Tracy Morgan for the Village Voice, Liz Lemon!

This is a different conventional/digital mix than normal for me. Being  that the conventional part was done digitally and the digital part was done conventionally.

Jesus Diaz of the Village Voice asked me to do a straight illustration of Tracy Morgan for the Choices section. Specifically he wanted my airbrush style,  which I perfected (or whatever) years ago working for The Voice, and went on to use it for a lot of other clients (Pierce Transit, Vibe, No Depression, BIBR, Dark Horse Comics,)

Originally I was doing this airbrush style in black and white, later I added color by spraying with Rortring Inks (Arguably the best inks that were on the market. Rumor is, they closed a plant rather than change the formula.)

When I started using a computer, I developed a way to color the black and white airbrush so I had the best of both. Nice B&W art for me, and controlled color art for my clients!

I like this style best in black and white, it just looks cool to me.  My last sprayed color piece was an illustration of author Zadie Smith for Black Issues Book Review. After that I only did B&W, mostly  for No Depression.

Then recently Jesus Diaz asked for that ol' airbrush magic. Time was tight, as usual, and I had only done one successful digital airbrush piece, (my jazz Blue Note Santa!) The sketch was drawn conventionally by hand (as opposed to by foot?) on paper over my light table. I scanned the drawing and completed the illustration in Photoshop CS4, making paths the same way I would cut frisket, okay maybe a bit more anally 'cause I'm like that!  The new rotate feature is very handy. The texture is my own special recipe, actually sprayed by hand! Layers were sandwiched and the illo was sent off. In the rush, I forgot to add color but Jesus did that and it looks great.

It takes a Village…

It takes a Village to get me back to my blog! I find myself going to the blogs I frequent and seeing no new posts, then I say, "Man, why no new posts!?" Then I realize that I have a few followers who might be saying the same thing. So here we are! I have been working. Most of it has been on secret or proprietary stuff that I can't show, yet.
One project I did, again, Top Secret storyboards. (not in the film sense, more in the business meeting sense.) It was so secret that I didn't know where I was going until the morning of the meeting, no topic, no names until I was on the road. The pay was good and so was the food, as was the location. I drew for 8 hours, with a lunch break, uploaded my files and was done.
Another job was toy presentation art, that's anew one. The toys do not exist and there were no real drawings of them, just sort of "napkin" quality doodles from which I had to create "almost 3-D" drawings.
Then there's training comic book for medical professionals/technicians. I'm inking that in Illustrator. At some point in the project I should post about how I'm inking digitally. I love a real brush, but I have inked several illustrations in Painter, Photoshop, Sketchbook Pro and Illustrator. Each app has it's good and bad points. Which brings me around to The Village…Voice that is. I'm still doing the Robbin's column, so let's roll on the one from last week.
I start in Sketchbook Pro doing a few roughs for concept. I can email from the app or call the Art Director to discuss concepts. The topic for this was a fund scandal involving the city comptroller and Peggy Lipton, "Julie" in the original Mod Squad!
There are/were three major players in the scandal, but they only wanted to focus on two, and I HAD to draw the pose "Link" (Link, Pete and Julie! get up on your Mod Squad!) was in! So…After the rough I move to Painter, where I "ink" the art. I still do love inking conventionally, but I have a thing for what I call "The Impossible Brush." The ink never runs out and you get to Command Z any messed up strokes.
Then, over to Photoshop for the colors. I could color them in Painter, but Photoshop is better and faster at total image manipulation, and I'm used to the interface.
Colors and textures are added and for this an additional mod background and type.
The type was done by "The In-House Art Director" and is in the same style as the Mod Squad opening credits. A soft drop shadow helps it separate from the illustration. The blue-ish color is kind of 2000-ish, and not fitting with the TV show, but I used it to differentiate from the previous weeks illustration.
It's not as "hip" as I wanted. Looking at it now, some oranges and yellows would have been nice. Perhaps a solarized or posterized look. This concept was a straight ahead mash up of what is and what was. (Now that sounds Mod.)
For the NYC Tugboat Strike the concept was more metaphorical. My original idea was to use a version of Tommy the Tugboat, or more like his New York cousin, who's on strike. The AD didn't think there was anything funny in the article so we were going to go with a straight shot of a tug with a strike banner. I though the banner would be too small to read and then had the Eisner-esque idea of putting it in the water.
Whompped it up in Painter with "The Impossible Brush"……and then colorfied in Photoshop.

I'm trying to break myself of the horrible tendency to work zoomed in. You wind up putting in to much detail, making "hay" and wasting time. I like to look at the finish as the file icon in my finder window. I use a reducing glass when I work conventionally.
Just finished this coming week Village Voice illustration, another Bloomberg. I'll eventually post them all here I think. The next project to finish is the comic book inked in Illustrator, that and yet another secret project!

Village Voice Illustrations, It's New York time.

One of my first real gigs I got excited about was illustrating for the Village Voice. I was just little ol' me in Tacoma, doing section covers, spots and feature illustration for one of the hippest, toughest, newsweeklies in the country. I learned to work on New York time. It helped that I was fast and worked well in the morning. I did a lot of stuff, airbrush, line art, all really nice black and white. People moved on, design regimes came and went. I stopped illustrating for them but kept in contact. I like to think I got better and faster (and stronger, like the Six Million Dollar Man) Three weeks ago one of the Voice art directors contacted me. It was Thursday afternoon, they had a column (written by long time political reporter Tom Robbins) that needed an illustration. Sketch by Friday, finish by Monday, end of day… New York time. Well, yeah, I did it!
The first illo was of Mayor Bloomberg, "King Mike". The column was about term limits and a possible meeting with Rupert Murdoch. The Voice liked the way I handled the art on The Flitcraft Parable, and wanted the same look. I took the same file and added the new line work. We went with the image of "King Mike" in repose with a NY Post cover urging him to run.

Next illustration was of New York Congressman Nadler, a big, big fella. He was to look friendly, but imposing, not cartoonish or caricatured. There's not much about ACORN in the illustration but they are an important part of the article. We thought subtlety was best.
In contrast to the pre -email days of my first Voice work, these are all done digitally. Sketches and roughs are done in Sketchbook Pro and emailed directly from the app. A very cool feature! The roughs are imported to Painter and inked with brushes I created, then the line art is colored and texture added in Photoshop. Save the whole thing as a jpeg and it's small enough to email!
Man that's fun!


Back to Bloomberg. What took the longest in this image was designing a bag of chips! The design is based on Bloomberg campaign graphics. When I had added the color I thought it was all too much. My "In-House-Art-Director" suggested changing the bag color to white and shifting the type color. Then I knocked back all the other colors and things came into focus. The Illustration had a clear visual priority.
Working on the same Thursday-Monday Schedule (yet to work the weekend on these.) I still did two versions by Monday end of day… New York time.