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Cover for The Week Magazine. Out today!.. unless you are reading this after Friday.  Sometimes I have to illustrate subjects I don't know a lot about. Israel would be one of those things. I know how and why it was created. Anything after those facts gets argued without end. Living in New York City you meet people who are Jewish all the time. From what I'm told, these are not the Jewish people that compose Israel. I've only met a few actual Israelis and most have been pretty cool. I've met some Palestinians (at the same party no less!) and they've been pretty nice as well. That part is pretty simple, then you ad religious differences, repression, and history, in different proportions and you have a complicated mess.
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I have an adventure planned. All I'll say for now is it's a mural for charity in another country. Very exciting! As a young guy in college I had the attitude that an artist should be open to all possibilities to experience life. My art was only part of that lie. I didn't focus on one technique, I was open to all of them. Or at least tried to be. I like different things about different medium and some times the idea will dictate what media needs to be used. I use very small watercolor brushes when I paint in gouache. When I paint a mural on the wall I'm planning, I'll be using sponges, rollers, and brushes. My style approach will be affected as well. 
Playing around with a new surface to paint on with gouache. My friend Travis Louie gave me some scraps of hotpress illustration board to try out last time I visited him. His studio looks like an art store as it doubles as his supply closet as well. Very similar to my own! I find so much inspiration from my friends. Sometimes just seeing something they posted on Face Book or their blog is more than enough to light a fire under my ass! I'm still struggling with this paper but I see a lot of potential. This is still not finished yet. My plan is to see how much "polish" I can do on this so I know what I'll be able to do with it in the future. 
No, not all your dirty secrets. Tell all your friends and acquaintances how cool my website is! Or not. But I hope you do. My girl friend had two tickets drop in to her lap last Friday. Art Spiegleman gave a talk called "Wordless" with Phillip Johnston at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University. It was Art giving an informative talk about storytelling and how the woodblock prints of Lynd Ward and others were early forms of graphic novels. It was interrupted and some times accompanied by incredible jazz that went perfect with the images displayed on the screen on the stage and Art's narration. I did this last week. If you are subscribing to my Newsletter, you already saw this. I was trying some things out. Looser approach, limited palette. I had a lot of fun with this! 
This is the story for the latest cover for The Week Magazine. Hillary Clinton is a difficult politician to do a caricature portrait. There are several reasons. She is a controversial figure. People seem to either hate her with incredible passion or love her with about the same passion. I am finally seeing her in the "Politician" category. I had her pigeonholed as President Bill Clinton's wife for years. I was indifferent to her before when she was just President Clinton's wife. Then she started moving in as this entitled person when she jumped in as a senator of NY. Then dropped out and became President Obama's Secretary of State. And now there are no clear standout leaders to oppose her being the Democratic nominee for President next year. As soon as she decided to run for the senate everyone knew her real ambition was to eventually run for president. That's when I became unhappy with her. I guess it's the 1776 revolutionary spirit I didn't know I had in me that doesn't like kings and queens and dynasties. I didn't like the Bushes and I'm not going to like the Clintons. The dilemma I see forming is Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. Both running on elitist entitlement. I'm so happy to be a caricaturist so I can make fun of both sides. At least I have that. The Week editorial staff prefers to treat Mrs Clinton respectfully, so when they ask me to illustrate her, they don't want the cruelest caricature ever done. I don't see caricature as being cruel, but if you exaggerate honestly, those can be the most biting images. There are multiple audiences and depending on which one you are in, this will color your opinion of the caricature. To play it safe, The Week prefers less exaggeration. So I don't exaggerate much, but the tricky part is that Mrs Clinton is a close to 70 year old woman. She has some wrinkles and wear and tear on her face. I need those wrinkles to make it look like her. Sometimes I have to tone them down and I get feedback from people who thought I was too nice to her and others say I was very respectful. This time they just said make it look like her and they recognized she wasn't going to look like some Hollywood starlet in her early 20's. This was awesome, because When I second guess myself while working, the results are never satisfying. Usually just for me though. 
First sketch. Photo Shop over a pencil drawing I scanned. This is the sketch they look at to see if everything is going where they want. 
In the previous sketch I was trying to not make the shoes too dark so I thought, "why not match the balance bar with the shoes? Lipstick, bar and shoes all match!" They didn't like the red shoes. In my head I had the line from a David Bowie song from Let's Dance "Put on your red shoes and dance the blues". 
All finished. Blue suit was their request. The back ground I kept loose and somewhat painterly. Softened the clouds and mountains in PS and a few distracting paint marks on her face. 
I hadn't rid my mind of Mrs Clinton's face even after the job so I did a little doodling in my sketch pad with ink and gouache.
Here is another lame report about my travels. Mostly because I just lost an hour of writing a clear entry with names and insights and now I'm in too bad a mood to remember all the BRILLIANCE I just spewed. But it was great I tell ya! Kevin Buckland and Pertain Gillespie got a good "thank you" for organizing the Art at the Arnold. Paula (pictured) was one of the body builders or fitness models who posed for me. She was so cool! Jason my old roommate from CCAD got a huge thank you for carting me around and lending me his easel. Jim, one of my other roommates from college came down from Cleveland and it was good to see him again! There were a bunch of really nice artists I got to paint alongside and I would give it five stars out of five. Here's some photos. 
I'm pretty sure she told me her name was Paula. I thought it was fun catching people from the crowd checking her out. (Purple arrow)
Art show set up on the last day. The character on the lower right was caught trying to smuggle my painting out in his sock. We ate dinner afterward.
Acrylic on canvas 24" x 36"
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