Willamette Week Cover

TOM - Here's a cover I illustrated for this week's issue of Willamette Week in Portland. The cover story is about this crazy, rich dude who, to make a long story short, has a record of assaulting people and wound up terrorizing his next door neighbor with all sorts of dramatic displays of aggression. The article included accounts of him erecting a large fence, flashing bright lights into his neighbors window while blasting conservative talk radio and chopping down his pool house to then set fire to it. This shit would never fly in New York, just sayin'.

I decided to try and get all those things across in the sketches, feeling that fire, chainsaws and fences were all good elements to making a really dramatic cover. Although the art director and myself were excited about them, the editor felt in might be a little too over the top and 'comicy'. We settled on something a little more simple, while trying to keep it menacing; a creepy neighbor peering over his fence with a suggestion of flashing lights in the background.

Here's a little look at the drawing process and the progression into the colors. I drew the figure and the fence separately so that I could have the option of where to place the fence in the final.

This is what the final art looked like before the logo and text were added.

We also used a variation as an interior opening for the story.

If you're in Portland, go pick up a copy! Thanks for reading!

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Original Reservation

TOM - Lately, I've been experimenting with drawing on different surfaces. I guess it's an attempt on my part to keep things fresh and new, a way to experiment on personal projects, hopefully finding new approaches and techniques that can carry over into my professional work. That's always the goal at least.

Drawing on newspaper seemed like it might be fun. As an editorial illustrator, I've done alot of illustrations for newspapers, but there seemed something interesting about creating my own images on top of an otherwise illustration-less page. The text and newsprint create an interesting texture underneath and could also add an interesting narrative to the illustration.


In this case I chose to create a drawing based on a song by Burning Spear entitled, 'Original Reservation'. The song talks about the early tribes that lived on our land before it was known as The United Sates. I've been wanting to use that song as an inspiration for a drawing for a while now and so I used this experimentation as an excuse. I thought the weather section in the NY Times with the map and all the charts might work as an interesting backdrop/texture, as well as add to the narrative.

Above is a quick look at my process. I coated the newspaper with a thin layer of white paint, then drew the figure directly over it. Threw it into Photoshop to manipulate it a bit, added some color and some text and there you have it.

Hope you dig it! Thanks for reading!

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