Up on Vice Magazine

A recent job of mine just went up on Vice Magazine. It’s an interesting article – a positive story about a bad situation. Have a read here: {Vice}

The neat thing about these illustrations – these are probably the first ‘pro’ work I’ve put out directly based on my ‘Drawing People in Motion’ workshop. (Free PDF download of teaching pamphlet here). As any regular readers know, I’m very involved in the urbansketching.org community, and consequently I think a lot about the value of drawing on location, from life. The spontaneity of un-posed work, versus the ‘polish’ of a studio piece.

Now, these of course are done from photos. The events in the article happened years ago. But the idea is to treat the drawing exactly the same way. Work just as fast, combining from multiple reference sources, try to get the work in the studio to match the energy of the work in the field.  My goal is of course to be going out on assignment, getting reportage in real time. But, in the mean time, the philosophy can be the same.

A side benefit for illustrators is, the drawing part of the job was done in a single day. I imagine that’s not uncommon for editorial artists, but that kind of turn around is something I couldn’t have managed a few years ago. Not sure how important that is in the long run, but its certainly suits the situation in the editorial illustration market right now.

[Images roughly 10×17″, pen and ink and watercolor on yupo]