Book Review | Chris Gash

Posts Tagged ‘Book Review’

July 10th, 2012

July roundup

I love the NYT Book Review. I love that I feel like I can try something simple and narrative and draw the whole thing in pencil and have it be OK. This was just in Sunday’s paper for a book called Beautiful Ruins:

This was a spot for Corporate Knights magazine, art directed by the inimitable Pete Ryan. I was so pleased to do this and be a part of the all-star illustrator lineup in this (and every) issue. The article was about preparedness, unpreparedness and resiliency with the effects of climate change. Here is the final and a few leftovers:

This was a quickie for The Wall Street Journal about executives who refuse to leave their post even when most of the board is voting against them:

Here is a tiny spot for Hanley Wood about sales reps acting as project managers:

This opener for American Medical News was about considering the office culture when hiring new staff:

Here is a half-page for Seattle Magazine for an article about genetically modified foods. The test tube image was what they chose and I also finished up one of the rejects just because I liked it:

And here are the past few weeks of NYTimes Biz Day columns – Business travelers want upgrades from crowded coach seats, the follow-up to upgrades column, air rage, and the debate about what to do when a family or couple asks you to move so they can sit together:

Here is a Science Times illustration from a few weeks ago about how cockroaches can fling themselves under a ledge so quickly that they seem to disappear:

You can see all the Science Times illustrations, the rejected sketches and spots from the 8 year archive at drawingscience.wordpress.com.

Thanks to Nicholas, Pete and Jack, Dan, Allison, Jennifer, Sue, Joe and Phyllis, and Peter!

June 7th, 2012

Spots, I Love Charts book and off to ICON 7

Here are a few recent editorial assignments…

This was for the back page of the NYTimes Book Review. It was an essay about Erich Segal’s novel “The Class” and other books on Harvard culture. At the top of the assignment I was told it would be best to not have books in the art but this just worked, so I sent it, and they picked it:

Here is the runner-up:

This quarter-page for AARP was for a Q&A about a son who wants his father to stop driving. The dad feels he is cured after his cataract surgery but his driving tells a different story:

Here are two ideas from the scrap heap worth sharing:

This little spot was for a column in the New York Observer about a guy who discovers what he loves about nature – that it doesn’t give a crap about mankind. It was totally irreverent and a lot of fun to work on:

Here are two that got away:

This was a small spot for Golf Digest about “thumping” the ball in a sand bunker:

And here are a few recent spots for On the Road in the NYTimes – A young woman talks about aspiring to be a flight attendant in spite of all the drawbacks; passengers are still bringing concealed weapons onto airplanes; United Airlines is testing a new policy of checking bags (and charging passengers) for oversized bags in the overhead bins:

I just added some new posts to the DrawingScience blog which you can check out here. This spot for Science Times this week about how men’s offices are crawling with bacteria (just a tip in case you don’t read the article, I wouldn’t touch the chair or the phone):

And finally before I head off to ICON next week, I wanted to share that one (or more) of my submissions to I Love Charts has been selected for the book. It’s a fun blog with a lot of great contributors and I recommend checking it out on Tumblr, and buying the book.

I didn’t receive my copy yet but here are a couple of my favorites that I hope made it in:

Thanks to Jason, Cody, Joe, Peter, Scott, Doug, Joanna, Dian, and Nicholas!

September 7th, 2011

Newish work, Part I

I took some time off in August, which was nice, and even put off updating the blog so that the Times video could have top billing for a few weeks. But, it’s time to get back to it, so here is the first installment of newish work…

For the NYTimes Book Review, a piece about a woman with Alzheimer’s accused of murdering her neighbor:

For Golf Digest, a spot on how nerves can ruin your swing mid-game:

For the Wall Street Journal, for an article about the ripple effect of corn on the rest of the agribusiness market:

For Replacement Contractor, a spot about promoting one of your salespeople from the field:

For New Jersey Monthly’s dining issue, a sidebar spot about the backlash when changing a restaurant’s menu:

And one more for the NYTimes Education Life section, for a story about changes to the GMAT:

Thanks to Nicholas, Doug, Dan, Pete, Greg and Shannon! Check back next week for a big update on Science Times.

March 1st, 2011

Recent roundup

I am spending a lot of time out of the office this semester, so here is a very overdue update on some recent spots…

I have been regularly illustrating the NYTimes Education Life special section. This most recent spot was for an article about students struggling with the increasingly important college entrance essay:

This was a quick one for Atlanta Magazine about incentives for recycling:

Last month for the NYTimes Book Review, I did this for the book Alone Together, about our relationship with technology and the rise of robot companions:

Not my usual thing, but I was asked to do these little icons demonstrating the “office scarf” for Bloomberg Businessweek:

And finally a super-fast spot for the Wall Street Journal Market Watch column on jobs that are more dangerous than you think:

Next week I’ll be recapping the past month of NYT Science Times and Business Day illustrations, plus a cover and a full-page, and more to follow!

October 27th, 2010

NYTimes plus one

This first spot was for the NYTimes Book Review – a spy novel about a couple on ‘tennis holiday’ who get pulled into a web of international espionage:

Tuesday’s Road column illustration was for a survey of the offerings at a recent business jet convention – from a $65 million dollar Gulfstream and to a $188 set of hi-tech headphones:

Two weeks of Science – Rotifers reproduce sexually or asexually relative to environmental factors like food availability and new developments in Pituitary surgery for dogs:

Last month for American Medical News I illustrated this story about cloud computing:

Hopefully sooner than later I’ll be able to post the job I’m working on now, very exciting!

April 9th, 2010

4 for the Times

As I mentioned in my Ode, I love working for the Book Review. This assignment though was particularly good – an essay about bad parents (think Coraline) replacing the classic absent or dead parent (think Cinderella) in kids’ books and young adult lit. Most of my sketches were satires of children’s literary images, but since the article also covered young adult books, I included sketches like the DWI minivan colliding with the book:

The art director and editors unanimously came back with this decision:

My first ongoing assignment for the Times came from Paul Jean when he was the AD at Circuits. He has since landed at Arts & Leisure and called me to do a piece on downloading classical music. Here are the sketches:

I had sketches due that week for 5 assignments and all of them went for the one I wanted most to finish, including Paul:

So that was Sunday’s Times, and here are the two regulars from Tuesday – the Road column was about jetlag:

And the Science story was about how copper can repair its molecular structure after prolonged exposure to radiation:

February 11th, 2010

Ode to the Book Review

This is the most recent illustration I did for The New York Times Book Review, from last month:

For illustration, the Book Review is an institution. Every Sunday when I was a student, I would get the paper and check there first to see who was working – Niemann, Mirko, Richard McGuire, Boris Kulikov, Robert Grossman’s color spots on the back page; it was a ritual. In addition to (and on occasion, instead of) whatever academic tasks I had on my desk, I would take selections each week from the Book Review to illustrate, my own extracurricular job training. It seemed so mysterious to me then, as if it had its own esoteric style, not illustration style per se, but a methodology, and one that seemed more abstract in terms of the relationship between word and image. Whether that assessment was an accurate one or not, it is how I have approached the assignments, and why I’ve enjoyed working for them so much over the past ten years.

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Posts Tagged ‘Book Review’