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December 12th, 2011

Penultimate post of 2011

Here are a few jobs from the past month…

This was a section opener for American Medical News about legal help for doctors when online reviews cross the line into defamation:

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So it turns out that the Border Patrol, responsible for busting gun-runners and drug-smugglers, are in fact running guns and smuggling drugs, according to this cover story for the Phoenix New Times:


Cover 12.1_F.indd


And here is the latest Wisdom Circle for AARP The Magazine, this one about a woman who can’t let go of the anger she feels toward her ex:

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Science Times from two weeks ago was about how dolphins waddle under the weight of pregnancy; this next one was about people with grapheme-color synesthesia – the kicker is that we weren’t sure if there would be color on the page that week so the illustration couldn’t rely on it, that was a head-scratcher:

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The NYTimes Biz Day spot last week about alliance airlines and how you never know who will be flying the plane regardless of what your ticket says:

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For Remodeling Magazine, a story about how a quick personal response can satisfy an unhappy customer:

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And finally a quick one for the Saturday Wall Street Journal about how best to complain to retailers in order to get your way (I thought for sure it was going to be one of these “squeaky wheel” sketches):

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But we went with a parody of Lichtenstein for more graphic punch (to which I would add that I did this with absolute love and admiration for one of my favorite artists):

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Thanks to Jennifer, Peter, Joanna, Peter, Joe, Mary, and Mark (and Roy)!

September 14th, 2011

Science Times

Science Times never gets old. Here is a roundup of the past seven weeks of spots…

Elephants may mingle outside their normal circle, but they always maintain a larger, stable social network; “Number sense” in children correlates with mathematical abilities later in life:

SCI_1

New developments in object agnosia (disorder in which an individual cannot recognize ordinary objects); Coriander found to kill antibiotic-resistant food-borne bacteria:

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Honeyguides will lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, and the hatchlings will then immediately kill their foster siblings so they can dominate the parent’s feeding; How memory origin evolves from childhood to adulthood:

SCI_3

Scientists develop a new map for tracing ice movement in Antarctica:

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Thanks to Peter!

July 12th, 2011

NYT Regulars

Here is a catch-up on Science Times from the past few months

Larger-brained birds fare better in urban environments; study shows innate human understanding of Euclidian geometry:

OBOX_1

By analyzing teeth, paleontologists learn some dinosaurs were warm-blooded; coordinated movements to generate warmth in a penguin huddle:

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Using GPS to gather earthquake data; tracing rice genomes reveals cross-breeding:

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Female sparrows prefer the song dialect of local males; Whales survived ice ages by expanding their diets:

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And the last two weeks of Biz Day about ticketing and traffic signal cameras:

TICKETS

April 27th, 2011

Two months of Science Times

I have made no secret of my love for Science Times. No matter what my week is like I look forward to Thursday night and solving whatever subatomic or mammalian conundrum they throw at me…and it done make me smarter, too.

The CA 52 annual is on the newsstand now and Science had a good showing, including this spot from last year about the discovery that the proton is smaller than previously thought (page 155):

SCI_1

But now for more recent discoveries…

Researchers report on the most powerful optical microscope ever created, offering a staggering 6500x magnification, and marine biologists are studying why the call of pilot whale diminishes at certain oceans depths:

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Shortly following the barrage of natural and unnatural disasters in Japan, a Science story came up about the skin-whitening creams that dominate Asian cosmetics. The article featured a new herbal offering in this department and compared and contrasted it with the horribly toxic products currently available on the market. I thought the face in the white cream jar was safe, but the art director felt like anything that could be remotely misconstrued as a humor at the expense of the Japanese was ill-timed. Hard to argue with that…so we went with the ‘whitened’ skull and crossbones:

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Here were a couple of easier ones – recent research shows that memories compete for their place in the brain and microbiologists report on a dye that increases nematode longevity:

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And finally the past two weeks – a report on how rising water levels affect the barrier islands that protect coastlines and how warblers can detect an impostor egg in their nest:

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Thanks to Peter.

March 9th, 2011

Science and Business Day

I haven’t posted any of the weekly NYTimes spots in over a month, so before I get even further behind…

Six weeks of Business Day (from top left) – More overbooking at hotels, getting travelers out of a country amidst protests and violence, travel mishaps, female travelers and assault after the Lara Logan incident, the physics of cramming passengers into an overloaded system, and goodbye free pretzels as Continental tightens their belts:

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And two Science Times spots – A new metallic glass that is stronger and more durable than steel, and the reappearance of teeth in certain frogs:

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January 4th, 2011

What’s new?

Happy New Year, visitor. I ended 2010 by taking off a couple of weeks to recharge the batteries and it was a good move. November and December were busy and I needed some time to regroup before tackling a new year.

I posted some process sketches for my holiday card on Tip Top Gash last month (I’ll link to it below), but I wanted to show the final art here, as well (a bunch of them were never delivered or lost in the mail so if you didn’t receive one, sorry!):

FRONT

As for work-work, I have a lot I want to show so I’ll be playing catch-up throughout January. Last month I did this illustration for The Boston Globe’s Books page for a novel about Marilyn Monroe written from the perspective of her dog, Maf (additional research revealed ‘Maf’ was short for ‘Mafia Honey’, which she chose because he was a gift from Sinatra):

MAF

The original version of this concept had just the kiss-covered dog, front and center. The editors added the cropped profile which pushed the dog off to the side. It turned out fine but I still think it would have been stronger with just the dog…maybe…anyway, Jane at BG is great to work with and it was a fun assignment.

This opener for American Medical News was for a feature about doctors recognizing the value of reviews associated with geo-location technology. I was very much surprised that they went for this sketch, but glad that they did:

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I know I missed posting some of the NYT spots along the way, but here are the past couple weeks of Business Day – business jet companies offer tickets as part of a holiday promotion; a forecast of air travel hassles in the 2011 pipeline:

2011

And finally Science Times – baby girl chimps play with stick toys differently than baby boy chimps; new fingerprint technology for criminal investigations:

STICKS

Next week, more to come, and here is a link to the holiday card sketch post.

December 1st, 2010

NYT, WSJ, NJM

A quick one for The Wall Street Journal last week about how to calculate the tax benefits of converting retirement funds to Roth IRAs:

ROTH

Science Times has been testing my brain for the past few weeks…first, how the structure of the placenta determines how long the gestation period is, and bio-inspired aviation:

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Quick aside here – I have been working at texture for a while, trying to get it right, and it’s coming together finally…the drawing is still done with paper and ink, but the trick was how to make the digital color look less digital. Here is a detail, I think it’s just about there:

DETAIL

And finally, a very fast turnaround with New Jersey Monthly for a column in which the writer went on about how he loves our garden state:

LOVE_NJ

November 16th, 2010

Where you been?

Last Friday I wrapped an assignment that for three weeks consumed every moment of my time. I can’t wait to post the work (23 illustrations) but it might be a little bit. So, while I turned down a few things over the course of said job, I still managed to get in my regulars for the NYTimes

Science this past week was about how children will refuse to help an adult exhibiting bad behaviors, as well as those they perceive to have bad intentions. This was a tough one to illustrate but I was pretty happy with how it turned out:

HELPERS

For several weeks the Road column was about the backlash from rules regarding body imaging machines at airports, and about the hassles of new regulations in general. This week the writer responded to the thousands of emails he’s received on the topic and we decided to illustrate “Q and A” rather than another piece about security:

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The week before, Science was about detectable changes in brain activity when playing a game dishonestly, such as bluffing in poker. Here is the line art and dot screen version along with the full color final:

BLUFF

A couple of weeks back I did another illustration for the NYTimes Education Life. The article was about college students who can’t get into elective classes they want because other students get priority registration:

SEAT

And finally, just a quick follow-up to an old post. Here is a screenshot from IdeaSandbox.com with one of the illustrations I did for them in context…they always make me look good:

SANDBOX