Taxes. No death; taxes are bad enough.

This illustration is for a story about some of your options for dealing with taxes. Do you buy software? Do you hand them over to a tax professional and let him/her sort it all out for you? Do take your calculator in hand and do them yourself?

If I could afford it I'd pay someone to do them for me, so I wouldn't know how much of a cut Uncle Sam takes. It sure is frustrating to look at the difference between the Net and Gross columns on the old paycheck, isn't it?

I suppose that's where the feeling of this piece comes from, and I bet-- regardless of income bracket-- that we all feel a little disappointed when we are confronted with our annual loss.

I made myself sad with this one. Poor little piggy. Pure photoshop done on my zippy li'l iMac at work.

The End.

Weird Travel Illustration

This illustration accompanied a collection of travel stories written by high-school students. I read the stories, made a mental note of some of the imagery that popped out at me and I started scribbling.

I made a surrealistic mess of it– it's very monochromatic and confusing to look at. I hope it is an "interesting" kind of confusing; meaning that I hope you look at it and say "Ooh! What's going on here?" instead of "What the hell is going on here?"

The story I riffed on from the outset was a very dark and moody piece about London. I grooved that tone and just let the shapes swoop across the page, inviting imagery from the other stories drift in when and where they wanted. Ultimately, I feel that this piece is a good start; I'd love to go back and revise and work in other things that occurred to me as I finished it up, but this is drawing for deadlines. It's not very often I get to do "studies" for a final piece. Never. Thumbnails? Sure. Studies? Nah.

The headline and introduction fit into the white space up there on the left and then it teases to the stories inside.

The End

Happy 2007!

Having worked in the newspaper biz for the past six years I've become familiar with many cyclical topics that we must wade through annually. You have your standard "news," of course– and that provides surprise and unique opportunities for art & graphics– but many of the stories that are generated by the writers themselves tend to address familiar topics and events that are often recurring.

For example, the summer movie package. Every year we must find a way to package and present the information on the slew of blockbusters– or busts– are coming to a theater near you. You'd think that it wouldn't be tedious since they don't release the same movies every year, but somehow it often feels like you're doing the same thing you did last year. It's a challenge to come up with different ways of making it interesting, not only to the readers but to yourself.

There's back-to-school, new TV show season, the holidays, parades, local annual events, elections... I don't think two weeks go by without having to address a topic that you have covered before– like the arrival of the new year.

I try to avoid falling back on a cliche, such as the New Years Baby shtick, but I couldn't get around it this time, so I embraced it! I took the idea and I tried to give it a gentle tweak. It gave me a chance to indulge my retro-sci-fi tendencies. Lotta fun to work on.

Here are a few screenshots of this piece's progression. Painted in Photoshop!

The End.

Tired of the holidays yet?

Our paper invited the readers to submit humorous lyrics set to the music of holiday tunes. There was some pretty good stuff in there.

I created this image in Photoshop.


The end.

Party On!

Illustration for a story on how NOT to behave at an office party– but not everybody is going to read it and take the advice, so the rest of us will still have something horribly embarrassing to talk about.

For this piece I drew all of the characters, individually, on real paper and scanned them in. Just plain old pencil and photoshop! I'm enjoying the drawing I do away from the computer and I think the old looser, more relaxed line is finding its way back into my work.

I regret not having attacked this illustration with more vigor at an earlier date– I had to finish it up much more quickly than I anticipated due to bad planning on my part. I envisioned about 6 more characters and a slightly different composition but I think it came together pretty well in spite of my efforts to fail.

For some reason– and I know better than this– I drew each character, scanned it in, colored it; then the next character, draw, scan, color. I should have drawn them all first, scanned, designed the composition and then attacked the coloring. I found myself going back and re-coloring stuff as I tried to arrange the layout on the go. Bad.

Still, I had fun with it. Beats working.

The End.

Shopping Season

This is a really quick sketch I did at work on Saturday afternoon. Really quick. I was laying out a graphic and needed some art to fill a peculiar space. Ta daa. Pencil and Photoshop!

The end.

p.s. I just decided to try the new blogger upgrade beta thingamajig. That's why things are looking different. I don't know much about webstuff but it seems pretty easy and not too confusing. Of course it will take some time before I settle on a stable presentation. I'll probably end up going back to the original but at least my interest is piqued for a day or two!

Infographical Thingamabob

This is a graphic I did for the paper this week. I haven't done many hard-core info-grahpics before– well, maybe a couple– but this was the most fun I've had doing one yet. Lotsa painting!


Photoshop with a touch of illustrator.

THE END.

I HATE TV!

This is the way I feel. Hate it. So, when the editors at work asked me to illustrate this idea for a story it popped out and onto the page (screen) sooo easily.

I plugged in my little TV last week for the first time in a long time and tried to watch the Colts/Patriots game, just because, well, how could you go wrong? Colts! Patriots!

Ugh. Pretty good game but the commercials beat me into submission. I was so worn out I almost turned it off in the 3rd quarter. So many dumb commercials and so many repeated pleadings to watch their crummy TV shows. Every pause between plays was crammed full of "CSI" and "ER" (or whatever) advertisements.

I've unplugged the TV again and put it back on the shelf, and it's likely to stay that way for a long time. Until the next Colts Patriots game, I figure! Or until I feel the need to play my old Sega Genesis.

Painted in Photoshop! It runs this Saturday in the Contra Costa Times and the affiliated papers.

The End.

The Idle Moment

Quick doodle. Photoshop.

Politically Polite

Photoshop illustration for a story about getting along with your fellow humans of differing political persuasions during the election season.

Doodled in photoshop.