Taschen's Illustration Now/98lb Obama

NEWS

Taschen's Illustration Now has just been released. Congratulations to Kako, Robin Eley, Kyung Soon Park, Brian Hubble, Jason Seiler and Koren Shadmi of Levy Creative Management for being featured in the book. Check it out here.





This is another quick turnaound for The Weekly Standard. My 31rst painting for them. Started Thursday and was due Friday afternoon. I decided to have fun and try something a bit different style-wise.

Everytime I draw Obama I try to do something different, it's fun to see the different ways he can be drawn. And under such short deadlines, there's not much time to plan or develop, you just have to get the work done and do the best possible job that you can in the time given.

I enjoy working with The Weekly Standard because the jobs are always challenging. My deadlines are fairly insane. It's typical for me to get a phone call Thursday night, and the final art is due the next day, Friday afternoon. The jobs first start with me finding references for expression and so forth, then I take photo references and set up lighting for additional reference. I do a few sketches, wait for approval, when I have that, I begin painting. With this piece I wanted to try something different from my usual style and look. I liked the idea of an outline encasing the painted forms, the contrast with the background has a nice effect.






Detail of head.

The Audacity of Hillary!

"Hillary Clinton might be the Dem's presidential front-runner, but the trip to the White House makes a stop in Obama Country. Can the hometown girl beat the state's favorite son on what's now his home turf?" - David Bernstein, Chicago Magazine.










I shared a sneak peak of this a few weeks back, it's now published, so I can go ahead and share the whole piece with everyone. It's always nice when you pick up a magazine that you did work for and the actual printing job is done well, this is one of those jobs. I was at the grocery store with my wife last night and I saw the new issue of Chicago Magazine, flipped through it and found my illustration, always a cool feeling to see your work on the stands. I hope I never loose that childlike feeling.

Anyways, I've as you can see attached the full image as well as cropped close-ups! Technically I probably shouldn't have given so much attention and detail to Hillary because of how small she is in the illustration, however I couldn't control myself. The sketch and photo reference was too good to not have more fun with!