Bleeding Heart Show

Man, things have been crazy this week, which have largely kept me from sketching. Luckily the dates lined up and on a day like today, when I don't have a sketch to post, I can post this:



Awhile back John Sandford of Carus publishing sent an email to both the transcendent Kali Ciesemier and myself asking if we could do a joint cover for their Halloween issue of Muse. The cover story was about bleeding heart transplants -- basically a body is brain-dead (the legal definition of dead) but the organs work just fine, so they have a bunch of doctors come in a take organs out while the body is still pumping.

The art director wanted a really visual, really richly hued heart to be the focal point, but wasn't sure of the right context. Kali came up with this idea of having the heart branch off into very lively foliage, going with the concept of these cadavers giving new life to someone else.

If you know our drawing styles, you can probably guess which parts I had a larger influence on and which parts Kali took care of, but in truth, this process was more collaborative than that. After we got my parts of the drawing scanned (as Kali works exclusively digitally), one person would do a chunk of it and then hand off the file and it would go on like that. While Kali and I were both in charge of different areas, I'm not sure there's a pixel there that both of us didn't touch.

After you send a piece in to an art director, there's often a little tweaking that has to happen before you can both agree on it. Our art director had an unusual request for us: "Can you cover the hands in blood?" he asked? Of course, John. Of course.

Did I mention Muse is primarily a kids magazine?