Back-to-Back Illustrations

I recently had a run of three illustrations published within one week. That used to be fairly standard for my job back in the 2000s and early 2010s, but such a flurry of artistic work is a rarity now. I was happy to do it, but also relieved to find that the effort didn’t stress me overmuch. It is good to know that I can still comfortably ratchet up to the pace of the olden days; I felt good about that. I’m showing two of the drawings here since they go together!

Two illustrations for the 2024 Mercury News coverage of the annual Silicon Valley Poll

The newspaper, in partnership with a regional studies organization, conducts an annual public opinion survey in the Bay Area and — looking at it selfishly — it is usually good fodder for illustration opportunities. The poll typically generates three or four days of stories based on the analysis of the survey data. This year I committed to two illustrations running on back to back days. 

I prefer to work on one assignment at a time but I had to cultivate both illustrations in tandem because I mistakenly thought my Day 2 effort was for Day 1 – my bad. So I had to adjust course to make sure that I had the right one done first. I managed to get them both finished before the weekend so the only speed bump of consequence encountered was a mental one. Whew.

This is how the illustrations appeared in print.

The rough sketches

The illustration for ‘Day 1’ pertained to economic hardship, the expense of living here and the housing crisis. As is often the case for illustration assignments, the story and the illustration are developed at the same time, and one must hope that during the reporting and writing the story doesn’t reveal itself to have a different focal point than the one we anticipated. That did not happen in this case — there was the benefit seeing the poll data as a guide for the main interests of the story — but I tried to represent homelessness and the cost of housing in a general sense to hopefully cover any possible variation on the theme.

I swiped a house pic from the internet to avoid spending the time 

drawing one to sell the idea if it was just going to be rejected.

The robot illustration didn’t stray much from the accepted rough. I selfied for reference!

The illo for ‘Day 2’ is meant to speak to our fear of the rise technocracy, its diabolical impact on our society and the soul-crushing potential of Artificial Intelligence to disrupt the lives of the common man, the common worker… the common newspaper illustrator. Yeah, I’m feeling it.

‘Day 2,’ as the 'Day 1' illustration, is also conceptually basic; it’s the simple “fear of the future as a robot” cliche that we should all try to stay away from, although it’s about the 100th time I’ve used it. But it’s the idea that got through the approval gauntlet and, contrarily, I absolutely enjoy the cliche! After all, my childhood dream was to be one of those guys who sketched the robot illustrations for the Fred Saberhagen stories in Galaxy Magazine. As I walk and talk and opine in the world of adults, I raise my nose and dismiss the banal predictability of such a hackneyed concept. But at my core I am ecstatic. "Destroy all humans," I whisper.

That's all for this time! Everything was drawn in ClipStudio for iPad.

the end