American Prospect - This was the last issue of The American Prospect magazine before the 2004 elections. I was thrilled that AP had liked my previous work for them so much that I got to "graduate" to doing a cover for them, my first for any magazine.

They asked me to try and think of something over the weekend, since the deadline for this piece was very short. I was stumped for a little while, so I went out for a run at night, something I hardly ever do. After jogging a couple miles or so, I had a germ of an idea in my head, something about splitting the cover and using the backgrounds to represent what each man was doing during the Vietnam War, which was a bulk of the cover article. I thought it was original, creative, and visually arresting; the only problem was it would probably make a lousy cover--while being very clever, it wasn't something that someone passing by could grasp within seconds, the #1 purpose of any magazine cover, so you by it, instead of, say, Paintball Enthusiast or Highlights.

So I tried to come up with a variant of the original idea--I drew up a bunch of placards, filled them with the slogans of both sides, and put it together. I showed it to AP and while they really liked it, they did ask for a few changes that ultimately made the piece much better--get rid of the hard line separating the candidates, make them much angrier, and more confronting each other. They also suggested adding some placards to the front so they could add their text, a suggestion that I thought was just great. I reworked it, they loved it, and it was on newsstands shortly before the election. Don't blame me, I voted for Kodoss...

This other piece was the simplest thing I've done for AP, a spot illustration for a small article about the Bob Woodward/Judy Miller debacle over Valerie Plame's identity. I didn't have a lot of space to work with, so I knew I had to keep it simple and clear. Trying to cram in two portraits plus their respective newspapers (an element I wanted in from the beginning) was daunting. But then it occurred to me; since the article was about how both these newspapers let loose the quality and accuracy controls on this particular story, I realized we were dealing with the same problem across the board. So I dedcided that Woodward and Miller would be presented as two halves of the same coin. Their visages are famous enough that even showing only half of each wouldn't hurt their recognizability.

Soon after I found relevant editions of both papers (headlines concerning the invasion of Iraq), and layed them in back, slightly transparent so they didn't fight the reporters for dominance of the piece. It all fell in place very easily and smoothly--I think the entire timeline from asking me to do the piece to delivering the final was less than five days. The magazine loved it and it appeared in their January 2006 issue.

Pitt Med - "Put A Band-Aid On That Incision" - I've done a few jobs before for Pitt Med magazine(the University of Pittsburgh's medical publication), but for one reason or another they never ended up getting published or were the kinds of thing that I felt should've been put up here.

Luckily, I did two pieces in a row for them that are the best things I've done for them so far. This first one is about a Dr.Gellar who is pioneering a new way to perform surgery with the least amount of invasiveness possible. The magazine sent me a giant portrait of Gellar doing his thing, but wanted me to come up with a way to convey what he did.

So while I did a straight-up portrait of Gellar, I turned the mountains of equipment around him into a clean blue outline to give that sort of high-techy feel without getting bogged down in the specifics. It gave the piece the kind of feel I was looking for, and kept Gellar as the focus of the eye. Pitt Med liked it too, and after just a few revisions here and there (fading one part out so the text could be laid in and be readable, etc.) it ran in their Spring 2008 issue.

Pitt Med - "SWAG" - This was for a separate article for the same issue of Pitt Med, about the piles of free stuff pharmeceutical companies send out to doctors while pitching their products.

The magazine told me the angle they wanted, and left it to me to visualize it. I sent them a few ideas, mostly involving looming mountains of crap, but it was the last one I came up with that really struck them--an anonymous doctor's office, trash can stuffed to absurd proportions with junk.

I was familiar with some of the typical stuff--pens, hats, clipboards, etc. But Pitt Med gave me a whole list of crazy items, like umbrellas, teddy bears(for pediatricians, of course), clocks, post-its, even Slinkys!

I rarely ever do illustrations that don't feature people, so I'm always happy to do something a little different.

Popular Science - This is a set of illustrations for PopSci's "How 2.0" column. They told me all the elements they wanted for the piece--guy in a hammock, sleeping dog, components in the foreground. Most of it came together quickly, but unfortunately not quickly enough. It was Monday morning, and the piece was due that afternoon, and I still hadn't illustrated the dog or the background elements. So...I cheated. I took the dog from my Adopt a Pet poster, redrew the head and eyes so he looked like he was napping, and placed him underneath my hammock guy.

I then put together the sky and the picket fence, but for the trees I rooted around my HD to find what I was looking for--some tree art. I had done some tree illustration samples awhile back, and I had done a couple of variations. I found those, recolored them a bit, added some foiliage, and voila! My hammock guy now had a place to hang from.

With all the sorta-shortcuts, I was able to get the piece out on time, and PopSci was happy with it. I normally don't like being so rushed, but sometimes that's what being a professional freelance illustrator is all about. It does look a little rushed to me, but I don't think it came out too bad. I really like that I didn't use any black on the piece so it does have that hazy, lazy summer day feel...

Next is a different assignment I did for the magazine. I was sent photos of a pair of hands working with these hard drive components, and was asked if I could find a way to turn all but the components into illustrations. PopSci wanted the hard drives to be the focal point of the art.

I soon found that using just black and white (and grey) and a cool blue background made those components *pop* right off the piece. I sent the first one off to PopSci, they loved it and I went ahead on the rest. They cropped them to fit the article's layout, focusing even more on the hard drives, so they look even a little better than the originals I sent.

To see other illustrations I did for Popular Science, check out the Portraits page!

American Lawyer - My cover for "Litigation 2004," a special supplement for American Lawyer magazine. I was given a rough concept by the art director, to go for a sort of viva la revolucion-type thing, maybe with a little bit of those cool Saul Bass-designed movie posters (like Exodus and Anatomy of a Murder) thrown in for good measure. I grabbed some dough, and got Trace to shoot some shots of me with various lighting schemes.

Once I had that part of it figured out, I just played around with the shapes and colors in the background; I knew I didn't want hard, straight lines, instead going for the jagged, loose edges (again, taken from those Bass posters). I fiddled longer over the font, again trying to convey a nice sense of looseness. Usually I would have used colored lettering, but the stark black and white lettering on top of the bold colors gave me a nice contrast, I thought. The magazine agreed and this special supplement was published in late 2004.

Forbes 6.5.06 "Brew Kit" - I've had a great relationship with Forbes magazine, so I was happy to get another assingment from them, but as you can see this one was a little different. This time they had some fairly dry material (no pun intended--really) and needed to spruce it up a bit.

They told me they wanted "that Namtab style", a phrase I just love. What he wanted was a diagram of the beer brewing process, leaving out some of the more obscure elements but still making it clear--"specific yet visually interesting" was the term I think I used.

I did a first version which was very simple, then I added a little more detail, but still kept it nice and clean. I added the color additive balloons which helped pop that information off the rest of the picture. These gave it a nice, fun look. Forbes agreed, and the piece appeared in their June 5 issue.

To see other assignments I've for Forbes, please check out the Portraits and Sports pages.

Business 2.0 - This was for an article with the umbrella title "The Titans of Tech", profiling Ed Zander, a executive who specializes in taking over failing businesses and reinventing them.

I submitted a couple of ideas fairly quickly; and while they liked the likeness they wanted something more associated with "transforming" someone or something, like a bodybuilder. I suggested a riff on one of those Charles Atlas ads from the back of seemingly every comic book in the fifties. They agreed and soon after I reused the original likeness I had created and added the new, goofy background (I used myself as reference for the "before" guy).

Since the whole piece was reminiscent of what you'd see in a comic book, I smoothed out a lot of the detail I normally have, and added a thick outline around Ed, to give him a slightly more comic-book feel. At the last minute I added the "See the Amazing Results!" button to give the piece an extra little nudge of humor.

The piece turned into my one of my personal favorites, and it appeared in their July 2003 issue.

I had originally designed the four of them aiming in all directions, in a kind of Charlie's Angels-action pose. I used red and orange as the colors, and I came up with what I thought was a really exciting piece.

It turned out to be a little too exciting--the a.d. told me that since this was an article about retirment savings, using deep reds was pretty much a no-no. And top of that, the article's layout had been designed as such that everyone needed to be aiming in the same direction. Check and double-check.

So after a little rejiggering of the people, and the picking of some more neutral colors, I had this piece, which everyone was pleased with. I was also asked to illustrate a couple of arrows that were interspersed throughout the article, and some of those hay-strewn target blocks you see at archery competitions, which the arrows heading for.

All in all it made for a nice, cohesive look for the article, and I'm very pleased how it came out.

Charles Schwab On Investing Fall 2007 - My second piece in just a few months for the specialty magazine Charles Schwab On Investing.

Like I do with sports, I get a lot of work about the world of business, even though, like sports, I have hardly any knowledge of it. Luckily, the projects I get to do for On Investing are always an interesting challenge for me to do--I don't get just asked for a portrait; they have me try and visually sum up an article and make it attractive and compelling visually.

I will say, this was one of my smoothest jobs yet--when I read the summary of the article and what the magazine was looking for, this image pretty much immdiately popped into my head, and the final result is very close to that initial burst of inspiration. This piece appeared in the Fall 2007 issue, and as you read this I'm working on a piece for their Winter issue.

Charles Schwab On Investing Winter 2007 - My third piece for the magazine, and definitely my most challenging.

For an article on how a lot of people are working past age fifty-five, the magazine needed a shot of five people walking down a street--a nurse, a businessman, a chef, a gardener, and a cop--all of them over fifty-five, crossing a street.

That was a lot to cram into a small space, so one of the first decisions I made was to do the city in a monochromatic color scheme to help the people not get lost amid all the detail. I ended up shooting my Dad in the role of the businessman, and a very aged-up Darlin' Tracy as the gardener(boy, did she enjoy that).

It turned out to be one of the most challenging pieces I've ever done for a magazine, just for the amount of info that had to be conveyed. I was very happy with how it came out and since I'm working on another piece for On Investing, obviously they were too.

Start Here - This was a cover for an accounting magazine called Start Here, featuring an article on movie producer Kathleen Kennedy, and all the various travails a producer has to go through every day in their job. The magazine's aesthetic was very (as they described it) "edgy"--lots of weird shapes and tones, a whole Se7en/Marilyn Manson look. I had worked with the mag's designer before, so he contacted me about maybe doing the cover, even though my style is (as he described it) "uber clean."

To that end, after doing the portraits (Kennedy along with Depp, Cruise, Gibson, and Berry) I blurred colors, lines, added tape marks to the piece (as if it was an original piece of art taped to an art board), even printed the whole thing out, scanned it back in, and then worked on that second-generation version.

After a lot of back and forth, they came to the conclusion that, no matter how much I dirtied up my work, it just wasn't exactly what they wanted. I was disappointed, but I knew I did the best I could. Normally, I don't put "killed" jobs on here, but I still like this piece so much I'm making an exception.

My favorite part? Halle Berry in that stupid Catwoman mask.

Time Out New York #519 - "Double Take" - In addition to my weekly "Hot Seat" gig for Time Out New York (see them here), I occasionally do other pieces for the magazine. This was a fun piece for their Fall Music Preview issue, all about some odd collaborations making their way onto CD.

The idea was to present these three odd pairings as sci-fi/horror movie-esque monsters, something I could really get behind! Even though they would run as three separate illustrations, I wanted to give them all a running background to tie them all together and make it more fun. I stuck to black and white for the portraits to help sell it further, and as you can see, added every horror movie cliche I could think of--tombstones, full moons, bats, spooky castle, fog, etc.

I went a lot more cartoony on the monster bodies than I usually do (my Sideshow Toys line of Classic Universal Horror Monster figurines really came in handy!), because I felt the more detail put on them, the more they would detract from the likenesses (even though they were on giant heads) so I kept them simple. I liked the moody blue colors contrasting with the characters, as they lurk toward you, demanding you buy their CDs!

Western Standard

11.25.04 - This was the first piece I did for the Canadian news & events magazine called Western Standard. It was an article about a "radical" new way of voting that is growing in popularity in some provinces. In the article it describes this new way as somewhat of a gamble, hence the Rubik's Cube metaphor.

The job came in on Thanksgiving (not a holiday in Canada, of course) so I had to scramble to get it done over the weekend. Once I found an actual Rubik's Cube I was able to see what one actually looks like rather than relying on my childhood memories.

5.16.05 - This was a surprise.

This was my second assignment for Western Standard. Apparently there is some big scandal going on up north, involving this group of politicians. They had asked me to do a riff on the famous "Sopranos" image, substituting the officials for the members of the family, with a very specific order of importance.

Since the layout was already done for me, this piece became more about time management--eight portraits had to be finished in just a few days, and then sized and put all together. I finished up the cover fairly quickly, and even with the various directions of light hitting all these faces, I thought it all came together fairly nicely. The magazine was pleased, so much so they had decided to include a pull-out poster of the image (with fake credits) inside the issue itself. Cool, I thought, and sent it off, moving onto the next thing. Then it got interesting.

A few weeks later, I was told that the cover caused a bit of controversy up in Canada. As far as I could figure out, another politician from this party was angry at the magazine, and said it was a slur against Italians (It was? Gee, I'm half-italian; I wish I had known to be offended). This guy even went around holding press conferences with a big blow-up of the cover. Then all of that caused a reverse-controversy, with people saying this guy was trying to deflect the real point of the cover and story, etc. All this spread like news about TomKat, and there were like dozens of articles (some TV, some print, some online) about my little ol' cover! I even got contacted by one or two Canadian news agencies about it.

This whole thing got big enough that they decided to make t-shirts and full-size posters of the image, which you can buy here (though god knows why you'd want to).

5.8.06 - My second cover for the magazine, for an article on environmental and political activist Maurice Strong. They had wanted a classic propaganda-style recruitment poster look. I didn't have the luxury of reading the article beforehand, so I didn't have much to go on besides what I could find on the internet. After a few quick articles, I found myself actually agreeing with a lot of Mr.Strong's views and goals, and frankly I was a little concerned about illustrating a cover for an article that I gathered was not going to be complementary.

Since I didn't know whether the article was an honest critique of his views, or an attempt at cheap character assassination of someone who doesn't share your political views. We have lots of that here in the US, they must up north, as well. I hemmed and hawed about the assignment wondering how I'd feel putting down someone I think didn't deserve it. Ultimately, I decided that I could still do the assignment without using any specific cheapshots in the artwork. That was a compromise I felt I could live with and still be able to be professional.

Like those communist propaganda posters, I was going for tilted axis', simplified colors, and, most importantly, a vision of a Bright Shining Tomorrow (if you're trying to sell someone on a political movement, you gotta promise the Bright Shining Tomorrow). WS had specifically asked for some sort of crowd shot to represent the Canadian populace, and after some research I realized I could render them in a rough black-and-white, xeroxed-copy kind of way. Frequently people putting together propaganda posters didn't have lots of resources at their disposal, so they had to make due with a lot of basic elements. Not only did this idea speed up the process, but when I layed them in I saw how well they contrasted with the rest of the cover.

I submitted a rough that was pretty close to what you see at left. I had to reduce the size of most of the elements to fit more cover copy, and there was a little more fiddling with it after I turned it in. Overall, though, I thought it was still a striking piece and makes for a nifty cover.

5.21.07 - This is my third cover in three years, and by far the easiest one I ever did.

They had sent me the cover article--about how there's a growing demand for elected, not appointed, judges--and hoped I could come up with something over a weekend(this was a Friday, and they needed final art on Monday!). I read the piece and thought it over for a bit, and then this mighty-hammer-of-Thor type image came to me.

I wanted something simple, graphic, and a little blocky, like all those classic Saul Bass movie posters(Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, etc.). After messing around with some color choices, red seemed to work the best, and just a few moments after submitting a rough, I got the go ahead--no changes--from the magazine. Success!

I put it together, and sent it in first thing Monday. When I saw the version used for the cover, which they did amend a bit by combining the formerly two-red-boxes into one big one(I'm guessing to help have the cover copy read easier). Not a big deal, though I still preferred the original version. Oh, well. I'm still happy with it and think it looks pretty cool.

Oh, and this cover marks the second appearance of my hand as the star of a magazine cover.