt justified using the reddish light from A-- it's a little more menacing and relates to this gut-wrenching lie the author is telling Mr. King, and it fits with the overdramatic mood I was going with for the humorous aspect of the article.

All in all, some fun assignments! Plus, I was able to use some of the compositional experience I gleaned from the Introvert image to make the Stephen King piece work better overall. Woo, learning!

Apocalypse Coffee

Hooray! The Cloudy Collection 2012 Calendar of the Impending Apocalypse released yesterday! It's a special edition of 50 calendars screenprinted in 3 colors and filled with every way you'd want the world to end.
Each month was illustrated by a different talented artist-- Emory Allen, Joe Alterio, Ana Benaroya, Amy Crehore, David Huyck, Adam Koford, Joe Lambert, Phil McAndrew, Luke Pearson, Vincent Stall, and Jamie Zollars. I had the pleasure of drawing September's apocalypse! I'm also so tickled that the wonderful Luke Pearson simultaneously illustrated October with a fully flooded town--looking our months side by side reads like a story!

Apocalypse or not, when there's crummy weather I love the feeling of being snug inside with a good book and I figured my protagonist would appreciate that as well. At first I thought of doing a fiery inferno outside, but it took me a while to get used to the rules of setting up layers for screenprinting, and none of the sketches were working for me:

When something doesn't work sometimes you just have to start over, and a change of scenery (and flooding!) worked out better for me in another sketch (and although those socks would be cozy, I thought they were too distracting from the coffeshop/maritime theme):

Some photos of the screenprinted set:

You can buy the calendar yourself and browse some of the other fine Cloudy Collection sets here!