Steve Jobs for Adweek.

Steve Jobs portrait for Adweek.

It was a true honor to be asked to do another portrait for Adweek and even more of an honor that it was to be a tribute for Mr. Steve Jobs. I felt it was important to capture his warmth and passion for life, but to be honest, I felt a fair amount of pressure to say the least. I took this on with the intention of creating something iconic, an image that I hope honors Steve and his family.




This cover was done as a tribute to Steve Jobs, a special three-page gatefold cover. Two illustrations and a photo. The second illustration was done by artist Jorge Colombo, on an iPAD.




Last Wednesday, I was away with my family at an apple orchard of all places. I hadn't heard the news about the passing of Steve Jobs until that night as I drove back to Chicago. My agent called me and told me Adweek wanted me to paint a portrait of Steve. As mentioned above, I was honored to do this painting but felt a great responsibility to get it right. On top of that I had two days to do it. I gathered as much reference for Steve as I could and got to work. I based my image off of two different pictures but noticed subtle things within his expression from other images and brought them all together to create what I hope "feels" like Steve Jobs.



Detail of painting. Even though I did not know Steve personally, he's had such an enormous impact on the world, it felt as if I knew him and it was important to me to not create a sad image, but instead an image that would bring happiness and joy, and hopefully peace to those who knew him. As I painted, I tried to think about his family and what this might be like for them.



Sketches and block in . . . I'd like to thank Nick Mrozowski the art director for thinking of me for another cover, I really appreciate it!

Murdoch cover for ADWEEK

Last week I was called by Adweek to do a one-day-turnaround, which would be used for an interior illustration. They ended up liking the painting so much that they decided to use it as the cover instead!

Read the article HERE.



They wanted a realistic portrait of Murdoch and wanted a "mafia-like" feel to the look of the piece . . . notice my nod to The Godfather. It was a lot of fun creating the mood and feel of this piece . . . it had to look like Murdoch but feel dark and moody . . . I had a blast! BTW, I had only one day to turn this piece around.



I'm really happy with the brush work in this piece . . . the more I paint, the more I love it!




As I mentioned above, it was decided that my art would be used for the cover rather than inside the magazine. For that, I was asked to simplify the background as to not distract from typesetting and so on.




This is my mock sketch.