Elon Musk, Man Of Tomorrow!

Feature Illustration for Bloomberg Businessweek.

The article included 3 small spots imagining some of Musk's future innovations. I was thinking a lot about Wally Wood as I worked on these.

An early sketch.

Art direction: Robert Vargas

Martin Amis at the Republican National Convention

A feature by British novelist Martin Amis for Newsweek. I had less than a 48-hour deadline for this one: a day for sketches and a day for the final.

Art Direction: Vanessa Saba

Zadie Smith Fiction

This week, the drawing below accompanied Zadie Smith's new fiction, "Permission to enter" in the New Yorker. As a fan of hers, this was a joy to work on.

The final art as it was printed.

One of many alternate concept sketches.

Art Direction: Chris Curry

"The Proxy Marriage"

I recently had the pleasure of working on an illustration to accompany a lovely short fiction by Maile Meloy in the New Yorker.

The editor, Chris Curry, sent me the layout above and suggested a dyptic with two separate scenes.

I typically sketch until I have two or three decent concepts or until the sun is rising and I can't keep my eyes open. The three sketches above begun as very loose pencil sketches which I scanned and further developed in photoshop with a wacom tablet. After submitting these concepts, Chris suggested trying an eight-panel composition...

Sketch approved! One minor tweak to the first panel...

I usually do a quick digital color study before I jump into the final.

At this point, I turn the black lines of my color sketch faint yellow and print out the sketch on a tabloid sized piece of bristol board. The yellow ink, barley visible in the photo above, serves as my "pencils." I still use traditional media for inking: real brushes, nibs, and India ink. As you can see above, a fair amount of editing takes place during this stage as well.