The Back of a Lady

Discussion

Dance Party

Personal Note

In the New Year, I will be teaching at Parsons (The New School)! Visit the Illustration Department blog. Yay!

Steven Heller on Decoration

A short essay on Design Observer about the "D" word: Decoration. It's from a design slant, but it easily applies to Illustration as well. Personally I think ornamentation is a bit of a masturbatory exercise, but the essay does make some excellent points worth considering.

Dorothy

Test your knowledge of the Children's Fantasy genre.

Variations on a Rum Ball

Hope you are all having a happy holiday. Here is a picture of some rum balls I had at a Christmas Party last week.

William Steig at the Jewish Museum

NY Times slideshow on the work of William Steig. I'm going to try to check out the show when I get back to NY.

Leif: Keeping It Real

Of course, you are familiar with the illustration work of Leif Parsons. Now he's been posting some of his very good personal work.

May Kasahara

The Sketchbook is feeling pretty rejected these days. The run up to Christmas is always crazy, with everyone trying to file their issues and projects before the holidays.

Japanese Masks and Robots

Research Sketches for a current project.

Europeans

Drawing From New Sources

Yo, what's with the educational posts lately? Here is a great little animated short about alternative energy. It reminds me of vintage Sesame Street. Geoff McFetridge was involved in the animation.

A Brief Message

Not a lot of posts lately. It's been super crazy. Super Duper crazy. But here's something new and educational to boot! Read a short article on design that I illustrated over at A Brief Message. And, if you have time, check out the back archives... I'm loving the "Under 200 Words" format.

Thanks to Khoi Vinh!

Here are the sketches for a piece that appears in this weekend's New York Times Magazine. The article is about a man on trial for killing feral cats who were preying upon endangered birds.





This is the final full-sized drawing (after the editorial changes), over which I inked the final illustration. As you can see, it serves as more as a rough guide and isn't exactly set in stone.



Final image. It's a full page; it's nice when stuff is actually big enough for people to appreciate the details. I've also posted the accompanying spot. Art Direction by Leo Jung.