Ghosts of Mayors Past for The New York Times

I really enjoyed working on this one and would like to thank Richard at the NYT for giving me the freedom to exaggerate and create the characters in the most natural way for me. It's great working for people who let you do what you do. As the norm of late, I only had two days to complete this one. I didn't think I'd be able to finish a painting in the way that I wanted so I decided to combine drawing and painting . . . has a nice life to it that I really enjoy.

This is a Freud that I hadn't yet shared here. I did this while in Vienna a couple of weeks ago where I was teaching a workshop on caricature, drawing and painting and the process of illustration and working for publications.

Der Spiegel "Slothful, frustrated, arrogant – how non-voters f@#k up democracy"

Latest cover painted for Der Spiegel. This is already my 6th cover for them, the other four are on hold and will print when the time is right. One of those covers is an obituary cover so sadly we have to wait for a certain person to pass on before that artwork will be released. My first Obituary cover. A strange thing to have to paint but it was an honor for me for sure. This cover was quite the challenge, but before I get into that, the copy on the cover reads: "Slothful, frustrated, arrogant – how non-voters f@#k up democracy" The idea was to come up with 8 characters who are all using their ballot's for things other than voting. I had less than two days to do this cover which was crazy. I decided the only way I could pull it off while maintaining my style would be to keep the painting style much looser than normal. I knew that would work out fine because of the size the characters on the final cover.

Always cool to see the work on news stands or in book stores. What is weird is that I finished around 5:00 am Friday morning and by Monday morning it was all over Europe. Crazy business.

Close up of main character to show how loose I kept the painting.

I really liked the look and feel of this guy, this was a fun job!

This was my favorite character but in the end there wasn't enough room.

Tattoo man sketch.

Originally this character was bigger and in my opinion a lot more fun and exaggerated.

There was a worry that the way I was painting her would offend people so if you compare this to the final version on the cover, you can see how I had to soften her a little more. Make her cuter.