Illustrated an article about a solo séance at the Chateau Marmont for the online magazine Road Trippers (it’s good! check it out). One of those out-of-the-blue jobs where I met someone at the Indy 500, they liked my drawings and over a year later rec’ed me to an editor looking for some drawings. The turnaround time was ridiculously quick—just a week from 1st contact to the due date. With my clogged schedule I basically did the entire 3 illustration job in one insane 17 hour overnight stretch…but, because the content was so fun, it was actually one of the more enjoyable all-nighters I’ve pulled….
So there’s that.
Illustration is interesting because a reader will pick this article up (or click on it, I guess) and be immersed in what looks like a collaborative world devised by writer and artist (with behind-the-scene presence of an editor, art staff, etc., implied), but in fact I had no contact with Dan Shapiro, the author of the piece. Just a series of breathless texts with the editor, and one phone call the night of the deadline. I did have the article, so I had something very solid to riff on. And they’d asked for something “wild, like Scarfe.” We were all happiest with the first image, in the bathtub. The last image, with the ghost in the room, was both the slickest and the one that’s sort of least successful I think….spells it all out too literally, maybe. Which points out the other big obstacle to getting the best work done: the time constraint. If I had another day or two I could have redone the seance drawing into a wilder technique.
But them’s the breaks in the life of a freelance illustrator. I did get the best text message reply ever when I sent the editor the first two images: “I FUCKING LOVE THESE!!”
