SWAMP MUSIC

A piece for the new Oxford American Music Issue. Cleveland Crochet and the Hill-Billy Ramblers. 50's era cajun garage-billy rock and roll. Real swamp music. At first, I was trying to get these guys all in the jaws of a giant croc, but then I thought it would be great to have a band on a Croc/Swamp tour boat. Thanks to Oskar for picking out the orange.
These guys have like two songs but  Sugar Bee was a major regional hit and even cracked the Billboard top 100.

As usual for these kind of assignments, except for some weirdo-obsessive music blogs there are hardly any photographs or other evidence these guys existed. These are the two reference photos I had to work with.

Early promo shot of the band.

The bandleader, Cleveland Crochet.

I'm honestly not usually a fan of Cajun or Zydeco music, the insistent oompah beat grates on me after a while. But this early stuff when rock and country and R & B were a little less defined is very interesting. Think a white Little Richard backed with a lap steel, fiddle and an accordion and you got yourself some Hill Billy Rambling jam.

LOVE-A-RAMA

This is a piece for Oxford American Magazine. Leon Bass is a Rockabilly performer who had a couple hits in the 60's and is from Alabama. He stopped performing in the 70's and worked a factory job.
In the late 90's producers from Hollywood contacted him about using one of his songs in a movie and with the renewed interest in his work, he began to perform again.
This is one of his more famous tunes.

YOUR KIDS ARE ANIMALS!

A recent piece in this month's Philadelphia Magazine. Two best friends have kids. One kid is wild the other is not. Because of this, the friendship begins to crumble, a touchy subject is handled deftly via excellent art direction from Jesse Southerland and liberal use of animal stand-ins.

HEAD BANDS AND SNACKCYCLES

Finished a sweet assignment for BYU's McKay Today. For an article on keeping kids fit through their lives as told by a PE teacher/life coach. The AD wanted something fun and light with healthy foods and exercise.

They needed three images and I sketched out three loose concepts. Above is a kids based one with fruits and even a grapefruit slice bicycle.

The next series was more directly a concept the AD had of using fruits and veggies as excercise equipment, my fav here is the bicycle driven snack machine. Seems like a good idea to patent.

And lastly the idea of a life coach who is over the top and training people in places that are not the gym. Like dinner while doing push-ups and chair pose at your desk without a chair.

Ultimately they ended up picking my three favorite illustrations of the bunch. The Bi-cep fruit boy at the top, the vending machine, and the grapefruit bike. He just asked that there be a range in age.

Here are the other two finals. Seems like I'm doing a lot of bikes lately? Weird.

WHAT THE DOG SAW

Just finished a new piece for Canada's Cottage Life Magazine. An illustration for a Q&A page about wood bugs. Apparently a common problem in cottages in Ontario. They are roaches, but they eat wood, not food. Harmless but gross looking. They wanted a humorous piece that would show the bugs vacationing like the human occupants. Here's the final and sketches below.

Working on this piece reminded me of our apartment in Brooklyn. We had GIANT "water bugs" same thing as the wood bugs but they hung out around water. Going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, there might be a giant scary friend in the toilet waiting to greet you. Aggghhhh!!

CRITICAL MASS

Details from a piece in this weeks BusinessWeek Magazine.
Hi tech gizmos for all kinds of bike riders.
Like HD helmet cams that also track you by gps.
If you make that sweet jump, you're gonna want all your  friends on Facebook to see it and know the exact place on earth it happened.

WOLFPACK

Holiday Parties bring them together.

Future Shock!

A piece for the Oxford American. They asked a few illustrators to illustrate what they thought buildings would be like in 2050.
I was thinking about this and went forward with a theory about structures being made of living tissue from animals. Very traditional in a way, but the fact that the skin is kept alive and not dead is where it gets interesting.

Super Dad

Another couple pieces for the Improper Bostonian. A dad to be, decides to learn as much as possible before his child arrives. His quest brings him to a whale spotting class,  instructions on driving a city bus and more practical ones like infant cpr. The article wasn't completed at the time of the assignment but there were plenty of visuals with the little info I got.

AN ISLAND DIVIDED

Just finished up a couple pieces for the Improper Bostonian. An essay on the two sides of Martha's Vineyard and the types of folks who identify with either group. The AD went with this concept of well known lighthouses from either island getting ready to tussle. I learned a couple things too, that Islanders refer to UP and DOWN island even though it runs East to West. And everywhere that is not Martha's Island is just called OFF ISLAND. Hilarious.
Plus a couple little details that I added for my own amusement.

HAPPY JUNE

It's official. Summer is here. I'm currently recovering from the first major 3 day cookout weekend. This piece is in the current Philadelphia Magazine.  Really nice design interaction with the type from AD Jesse Southerland.
Free surprise poster to the first person who can name all  Philly sites and references in this piece. I'll give you a hint, there are fourteen.

IF THE HEAD FITS, WEAR IT.

I did a piece for The Atlantic that is out on newstands now. This job was partly a result of my being outed for being a Deadhead and...well yeah I admit it. I LOVE the Dead. Not in that college dorm/ American Beauty/lightweight kind of way. But in a deep, Dark Star counting /Cornell 77 /Set 2 kind of way. 
Anyway, this article is really interesting in that it explores the visionary way the Grateful Dead approached marketing, creating value by giving away your product for free, forging social networks etc. All the things that corporations are trying to do today in a post internet world.