...Out Like a Lamb

There. A lamb illustration as promised. This is another one you might want to click on to see better. Once again, a map for the New York Times Travel Section. I hope someday to visit The Lizard. (?)

Happy Opening Day (Almost)

Hey everybody. I know it isn't quite opening day yet, but I promised a lamb illustration for March 31st, so here's this thing. Having been born below the Mason-Dixon line (and not in Atlanta), I do not care about baseball. But, having adopted the New York area as my home, I sometimes must pretend (for professional reasons) that baseball is exciting, and even worse, that Yankees baseball is exciting. This illustration was for an article in Time Magazine attempting to justify the outrageous amount of money the Yankees spend on home runs. 

Happy Sick Day!

Today I feel like this chicken. That's all I've got. Bye.

Writers Worth Raving About

Hey everybody. I did a series of ads for the New York Times Book Review a while back that had portraits of writers and a tag line like "Writers Worth Raving About" for Edgar Allen Poe, and "Writers with a Twist" for Charles Dickens. I think I did about five of them, but the Poe one was my favorite because I really like this guy as a writer, he's easily recognized, and the tag line for this one was more elegant than some of the others. Do me a favor and click on this image and have a good look at the raven. I was really happy with that raven. It was important to me that it would not be mistaken for a crow, even outside the context of the ad.

Hey Kids...

See how many religious symbols you can find hidden in this stained glass window! Done for the New York Times Book Review. So long!

3-D Robots Cover

Hi everybody. Do you have 3-D glasses? If you do, this would be a good time to put them on. Click on this image to see it bigger and gaze deeply into the cover art for my first children's book The Robots Are Coming. If you don't have 3-D glasses, this might be a good time to really think about how you are living your life. 

P. S. The book was not originally printed in 3-D. I changed it in Photoshop. Hopefully I can publish a book in 3-D someday. It would have to be a story that is enhanced by 3-D, though. Maybe Pinocchio.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everybody. I was looking around for a good Easter image, and I had a lot of rabbit and egg illustrations to choose from, but this one sort of jumped out at me. This is actually the first time I ever did a gouache-resist, which is the technique I use for a lot of my illustrations. I guess you can see why I fell in love with this technique. It affords such control, such subtlety of expression. If you'd like to create a sophisticated image like this one, I'll tell you how.

Start with a piece of watercolor paper. Now thickly paint with gouache (which is a water-soluble paint containing a lot of pigment and chalk) where you want color to be, and leave the paper unpainted where you want it black. Let dry. Now cover the whole image with waterproof india ink. Let dry. Now go over to the kitchen sink and run the water over the image. The ink will flake off the gouache and stick to the paper and there you have it. Beautiful.

First Day of Spring

Happy first day of Spring, people. I had to look for a while before I found an image I thought was Spring appropriate. This is a caricature of Kevin Spacey I did for a class demonstration of the gouache-resist technique I use a lot of the time. Visiting classes is interesting, because there is always one student out of maybe twenty who is actually asking questions and taking notes. I'm always hoping that those are the people who end up becoming working illustrators, but I don't really have any info about whether that's true or not. 

Evidence of Things Unseen

Hey people. Here's an unusually realistic (sort of) illustration I did for the New York Times Book Review. It was selected for a show at the Society of Illustrators called Art of the New York Times. This is one that would probably benefit from clicking on so you can see it bigger. So long!

Samuel L. Jackson

Ezekiel 25:17 

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know that my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."

The above quote is not from the Bible. It's from Pulp Fiction. 

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Pat's, everybody! The most explicitly anti-snake holiday on the calendar. Poor snakes. Oh well. Here's a topical illustration I did for Time Magazine. Looks like it had to do with the health benefits of oat cereal. Lucky Charms has evolved over the years due to advances in marshmallow technology. When they were first sold, the marshmallow charms were pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers. To complete the visual spectrum, blue diamonds and then purple horseshoes were added. Later came red balloons. After that, the ability to create multiple color marshmallows was developed, and the results were rainbows, pots o' gold, leprechaun hats, and shooting stars. At this point the only ingredients listed on the box were sugar and food coloring. To make room for some semblance of nutrition (oats), blue diamonds were removed and yellow moons (which looked too much like pots o' gold) became blue. Later technological advances led to a hidden key marshmallow, which is a yellow tombstone that dissolves to reveal a key shape inside. The most recent addition is a "magic mirror" marshmallow which, if viewed close up, reflects the face of a morbidly obese child. 

Agent U

Parent's Choice Foundation Silver Honor  

"Too often alphabet books are big on pictures but scrimp on the wordplay. Not so with this book. The author has taken the cagey step of involving young readers (and the grownups who help them) in a spy mission that can only be solved by becoming a better and more discriminating reader. The lead Spy in the book is dispatched to find a missing Agent who does not use his or her assigned letter. On the way, we meet all the other agents and the interesting espionage activities they engage in with words and great humor. Highly recommended for fans of anything having to do with spies... or fun."

Agent A to Agent Z at Amazon.com

Narby Woo

One of the episodes of Doctor Zorbo (my television pitch with my friend Dan Y.) featured a bunch of teenagers and their mystery-solving narwhal Narby Woo. The idea was to take a standard Scooby Doo episode, but tell it from the point of view of the villain. Did you ever see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead? Basically, it tells the story of Hamlet from the perspective of minor characters. Our idea was that these meddling kids would collect clues and come to some false conclusion that Doctor Zorbo was faking a zombie invasion to prevent a real estate deal (which is what Scooby Doo was always about). They are wrong, of course. Doctor Zorbo was actually just creating a zombie army and didn't care at all who owned the abandoned amusement park he was using as a base of operations. Also, at the end of the episode, a neanderthal assistant of Doctor Zorbo's eats Narby and picks his teeth with the tusk. Why Hollywood hasn't jumped at the chance to greenlight this baby is purely beyond me. 

Simpler Times...

... for Eliot Spitzer, when he was battling fees rather than allegations. Here's a rather stupid concept of mine which was published in The Wall Street Journal. Reporters today are saying that they take no pleasure in delving into a man's personal life or the heartache it will surely cause his family. I'm proud of them. Even when they find their obligations distasteful, they still pursue them with such vigor and enthusiasm!

Teleporting Eros

Hi everybody. This is of course Eros, the Greek god of love experiencing the benefits of a matter transporter. I guess with the wings he could just as easily have flown that distance, but perhaps teleportation offers other benefits besides instant transportation. For example, the physicist Seth Brundle erroneously theorized that there is a purification one undergoes during the teleportation process. Later, of course, his head split open and a fly face emerged. Also, being a god, Eros presumably has little need for purification. Looking closer at his unusual physique, I can't help wondering if perhaps he teleported previously and had his DNA accidentally spliced with a dove. Dr. Brundle attempted to unsplice himself from a fly by reteleporting. If a similar attempt is pictured here, we see that it is failing, as the large bird wings are clearly visible in both the departure and arrival rings. Conclusion? I should make this my last cup of coffee this morning. Incidentally, this, like so many images so far uploaded, was originally done for the New York Times Book Review. 

Daylight Savings

Happy Daylight Savings Time, everybody! (Yawn) I think I dislike Spring Forward more than I like Fall Back. This is all a conspiracy, of course, started by Benjamin Franklin who was just a stooge in the pocket of Big Candle. I love the extra hour in the Fall, but couldn't we ease forward more slowly? How about making every day from January 9th to March 9th 24 hours and 1 second long? You'd barely notice it, and the economy would get a real shot in the arm because every company that sells a device with a clock built in would be able to sell a replacement. Or we could just forget Daylight Savings all together and live like that bizarre cult in Indiana. 

Characters in Search of a Story

Hey everybody. Here are a couple of characters from a picture book about bugs I'm working on kind of on and off. I think that blue beetle looks like a hero who doesn't know his limitations, and his buddy the caterpillar is all too aware of his limitations. I just haven't figured out what the story is. Any ideas? Email me. Thanks.

Hades and Cerberus

Here's a weird one. I did this image for a book series about Greek Mythology. This is Hades, with his three-headed dog Cerberus. It was deemed far too weird even for the subject matter.

The Case Against Hillary

I guess she's not leaving yet. Hi all. Here is an illustration I did for the New York Times Book Review a while back. It was a few hairstyles ago for Hillary. This was for a book called The Case Against Hillary and it had more to do with her Senatorial run than what she's up to now. This is not a political blog. The views implied by the illustrations here are not necessarily those of the artist, but rather those he was paid to pretend to have. 

Utah Map

After I did a bunch of maps for the New York Times, I got a call to do one for Time Magazine. This one was about all the drug supplement companies clustered around Utah. By the time I did this one, I had my map routine down. I think this one looks pretty good. Maybe I'll enter it into Communication Arts this year. I'd like to get some more map work. 

In Like a Lion...

Hey everybody. I don't know what that saying about March means, "in like a lion, out like a lamb..." but it's a good excuse to post one of the images from my book coming out this fall called Are You a Horse. I'm sure I have a lamb illustration around here somewhere...