For Crains NY. Joseph Sitt Coney Island real-estate developer. My opinion is it will never be as good as it was. The Mermaid Day Parade rocked!

The late edition of the drips were added in photoshop. We didn’t hash that part out so clearly in the sketch. I imagined a puddle collecting at the bottom but was hung up with the initial explanation from the editors using a reference to when the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz had water thrown on her and she began to melt. The scene showing her feet shrivelling up under her skirt was stuck in my head. It took a little extra work around deadline time, but I think we got it pretty good.

Cover for The Week again. They changed the format of the cover beginning with this issue. Anthony, the main designer from London who works for Mr. Dennis (the guy who owns everything) came out to art direct this one. They really wanted to emphasise the crowd. My first sketch was more of a panoramic view to show thousands, but several revisions later, it was a little more intimate so you could see facial expressions on the people.

Cover for The Week.

For an online blog. I don’t remember the name off the top of my head.

I ask for patience while I figure out my Final Cut program for video. Just have zero time to figure it out! Here are some recent things I’ve been painting.

Kim Jong Il cover for The Week Magazine.

The government owns GM Obama as a used car salesman. Cover for The Week.

This is one of a bunch of quick studies in gouache on Bristol. Simple color, nothing fancy, just simple look and draw and paint. I’ll share some more later.

Been channeling R. Crumb this afternoon to come up with a nice portrait for a special client. Had a great day walking around the SoHo and West Village area in Manhattan. Ended up at my gym on 14th St. and then “Cup of Joe” coffee shop before getting on the “L” train back to Bushwick. I wish I could freeze everyone in place for a few hours sometime so I could draw everyone I see. There were some great faces riding back to Brooklyn with me today!

Sometimes just cartooning is fun. I met a guy named Steve Silver at the National Caricature Network’s annual convention in Raliegh, NC last Nov. He does a lot of character development for animation. I sat in on his drawing seminar and got re-inspired to design characters and just plain draw more. I had fallen in to the habit of only drawing when I had a job. That just got me in a rut. I’ve been trying to pay attention to the gesture of my figures even in a more conservative composition. I’m even trying to get the gesture of a landscape or automobile.

This week’s Sports Illustrated Players article illustration.

This is a quick pencil doodle I dashed off after waking up late this morning after being up ’til 4:30am finishing my deadline for The Week Mag. This is actually my self image I have after most all-nighters…. I don’t know what is in the bottle. Coffee in  juice form?

Cover for The Week.

New York is getting wacky again. Cool!

My portrait. It’s under the Jan. 25th entry.

Clayton Cubitt came to my studio to do a long portrait of my girl, Molly Crabapple, and asked if he could do mine. He called it stealing 5 minutes of your soul. Not feeling that I had one to steal, I told him to have at it. He sets up a shot and clicks start on the video button of his camera. My job was to hold still and stare at the camera for 5 minutes. This is me holding still. I apparently can’t do this simple task.

Sports Illustrated asked for a more challenging illustration this last week. Peyton Manning seems to have a good sense of humor and SI wanted to convey this in a quick way.

They asked to have him in Groucho Marx make-up. So I watched a couple of Marx Brother clips on You Tube and put Peyton in the slouch walk. We got a late start on Sun. so I didn’t have much time to figure out a better poses etc.