Dallas Observer Cover

TOM - A couple weeks ago, I was contacted by Alexander Flores of Dallas Observer to illustrate a cover for them featuring a whole bunch of accomplished Dallas musicians, including Erykah Badu and Rhett Miller of the Old 97's. It was a super cool gig and I was glad to finally get to work with Alex. Unfortunately, during the  production of this cover, my computer crashed! Thankfully though, I was able to borrow a friends computer for the scanning and coloring of the final image and everything went to press right on time, whew!

Here's a look at some of the process that went into making this cover.

This is an early sketch idea. The cover called for pretty much, just a group shot, so placement and composition became my main focus. I wanted to have Erykah up front, she's probably the most well known of the bunch and also the most visually interesting ( I was really looking forward to drawing her fro!)

Then we decided on this one, I really liked the idea of having Erykah's hair somehow incorporated in the logo itself, as if the logo were etched out of it. After a few failed attempts on Erykahs likeness, I had to scrap that angle all together  it and try again. I think a big part of growing as an illustrator is being able to admit  when something just isn't working and being able to scrap it and start again, no matter how much time you already put in. If it's not working, it's not working.

I was simultaneously working on some interior illustrations of all the musicians and thought that version of Erykah would work much better on the cover. A bit more iconic and less of a full frontal shot. It worked!

Got to work on all the other characters and the assembly begun!

Trough several revisions and a broken computer, I'm very happy with the way it all came together.

Here's a quick look at another interior illustration I did of singer/songwriter, Sarah Jaffe.

Thanks for reading, more covers on the way!

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Jet Propulsion - San Diego's Night & Day Magazine Cover

JAMES - I was asked to illustrate another cover for the San Diego Union Tribune's "Night & Day" magazine. It's always great working with their talented art director Peter Nguyen, and when he mentioned the lead story was about the upcoming air show, my imagination started to soar - both figuratively and literally.

The main attraction at the air show are the Blue Angels of the U.S. Navy, who have some of the damn coolest looking jets of all time. So along with the cool paint jobs, I wanted to just convey speed - lots and lots of speed. So I started sketching like a wild man, sitting there making "shhoooommm" and "whoooossshhh" noises like a five year old. Serious fun.

Here's a close-up of the final cover artwork:

And here's a look at the final printed cover put together by the design team over at Night & Day. It's still available for the next couple of days in San Diego.

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