Experimentationalism pt. 1

Experimentation is my favorite part of making art and illustration. I love to surprise myself and make pieces that fit the solution in the best way possible. Today I have two very different pieces, both done for different Russian magazines. At a glance I think they’re quite different from each other, but at the drawing level and in relation to all my work to this point, I think they fall right in line.

The Monday before last month’s American Illustration party I got an email from a swell fellow named Grigory at the Russian Travel & Leisure magazine asking if I could do an illustration for them by Friday. I accepted. The piece was a portrait of the famed writer Umberto Eco. It was a Russian translation of a humorous rant he wrote about how messy airplane food is.


I sent these two sketches to them, one playing with the format (they hadn’t specified an exact size—rather they said it would be about a square, more than half a page.

Anyway, the art directors didn’t really like them, felt that they were too “arty” and requested another quick thumbnail of one that would be more like the first concept, with just tons of food on his lap. So I did this:

The art director dropped this final one into a template of the layout they had in mind and we were on our way. I did a tight sketch, inked it, and proceeded to color it digitally. At first I wanted to make it duotone, or a false duotone, like several of the last illustration pieces I’ve one were. But I couldn’t get this complicated image to work that way—I knew the piece was about the food, and while the duotone might look neat, I wasn’t getting a good enough read on the subject of the article. I did several variations on the coloring before settling on one I liked the best.



And here is the final, I’m pretty happy with it, and they were, too. Got it done in time for the AI party, too!






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I was going to post another piece instead of this next one, but this just turned out so good and was such a good contrast to the last one that I had to put it up.
My old friend Katya at Russian Esquire emailed me on Tuesday and asked if I could do two illustrations by Friday. I asked if I could show sketches on Wednesday but she insisted that I just go straight to final. When that happens I have to be extra sure to art direct myself in the way that will be most appropriate to the publication and their needs. Sometimes I think when we’re closely art directed we act a little more liberally with our ideas and suggest stuff that we would like that aren’t necessarily the best things for the client. But to quote Spider-Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Katya, like Grigory at Travel & Leisure also gave me the layout they were thinking of using. I've noticed this is a huge help in developing the composition because I can really make sure that what I do will complement the rest of the layout.

Unlike Umberto’s story, Esquire Russia didn’t have an English translation of the piece. Rather, they described the piece to me and told me what elements they would like to be in the illustrations. The story was basically about a guy who claimed that
Thomas Edison was a Cyclops who never came up with any of his own ideas, but rather swindled them from other inventors and enlisted the help of his tiny wife to help him do his dirty work (I know it sounds crazy). So I was told what elements they wanted in each illustration—and just to check I made two quick doodles and emailed to make sure that we were on the same page. They said “ok” and I went ahead with the finals.
Images
My inspiration for these pieces were sepia-toned old time photographs, and technical drawings of a phonograph that I found on wikipedia.