Dumping E-Waste

This is an illo for a San Jose Mercury News story about recycling electronics devices and such. It was written by long-time colleague George Avalos and you can read the story at this link.

Drawn in Manga Studio and Photoshop!

When I received this assignment the topic was clear but the story hadn't been written yet – not an uncommon situation. The general concept for the illustration was agreed on and it was suggested I not spend a lot of time on it; there were too many other assignments to sort through, so maybe just grab some bits & pieces of older illustrations and put them together with a couple new sketches. Sounded good!

But that never works out. I should know better. I spent too much time looking through old work and trying to make clip art out of it when it would have been more efficient to simply make a new drawing.

A few objects there at the bottom of the stack are cut and paste jobs, and there were a few others, but they didn't fit nicely and I wasted more time warping them, redrawing them, trying to get them to match with the general style. I finally came to my senses, put my shoulder to the old grindstone and drew the stupid thing.

Page design by the great Daymond Gascon


The End


A Tragic Love Story

Long-time colleague Matthias Gafni tells a powerful story of age, disease, the right to die and the compounding cruelty of the law; awful, awful circumstances. Matthias always does a great job and this is one of the most moving stories I've illustrated. You can read it at this link.

Open in a new window for a larger image. Drawn in Photoshop.

I plowed through this illustration as quickly as I could. The topic really bothered me and once I had the concept I did my best to keep my thoughts from dwelling on the tale. I much prefer illustrating fun, light stories and always find the darker and sadder assignments draining.

There is truth in that most news is bad news, but some news is worse than that. One must work on what he or she has to work on and hope that tomorrow's task is less depressing.

Below is the lovely Sunday page designed by Chris Gotsill.