Strange Business...

I thought I'd post an illo I did last week for The Stranger in Seattle.

It was a pretty straightforward job - they wanted a portrait of M.I.A. with no background, so that they could wrap some text around it.

I was pretty happy with the way things turned out, both with regards to the drawing and the colour. I'm starting to use a bit more feathering in my linework, and I think it's adding some depth to my drawing.

Catching the Wave...

Just did a job for the Miami Herald. It's for the cover of their "Business Monday" insert section. Here's the illo:

I thought it came out really well. I was trying some new things inking-wise with this one, specifically with regards to the water, and I was pretty happy with the results.

Here it is in context:

It's a bit crowded, and they appear to have saturated the colours a bit, but it still came out pretty well. There was a miscommunication in their office about the deadline, so given the timeframe, it could have been much worse.

The article is about how Florida has had to re-invent its economy several times, finding new ways to keep people going there. The wave is possibly about to crush the surfer (economy about to collapse), but also possibility of surfer riding it out (catching the new wave). Some of the other sketches were more conceptual, but this one had the most visual energy, and the art director thought it would look good executed in my style.

I'm working on some other stuff too, but I have to wait until it's published before posting. In the meantime, I hope this is interesting :D -J

More Business Week ...

Business Week hired me again for this week's issue (out today) for a 1/4 page in the News section. Here's the illo:


The story was about the problem with large-scale, organized theft in retail stores like Wal-Mart, Target, etc. Here are the sketches I sent the art director:



I liked the first one because it's more iconic, but I understand that the second one is more clear about the organized crime aspect. I thought the illo turned out pretty well, especially considering that I only had one day for sketches, and one day for the final :)
Cheers -J

Business Week

I recently finished a job for next week's issue of Business Week Magazine. The job was for two quarter-page editorial pieces for the BTW section. The image above is the final for an article on the rate of workplace injuries, and the one below is for an article on a company that is incorporating Facebook into the way it does business:


It was actually a bit of a trek to get to this stage, as there were a number of revisions with the roughs. I thought I'd put up the sketches for my original ideas, for comparison with the finals:For the safety one, the article is stating that incidences of injury are lower, but that the data may not be accurate. So I want to show a hint of past injury. They decided they wanted to go a bit more straightforward.
For the Facebook one, I originally wanted to go a bit more conceptual, emphasizing the "growth" and "building" factors of networking with Facebook. Again, they wanted to go a bit more literal.

Anyway, I think the finals turned out pretty well, and overall I had a great time doing the job :)

Cheers -J