John Waters

After I had completed this illustration and sent the original to the client, a newsweekly on the East coast, the art director called to let me know he got it. We got to talking about Waters and how much we both enjoyed his films and what a wild aberrant creative force he is. Then the art director said the Waters was coming into the office for an interview and asked me if I wanted his autograph. I said sure. Well week passed and the illustration was returned to me in the mail. When I opened the package I saw that someone had scribbled across the illustration. Furious, I stormed into my studio picked up the phone. I was ready to assert myself when I noticed the scribble read "John Waters", just in time to thank the art director for getting me that autograph. Isn't that well…Devine?

Dolly Parton

This illustration of Dolly Parton is one of my favorites. I like it when my work is clean and relatively simple. Which is hard for me to do. I tend to want to junk things up, lots of shapes and lines and tangents. Plus it's not often that clients let you work in black and white for no good reason. For this the concept was simple Dolly and her voice, nothing else. She had been thought of as having an angelic sound early on, and I wanted to point that up, the blond hair helped. Nothing like black ink for drawing white shapes.
Again working with No Depression editor/art director Grant Alden was a pleasant challenge. Hs faith in any illustrator he hired spurred you on to some of your best work.

Sign of the Times

This illustration received a nice post on the blog of Jürgen Mantzke, the art director of Lore magazine. This illustration was not used. Rarely do I have an illustration "killed". Of those killed only one other have I liked as much as the second go 'round. More often the two attempts are extremely close in concept. This time however I liked the second attempt which was way different from the first. As you can see.

Both concepts were sound, the second coming on recommendation from the publisher. It created some interesting creative hurdles. Both illustrations were done in black and white airbrush with color added digitally. It's wild to think that both illustrations were based on the same article, about the same man. That says something about the power and life of an illustration despite the words that it's tied to. A good lesson about something we sometimes think of as conversely subservient or self serving. That, or they could just be pretty pictures.