New Village Voice Cover

My first cover of 2010 and the first cover for Village Voice of 2010! This was a bit nuts to pull off under such a tight deadline, so I'm very pleased with the end result. I only had one day to complete this painting, as I was on holiday when I received the job and there wasn't any way I could work on it until the day before it was due. I was able to squeeze off a quick sketch over the weekend and get it approved for painting.




I started work around 4:00 a.m. Monday Morning, and painted all day, took a dinner break and then worked until around 9:00 p.m. I then woke up at 4:00 a.m. Tuesday morning and painted until the deadline, which was 8:00 a.m.

This was a fun piece to work on, I really enjoy working with the Village Voice! The idea behind this cover is simple, a parody of "The Odd Couple" movie poster. If I had more time, I would have liked to have played around with things a bit more and have a little more fun with posture and gags . . . but being as I didn't have much time, my main priority was to draw Bloomberg and Thompson's face with the exact angle and expression that I needed. I had to make up their expressions . . . to do that, I took pictures of myself making the exact expression that I needed and from there I made the rest up.

For the rest of the painting, I tried to capture the feeling of the original painting, adding small things of my own here and there . . . the important thing for this cover was that the "parody" read well, so I couldn't stray too far from the original.



Detail of face . . . I tried to keep it fairly loose and painterly . . .





Pic of inside spread by Hermann Mejia.