WORDPLAY at The New York Times

Many of you know the "On Language" column from The New York Times Magazine, not just from the etymological brilliance of the late William Safire, but for the gorgeous hand-drawn/hand-built typography featured there every week.



The New York Times Gallery on the 7th Floor is opening a show called WORDPLAY, and features some of my illustrated type in an exhibition of these pages. If you are in New York, the opening is Thursday April 22nd 2010, at 7pm.

American Illustration 29 - Selected

Good news from American Illustration yesterday, I got three images into the new annual, which will come out at the launch party this November. It is also exciting because they selected three images that didn't get into any other shows- so I'm excited that these drawings will have a bit of life beyond their original publication. An unusual year of annuals, with very little overlap between the images selected by the juries of the major shows. The winners:

The Headless Horse/Man- An uncommissioned drawing I created for Dan Zettwoch's Villains Show last fall.



Uncharted 2- Entertainment Weekly called me to create an image about "Uncharted 2," the top video game selected for the year end "Best of 2009" Issue. The main character Drake is a kind of Jason Bourne meets Indiana Jones: a fearless treasure-hunting tough guy with the aerial dexterity of a stunt double. As a conceptual image-maker, it really offered me a great chance to have some fun with the conventions of first-person shooter gaming.



Coloring New Orleans - The cover for United Airlines Hemispheres magazine about the new New Orleans.

Drawing in Church- Easter edition

Gambling in the Locker Room

Just finished a drawing for ESPN The Magazine about the astonishingly pervasive practice of gambling in professional athletic locker rooms. A recent gambling altercation that lead to Washington Wizards superstar Gilbert Arenas bringing multiple guns into the locker room to frighten a third-stringer indicate the extreme stakes of these wagers. Superstars have been known to lose hundreds and even tens of thousands of dollars on a single game of dominos, pool and the bet-inducing card games like "Hit the Post." In this insidious betting game, when you lose, you don't just pay in your share but match the whole pot on the table.

Perhaps this visual idea seems obvious (or inevitable), but using the look and palate of Vegas was an exciting solution to explore in my sketches. I barely had 5 days for this, so I didn't have much time to look around for other ideas. The scope of the drawing would take a majority of the time. So I was eager to get started on something.



I sent a super rough idea for a quick "you're on the right track" approval. I wouldn't want to spend 6 hours solving this drawing if they hated the idea of a vegas locker-room.



Once they signed off on the concept, I had to add some new player likenesses and adjust the layout accordingly. And they took out my favorite part, that the devil was dealing the cards. All the players are specific likenesses, though none anyone would really recognize.



The final art was executed in about 36 hours (not ideal)- which did allow time for a rough color study, above (which I ended up mostly ignoring). I rarely get a chance to use a garish high-saturation palate- so I went all out. Perhaps too far out. The drawing will run across the top of a magazine spread, and their format is a big larger than most magazine- a full 10 inches wide. The full drawing will be seen at about 20 inches long. A few details below.

Just Enough Jeeves

W.W. Norton & Company are re-issuing the classic British early 20th Century novels about "Jeeves" - the uppity valet. (He is NOT a butler. Butlers manage the household, Valets manage the man!) This collection of several stories, called Just Enough Jeeves is the first in the series.




I liked both of the final sketches I sent, above. they picked the one with many different Jeeves, a challenge once I got past number 15, but really enjoyable to draw. The full cover including spine and back cover below.

Drawing in Church- 3/14

We have started a long trip through my favorite book in the Bible, the Gospel of John. The book is loaded with powerful metaphors, stark descriptions of good and evil and the quiet moving narrative of Jesus' closest friend, John. I'm looking forward to a good season of pew drawing. Here is Nicodemus, on the day he met Jesus- and the question that changed his life.

Battle of the Books

Just got back from an amazing event in Chicago, put on with a collection of area libraries, including the Bartlett Public Library called Battle of the Books! The audience was full of a couple hundred kids who were thrilled to talk about books and especially Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek. Thanks to everyone who made this such a great event. A few pictures from the night.



The winning team from Centennial School, above, the winners got a copy of John Brown: His Fight for Freedom for their school library.




A view of the audience before I went on- these kids were truly awesome. They love books!

IAM Conference Sketchbook

I just returned from the International Arts Movement Encounter 10. They kindly brought me up to enjoy the three day conference. I was asked to join a panel discussion about the intersection of the digital and the handmade world.... but more importantly the IAM folks commissioned my sketchbook to do some work, with the title "Conference Illustrator" (like I'm a journalist!) I drew throughout all the sessions and documented as many ideas, quotations and concepts as I could. I decided before I arrived that I wasn't going to draw anything from observation from the weekend. The result is a visual salad of symbols, metaphors and typography. What a fun weekend- hope those of you who were not there can imagine you were.

New World Order

With great thanks to Matt Kirkland and the folks at Brand New Box, I have a brand new design for my website and blog, and couldn't be happier with how it looks and functions. Lots of new goodies on my site with new work, new features and a much more cohesive look between my blog and website. If you see anything that needs fixing, let me know!

Drawing in Church- Redux

During the course of any particular week, there is always a moment or two when I wish I could sit down with my sketchbook for an hour, but deadlines and other work prevent it. Recent annual submission deadlines have given me the excuse to waste some time on these again. Since the day I've made them I've been meaning to sit down with these pages and have a little fun with them or finish them/ruin them. A few from the greatest hits catalog, now in color.

Love + Crush

I've donated a drawing to a local show and auction happening here in St. Louis, on March 12th at Mad Art Gallery. The proceeds from the show will benefit the American Heart Association. (Great poster by Mr. Dan Zettwoch!) The theme had to be love or crushes, and after searching the archives, I found a drawing I did for Men's Fitness a few years back about "How to Fall For a Bad Boy." Hope to see you at the show!

Communication Arts Annual- 2010

Good news on the wire today- my American Illustration cover is going to be in the CA illustration annual, out in July.
This show always confounds me, I can never guess what is going to get in or if anything will get in at all. Last year was a goose egg, even with some of my John Brown work that seemed like a shoe-in. Glad to be back in the pages this year with an image I'm very proud to show.

Sketchbook 2010

The pristine spine is still talking to me when I crack the new sketchbook open... a sign that more drawing is needed. I wasted a whole afternoon on this cover for no clear reason other than to make use of a pile of old stamps I found at a rummage sale. Below is a few weeks of pew doodling. Clear the baffles!

Ebbets Eulogy

A new image commissioned for the cover of Books and Culture Magazine about our national pastime. Specifically, it is about the loss of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the impact baseball teams have on the identity of communities. The images feels a bit like a throw back for me (with apologies to N.C. Wyeth) but it should look good on the cover.
I'll post the final image in place with text when it comes out.

India Sudoku

One of students was in India over the winter break and found my old Will Shorts Sudoku book floating around a local bookstore. She sent me this picture in a poorly disguised attempt to get on my blog. Thanks for sending Vidhya!

This Week in the Sketchbook

Caldecott Buzz

The ALA Youth Media Awards are coming up next week and it has been fun to track the conversation on book blogs and librarian forums. The conventional wisdom is that Jerry Pinkney's incredible "Lion and the Mouse" will win- as virtually no argument can be made against it. But, at least a few commentators have given John Brown: His Fight for Freedom a fighting chance, so to speak. Read this review at School Library Journal:


"John Brown: His Fight for Freedom by John Hendrix
I think I'm just getting punchy and playing devil's advocate at this point. But how wild would it be if this won? I mean, there's no denying that it's entirely original. You won't find anything else like it on the market today. If the Caldecott committee has a couple nuts on it who are dedicated to the idea of wholly original storytelling, this book may have a fighting chance. It would certainly make for a lot of interesting discussions around the country. Just sayin'."


Here's to a couple of "nuts"! (though I'm not sure if the reference is anatomical or metaphorical)

Regardless of whether the jacket gets a gold sticker or not, having so many people include my little book in the conversation about outstanding books of 2009 has been a dream come true. Let's cross our fingers, perhaps John Brown has one last ride left in him!

Drawing in Church- Christmas Edition

A recent drawing from the pew, (with some additional time on the desk at home.) Merry Christmas!

Video Game of the Year

For Entertainment Weekly's end of the year wrap-up, I was asked to do the drawing for the Best Video Game of the Year- UNCHARTED 2! (I had never heard of it.)

For all the D&D I played as a kid, I haven't invested into the first-person shooter video games- though I have a kind of admiration for them. My video game of choice as a 12 year-old dork was "The Legend of Zelda." So, I had to do some extensive visual research, as this game bills itself as a kind of hyper-real Indiana Jones-esque shoot'em-up. (No, I wasn't able to convince them they should buy me a PS3 for authenticity.)



A few alternate ideas that I sent- along with the final sketch.




The final sketch took an unusually long time to resolve. In drawings of this kind, it is a lot like assembling a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, and for hours it seemed I was missing all the center pieces, resnapping the edge pieces together again and again.



One of my favorite passages from this drawing-


Probably 95% of my drawings are done on one sheet of board with minmal Photoshop surgery... but this piece was a bit different. It really wanted to approach it a bit more graphically - here are a collection of some of the parts of this image.



I even got my beautiful bride to pose with my son's Nerf gun. I really get so little chance to draw this kind of old fashioned '15 year-old's notebook' drawing with evil henchmen and Beretta hand guns, etc.- I tried to enjoy it!

The Info-Wheel

Kenyon College called me to do a cover about Kenyon trivia for their Alumni Magazine. I used the chance to finally create an homage to the wonderful book collection of informational wheel charts 'Reinventing the Wheel' by Jessica Hefland. In many ways, these kind of projects really function as design much more than illustration. An example of how difficult it is in today's visual landscape to divide image-making from design thinking.



The cover above is shown without the masthead and all the headline copy. I also did four two color spots for the interior as well...