Spectrum, Society of Illustrators

Good news, everyone! These top two pieces were selected to be in Spectrum 18, out this fall. The top one is from Turtle Soup and will appear in the Comics section, while the bottom is of course from The Hobbit, and will be in the Unpublished section.

You can buy prints of that Hobbit piece here, and purchase The Anthology Project, volume 2 here. That one starts shipping on April 27, though I think some folks have picked up copies at a couple of conventions already.
Additionally, this piece, which was done for Plansponsor Europe and went on to be selected (along with a couple other pieces) to appear in the Society of Illustrators 53 book is now part of the Society of Illustrators Travelling Exhibition. The selected pieces will be shown in several schools throughout the country. Cool!

I'm currently working on some cool stuff, but it's still secret, so shhh.

Frogs, kaiju

Hmm, I wonder what this stuff is for?

Kaiju was my lifeblood as a kid. I'm glad Netflix Instant has a few streaming. Helps fill the gaps between NBA playoff games. Ghidorah: Three Headed Monster is my favorite one they've got up. Wish they had Godzilla vs. Megalon or Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.

Elliott Erwitt

I have a small piece in this week's New Yorker about an upcoming "Best Of" show featuring famed photographer Elliott Erwitt. You may know him from this picture? Or maybe this one?

Luckily for me he's also known for this one.

Seems like an interesting fella.

AD Jordan Awan.

And I'm off! To my next adventure!

Carl Fisher's Roads

These pieces accompany an article in the May/June issue of Muse Magazine, titled 'Carl Fisher's Roads.' It's a textbook excerpt about Carl Fisher, an entrepreneur in the early part of the twentieth century who had his finger on the pulse of America's growing need for personal transportation and the hurdles that needed to be overcome.

Highway engineer F.H. Trego recommended packing the following items on a long-distance drive in the early 20th century: an ax, shovel, and four-foot hardwood plank, 50 feet of heavy rope and 16 feet of cable, an extra engine valve, two jacks, two spare tires, three gallons of oil, a pile of cooking and camping gear, and a small pistol.
The first roads were nothing more than glorified game trails.
Early bicycles were extremely dangerous, and the big-wheel bikes (called "ordinaries") were essentially brakeless.
One of Carl Fisher's terrific business models as a bike salesman involved throwing a bike off the roof of a building and then giving a free one to whomever lugged the wreckage back to his shop. He also used a similar tactic when he sold cars later on.

A small diagram of the different layers of the typical road.

Prints of the top three images are available for purchase here.

I always love working for Muse AD John Sandford, though I have a tendency to bite off a whole lot to chew on in his assignments. These are all half or quarter-page spots, but I thought they'd make pretty nice prints, so I ended up working on them quite a bit bigger. Ah well!