Turkey

This is a drawing I did for the Wall Street Journal a few years ago, depicting how I find my turkey every year. Once again, there is a special charm in simple black line art.

Deciderer, Part II

I did this drawing in the messy, expensive aftermath of Bush's "victory" in Iraq. It's jarring to make a comical drawing of someone who created so much harm and crisis.

Thanksgiving USA

I got a fun asssignment from Family Circle last month. (A very smartly designed magazine; if you haven't looked recently, do.) The geography of Thanksgiving idea is reminiscent of a Geography of Christmas map I did for Graphique de France a while back, but it also reminded me of those elementary school murals we did of pilgrims and Indians and turkeys and the whole scene. Cut paper and paste. FC Creative Director Karmen Lizzul is one of my old friends from SPY magazine, where I did several maps for her.

Visualizing Words, Chapter 1

Illustration is harder than it looks. None of the effort is supposed to appear on the paper. And a lot of my work time is spent with my eyes closed or looking into space, trying to visualize a metaphor. This drawing is one of a series I did for WWWord, the new online magazine for word people: editors, writers, poets, teachers, readers, grammarians, crossword puzzlers, scrabble players.

Quick––bookmark it!

Suburbia A to Z

I've been working on textile designs for the past several weeks. This was just one of the ideas I worked up. Fabric has always made me think of the domestic landscape; the way patterns and shapes are repeated, the harmony of colors. I've been working on a book following the long unfolding story of a road in a more linear fashion. This image is a variation on that. A short excerpt from a remembered suburbia.

Bush Jr. Returns

Junior is back on TV this week, touting a new book about how he grappled with decisionmaking. One can almost picture it. Anyway, I thought it might be worth trotting out this diagram I painted for the New Yorker. This is as accurate a picture of the Bush White House's decidering process as I've seen. Flow charts are a very useful form. A map of a thought process or a criminal transaction or, in this case, a muddled philosophy.

Tea Party Politics

This is one of three sketches I did for a New York Times editorial page assignment. The topic was the Tea Party. They went with the simpler one of the hand holding a ballot, but I liked this one best. I probably should have included a few dollar signs in the voice balloon, since the Tea Party was organized and funded by two secretive New York oil billionaires.