Drawing In Church 1/22/2012

Drawing in Church- 1/15/2012

WalMart in China

Walmart created a groundbreaking sustainability initiative a few years ago, pledging to work with vendors in China to create more sustainable manufacturing practices worldwide. This article from Mother Jones follows one reporter who went to check in on this program at the actual Chinese factories, and what he found wasn't good, in fact, it was terrible.



The drawing runs across the fold of the opening spread, plus an additional spot on the interior of the article.




Both of my initial ideas were simliar, but portrayed slightly differently. In this case I agreed with the art directors choice for the fuller treatment, reaching across the gutter into the headline. A detail below.

Autopsy Lake

Perfect for a wintery January post, this cover was done for The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association. The only prompt they gave me was to make an image about Autopsies and the secrets a body holds after death. Art Director, Emma Dalby was great- the content was so open ended and they were looking for something expressive, personal and metaphorical.

A few of you asked about my process for creating this idea... so I thought I'd put up some of my rough thumbnails, which show the visual thread of my thinking.

There are very few of these thoughts that come be useful in the final art, but they are not wasted effort. For me, ideas develop not from careful thought, but from the actual process of drawing.

Above, the drawing I sent to the art director for approval of concept. 

Here, final art as it will appear on the magazine itself. 

Here is a shot of the drawing on my desk, in progress... with my color comp and ice reference. 

Drawing in Church- Merry Christmas

An advent sketchbook drawing. Onward to Bethlehem...

States of the Union

A fun spot for use in an online project, for Alissa Levin, at Point 5 Design. How I love billboards!

New York Times Book Review

Great news, my new book A Boy Called Dickens got a very nice review in the NYT Book Review this Sunday. Here is a preview of how it will appear in print.

UPDATE: here is the web link to the review.

Outside of the minor criticism about my figures, "for my taste, John Hendrix's illustrations of London succeed better than his figures" the review is very positive and features one of my images... which happens to include figures. Pretty amazing. Here is a readable image, thanks to blogger new image settings.

Running with Psychos

Peter Sagal, the host of NPR's quiz show, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! writes a monthly column for Runner's World, and I've been asked to illustrate it this month. When Peter travels on tour with his show, he often calls local running clubs to see if he can join a morning run with some other folks... often getting rides from total strangers in the middle of the night. This of course makes him think about 

being murdered by some psychopathic marathon runner... 

Had an initial idea for the color that worked in theory, but not in form. Wanted to make it spooky and unify the group in blue shadowy colors... but you lose the fun of seeing all the props. In fact, some of the characters need local color (as opposed to analogous colors) to help identify who they are. So, I came up with another color idea, which worked better. 

Drawing In Church - 11/27 (with Jack)

This week's church sketchbook drawing was inspired by this hairy robot that my son Jack drew the other day. So cool! His is much more interesting than mine I think.

detail of the flowers and head

Post-It Show 2011

Here are some of my silly Post it Notes for the Mark Todd's annual show at Giant Robot. Get'em at the opening for ten bucks each. Always wish I had time to do more each year.

SI 54 Award Winners

A big year for me at Society of Illustrators, I got 9 images in the show and also another piece I art directed. So thankful and humbled. The most prestigious illustration show in the world! I can only show 8 images, so I need to pull one of these, any thoughts? 

All six from my Rolling Stone Trivia package, in the series category: 

Three from my dickens book:

Not to mention I got a piece in as "Art Director" the amazing ICON poster!

Drawing in Church 11/6

First page of a new sketchbook. This drawing came from a sermon about the book of Amos.

10 Year Anniversary

Ten years ago today I turned in my first professional illustration job. I'm going to surpress my cringe reflex and post some images from that project, a interior full page for The Village Voice.

 I have no idea what this was about, something about globalization and corporate pirates. (Nice idea!)
Here are a few of my thumbnails from that, and as I remember it, I think it was Minh who suggested the pirate ship idea. Note the "sails are dollarbills" stroke of genius in the bottom right.

My portfolio was a mess at the time, full of drawings and full of paintings, (I could do about ten posts on that alone) but art director Minh Uong saw something in there. He gave me a cover of the Village Voice arts guide, that ran inside the magazine. I'm grateful for him taking a chance on me, and for calling me afterwards after I gave him a sort-of-ok-not-amazing-image the first time around.

I don't want to get too wistful and self interested here, but I do want to say I'm incredibly astonished and grateful for what I've done professionally in the last ten years. In some ways, I've done more than I thought was possible in an entire career. Eager to start the next ten years of imagemaking.  Thanks Minh for that first call! 

50th Anniversary Cover Type

Thanks to Alissa Levin at Point Five Design, I got the chance to do this cover package for Columbia Journalism Review about the future of media and reporting. All they wanted was big beautiful type on the cover, celebrating 50 years of CJR. 

I did some portraits of a few prominent figures in the conversation, as well as this funny Mad Lib homage for the opening spread. 

A few of my other ideas for the cover...