Bertrand Russell

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1/1/11 gave me the chance to do two things I had far too few opportunities to take advantage of in 2010.

1. We had company over.

2. I drew for recreational interest only (and without deadline) for the length of the late afternoon and evening. In this instance, an as-yet-finished drawing of a very elderly Bertrand Russell. Hopefully, there will be more opportunities for this kind of thing in the next 363 days.

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Above is an illustration I did accompanying an Op/Ed article in the New York Times that ran a day before the election. The article is written by two economic specialists with vastly different world views finding some common ground in what they propose many of the government’s economic policies should be going forward with whomever (at the time) turned out to be the victor of the election. My process of late has been more labored and precious than I’d like it to be, so it was extremely cool of Leanne Shapton, the page’s art director, to give me the room to play faster and looser than I typically do.

Ecstatic as I was when Obama locked the job down, any one man who actively seeks to assume responsibility for our current economy as well as our two wars has to be a little bit sick in the head. Godspeed, Mr. President-Elect.

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This one required a delicate conversation. The Times’ Science section ran this article a few days ago observing how the field of urology, long dominated by men, has been gaining a more substantial amount of female doctors in recent years. This can make for a somewhat uncomfortable doctor-patient relationship with regards to women touching men’s private parts in a doctor’s office.

Therese Schecter, the art director on this piece, was already close to giggling when she called me to take a crack at it the previous week. It was important to her that it strike just such a balance of humor without heading into pee joke territory or something more substantially gory.

While a stethescope-as-zipper-fly and the modern man’s need for Viagara (pictured below) were considered noble attempts by the brass, nothing quite sold the tragicomic dread of the doctor’s office as the snap of those rubber gloves being befitted by a woman’s hands. Working on this yielded many chortles and cackles, but only because I have been spared the urologist’s waiting room as of late.

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This is a piece I recently completed for the DollyPop exhibit at the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery in LA. It’s a group show celebrating the mercurial Ms. Parton as a performer, philanthropist, survivor and unlikely champion of the Great American Experiment. My original idea to celebrate her philanthropy was swiftly derailed on the subway one evening when my future wife Jill suggested this knockout idea of having her hair serve as manna from heaven to the poor and disenfranchised children that she’s helped over the years.

My friends (and fellow Mammals) Ben Marra, Devin Clark and Tom Forget all have pieces in the show as well, which puts me in some fine, fine company. Details of Manna from Dolly are below:

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The above is a recently completed illustration for the Asian branch of Time Magazine in Hong Kong. The article that the image pertains to addresses speculation and uncertainty of how China’s economy will perform in the wake of the upcoming summer Olympics. Upon giving me the assignment, deputy art director Nilanjan Das suggested that a bear might make a good representation of a brutish economy. As it happens, I have a love of bears born primarily out of wonderment and fear. This wonderment and fear should not be confused with the mania personified by Timothy Treadwell in Herzog’s Grizzly Man documentary. I’m not like that. I like to observe bears but I wouldn’t want to live with one. Regardless, for the purposes of this project, our course was set.

The assignment happened to come to me right before taking off for a decidedly lost weekend with my brother, so working quickly was of the essence. The final sketch was approved Friday afternoon and the final illustration was delivered the following Monday evening with my brother’s and my fantastic voyage sandwiched in between. It was quite a ride.

The article can be read here, and the quick-as-nobody’s-business sketches that Nilanjan and his editors graciously entertained before landing on our final are included below:

1. Loose Change – Notice the lack of bear.

2. Bear Tunnel – The Olympic torch lights the way into the bleak void that is a bear’s salivating jaws.

3. Bear as Socio-economic Superfreak.

4. Bear vs. Olympian in a heated battle for the governance of China!

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What began as fun on a xerox machine after work this past Friday became a full-blown preoccupation on Sunday. I work at a record company so on some days, I worry about my job security. Machine guns can work just about anywhere so lucky for them, they have no such concerns.

Tangentially on the criss-crossing subjects of music and machine guns, the title of this post, ‘Huge Gold AK-47′ was first a song title on the the Blood Brothers’ Young Machetes album, which expertly showcases the band’s finest examples of their particular brand of damaged and fearless and fuck-all rock and roll. Highly recommended.

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Here are two more pieces I’ve been experimenting with in the off hours after work. They are brothers. One is a brash, unyielding homo erectus jabberjaw with a wig who never shuts up and the other is a studious, silent monkey who is eager to listen. Makes perfect sense to me.

Here’s a detail of a loudmouth:

Here’s the brainiac:

Detail:

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Here are two new uncommissioned pieces I’ve been working on in the downtime. Both are roughly 8″ x 10″ and the one up top makes good on my prior experiments with gel medium image transfers. Merry 2008!

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What was once an unwelcome home invasion is now a painting. The final body count for the intrusive vermin rested at four, which is really not so bad, but when you find those four in the space of 30 minutes, your imagination tends to assure you that the worst is yet to come. Thankfully, in this instance that was not the case. Now I just have a rotten peace of mind about looking for and/or killing wayward mice that happen to find their way up three flights of stairs. I’ll live, but even with the mixed feelings involved in killing small, relatively helpless rodents, I can only give the mice a 50/50 shot.

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Blessed Unrest is a non-fiction account of current popular activism. Paul Hawken, the author, essentially sets out to document everything that’s going right with grassroots and non-profit organizations committed to any and all forms of environmental, political, social and/or human rights advocacy in operation across the globe as opposed to what’s going wrong. It’s a roundly optimistic and impressive account. His thesis is that each individual group, be it a human rights organization, an anti-drug coalition, an environmentalist group, a trade policy monitor etc., are all part of a larger, sweeping movement that thrives on its lack of central, unified organization. It would sound like the insane rants of a university-landlocked hippie if the information wasn’t so compellingly and effectively presented. It’s presently in hardcover still, so it’s worth a look.

These cover comps were intended for the paperback version. Roseanne Serra, one of the art directors at Penguin, contacted me on a Friday needing covers to present for her meeting on Wednesday. This gave me just enough time to tear through the book and grind out some possibilities to have ready on the morning they were required. She gave specific direction to use exactly three photos in my layouts that would draw connections to the far reaching effects and goals of these various, unrelated organizations. She also added a caveat that once I provided comps conveying specifically that, then I could do whatever the hell else I wanted afterwards to see if it stuck. Color me joyous.

So, working backward, the above comp is what I submitted last. It’s intended to reference the big-idea-that-originated-on-a-diner-napkin suggestion with all the various groups and causes linked to one another without ever holding a center.

These next two are different riffs that I first provided Roseanne based on her initial direction:

The first one was put together making a conscious effort to use images in which all of the primary figures were in silhouette. The two photos of rows of people bookend an image of multiple propellers to suggest movement and progress happening in real time effecting current situations. In the second comp, the pictures were selected to underscore how different and far-reaching these developments are. Between factory recycling, human rights relief in Africa, and a single hand harvesting a plant, the cover implies that the book to follow will draw the thread that connects them all.

The author ultimately decided on keeping the paperback cover the same as the hardcover version, so these comps were killed after all that elbow grease. Nonetheless, it was flattering in no small respect to be working on such a bold, uniformly positive account of social unrest. How often do you hear from an activist who’s rants aren’t defeating themselves in your ear as they spew?

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I keep long, late hours. I tend to wake up in a sour mood if I feel that I hadn’t made the most of my available time outside of work the evening prior, so if I’m overtired by the end of the week, the choice is most often wholly my own and I accept full responsibility.

Something that’s only recently occurred to me is that a natural side effect for keeping such long hours with what amount to be a constant rotation of various client-based or self-initiated projects, is that that funny, buzzy feeling of overstimulation sustains itself a little bit more than l’d prefer. Short of horse tranquilizers or a Buddhist-for-hire, the ability to dial the brain down before I go to bed is a bit of a challenge.

To combat this, I’ve begun closing the days out by digging up earlier sketchbook drawings I’ve done and reworking them without any thematic motive or intent. It’s a narrative free, subtext free, meaning free excuse to play with a picture and explore all of my idiotic, baseless impulses. The one above was a recent experiment by adding arbitrary bubbles of color around what was before just an ordinary drawing of someone’s head. I couldn’t explain the motivation to do that specifically to his head, but I did discover that it was extremely satisfying to wind the day down by playing around with something without the self-imposed pressure to ask yourself what, specifically, it means. Plus, I slept like the dead.

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I’ve been experimenting recently with image transfers using stacked layers of gel medium. I spray mount an image to a glass palette, and cover it with successive layers of the medium until it’s built up a thick enough consistency to soak in water and slowly remove the paper. Thus far, the imperfections and nicks have given each result a welcome inconsistency that I’m so used to seeing eliminated with Photoshop these days. However the real exam will come either this weekend or next when I see how successful it is to incorporate such a transfer into a painting otherwise comprised exclusively of acrylics. My craftsmanship-based interests have officially leveled with scrapbooking tips and helpful hints for housewives. A customized apron for such applications is in the works.

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