My Son's Left Shoe

How does a drawing make an ordinary shoe look interesting?

Office Tools

One of my limbering up exercises is to draw something nearby. Preferably something with a little elaboration to it. It's as much to limber the eye and the mind as the hand. Drawing something real teaches you not to fake or anticipate or invent, and often as not the seen is intriguing enough in its native lines and construction.

















The imperfection of the drawing is part of its interest. Why did I make this mistake here or misconstrue that attachment? Made things have shapes and curves that are just as sexy as the human body, or almost, or perhaps we see allusions from one to the other. Maybe designers gravitate toward the sexual when shaping things. Sometimes, though, a hole punch is only a hole punch.

Untranslatable (Verbal vs. Visual)

Over the weekend I illustrated another Untranslatable feature for wwword.com. (Edited by my friends Lucy Sisman and Tamara Glenny.) Always fun; always educational, the column discusses words and phrases that don't travel well from one culture to another. Translating words into images is difficult enough in one language. Luckily the job of explaining is left to the writer. My job is to make the adjacent text look interesting, to highlight the culture it's from, write out the word and hint at the meaning. Overexplaining is a sin among illustrators, which is why we use shorthand. Gestures, icons, puns, allusions. These tricks go back to the ecclesiastic art stuck up on church walls to occupy the faithful who couldn't read and didn't comprehend the Latin liturgy anyway. This drawing is a lot like these medieval puzzle pictures, although it's more playful than complex. The smug face (are any people as smug as the Swiss?), the protective hand, the national flag, the iconic Matterhorn, the word in question, layered in colors the way language is layered with meanings.

Little Drawing, Big Topic

I did some art yesterday for the New York Times op-ed page. The topic, while not as important as the sexual foolishness of a congressman, is pretty important: congressional gridlock, two political parties unable to compromise. Not a sexy issue. Given such a small space the key is to convey the essence in as few lines as possible, so I drew two angry men face to face. I drew them several ways.



















































To underline the nature of the confrontation I thought of overlaying the word NO in a gray tone.



















































I liked the look, but wondered whether it added nuance or unhelpful complexity. Did it distract? The point of this small illustration in the letters column isn't to make readers stop and make sense of it but to make them read the adjacent letters. We left the word NO out.

The word NO also conveyed a false equivalency. It implied that both parties were saying NO with equal force, which I don't think is true. One of the two parties has shown a greater flexibility over the past decade. Yes, they are both angry, but I think the one party (the one on the left) is angry because it's tired of always giving in.

I'm saying this very carefully because the illustrator's job isn't to shape the meaning but to convey it, which is also the job of journalists. I think False Equivalency is a big problem. If there are two sides to an argument a journalist is supposed to impart both of them in a fair manner. This sometimes puts the writer in the uncomfortable position of treating foolishness and intelligence the same, or fairness and bigotry, or greed and generosity. If you equate moderation and extremism equally and without any negative weight on one side, after a while the more extreme position is rewarded and encouraged.

Is it a cop-out for an artist to go only as far as the text goes and no further? Or is that his job? A lot of thought and worry goes into a small drawing.

June Sky

It's one of those perfect days in June and I moved my studio onto the screen porch for the morning. There have been some strange gyres and bumps this past week but today is quiet and pleasant and the clouds in the sky are the kind that don't worry anyone. Today is plain all right. I am busy drawing, waiting for the next big project, working on some writing I'd set aside, doing what I do well.

The Corporate Ladder

Sometimes metaphors invent themselves. You dream them, or daydream them, putting them together out of puns and wordplay. I did a series of drawings beginning with the little walk we do with our fingers. This drawing grew out of that. I'm not sure what it means. Is it the corporate ladder? Or is it life's ladder, a kind of Jacob's ladder that ends who knows where? Tops of ladders always seem dangerous to me.

Les belle dames sans merci

I remember the line from Tennyson, but I can't remember if it is the beautiful woman without mercy or the beautiful woman who always says "No, thank you." Don't blame me for the mercilessness of these faces. I drew them after leafing through a copy of Vogue.

Eyeglasses Times Six

A few drawings of eyeglasses make an interesting pattern.

Spark Plug

Small familiar things are fun to draw. This image is very low res, but pencil takes on an interesting texture when it's blown up at high resolution and colored. You begin to see the rough energy where graphite and paper meet.

Spring finally arrived and left again

I waited to post this till it had stopped snowing, but today it's predicted to hit 85. Summer already.

Aristocrats

I did this pair for ZEIT magazine, published in Berlin. The art director was Michael Biedowicz. I had a hand in some of the captions. The English aristocracy has been a lifelong fascination of mine. The story appeared the week of the royal wedding.

My debut in Rolling Stone

Thirty years ago I sent an envelope full of xeroxes to the art department at Rolling Stone. They liked the art enough to publish quite a few of my little maps and squibs on the letters page in 1981 and 82. A nice gig, but I was never named gardening editor, never met Hunter Thompson. My style has evolved quite a lot since my salad days.

Mission Accomplished

I drew this cartoon eight years ago and sent it off to Bob Mankoff at my favorite magazine. Actually, I realize it was almost eight years ago today that I drew it. It was never published. America was immune to ironies at the time. I don't feel celebratory today either. It's all too somber. It's no time for hubris or cheers or feeling satisfied. We and the world deserve better. Luckily we have more serious leadership now.

Pretty Nice Company

It's flattering to be included with all these book cover heroes in this new collection from AltitudeSF. I owe much to the art direction of Susan Mitchell and Mr. Waters.

Orientation (a book of stories)

This is an instance of a sketchbook drawing finding a life in print. The pencil drawing has become a whole new metier, a new style for me since the cover of the John Waters book, which is nice because I think in pencil. So I can take a thought, darken the line a little or a lot, add color, shift color, create variations. I sent this pencil drawing to the art people at Farrar Straus and Charlotte Strick replied saying she had just the book for it. A book of stories by Daniel Orozco (Faber, 2011). (Faber and Faber is another imprint they publish.) I added the color to the faces, inserted a couple of women's faces (it had originally been just odd looking men), devised the colored type, did an FF colophon in pencil and a scribbled edge for the back and flap.

Now available in a store near you. (And, as one short story writer to another, the stories are pretty great.)

The Malling of America

When the Mall of America opened a few miles from here I made careful plans never to set foot in it. (I'm a neighborhood shopper.) Then I got a call to illustrate Ian Frazier's piece in the Atlantic. I did eventually visit MOA, and wasn't surprised that I hated the place. Big isn't better, it's just bigger. This illustration was art directed by Mary Parsons in 2002.

Home on the Range

I did this art for Bon Appetit a few years ago, and since then have written a couple of things for David Leite's blog, Leite's Culinaria. We have this same Viking in our kitchen, so I suppose the art is a bit of a self portrait. Ours was not carried in sherpa fashion.

The Zen of Snorkeling

This is one of four illustrations I just finished for Shambhala Sun magazine, art directed by Liza Matthews. It makes me want to explore the underwater mysteries of Lake Harriet, which I can see from my studio window. Might be a bit cold; the ice just melted this past week. No exotic fish, mostly sunnies and northerns. Someone snagged a six foot sturgeon in the lake a few years ago. It was older than I am.

The End of the Book

I am writing about books these days, working on a book about books and bookstores as endangered species. About the book as something on paper you can (or used to be able to) hold in your hand. As something that doesn't require electricity, except after dark. I did this illustration a few years ago for Mary Parsons at the Atlantic. Looking at it again it could work as a depiction of the virtual library in which fonts and words are divorced from their protective covers. Once all the books are virtual they can all be burned with a flick of a switch. It makes me shudder. Booksellers and librarians are the curators of our culture. We need them.

Ballplayer

I can almost hear the crack of the bat. Hello baseball. This sketchbook painting is from a few summers ago, but the ballplayer is from longer ago when muscles were grown by hauling ice and lifting bales.

Toy Pistols

On the 30th anniversary of the attempted assassination (and subsequent deification) of Ronald Reagan, it seemed fitting to put up some handgun art. It's also the anniversary of the terrible injuring of Reagan's press secretary James Brady. Brady never recovered, never got his job back, and then lost many of his friends when he and his wife began an organization opposing gun violence. He was demonized by some of the same people who deified his former boss. Irony is lost on some people. I did this drawing for a group that opposes handgun violence, but it was never used. And I see why. The guns I drew are simply too interesting, too fun, too iconic. They are like toys or playfully phallic little machines, perfectly sized to carry in one's pocket. I grew up playing with toy guns, so maybe some of this old fascination endures like a tattoo you forget you have, but I outgrew my boyhood gun fetish. It's fun to draw them and watch movies about them but I don't own one. They seem like relics of an interesting former age.

Grade Inflation

I did this illustration for a Time magazine article about grade inflation, a fashionable topic at the time. What's interesting to me, and I don't hear it discussed at all, is how much smarter our kids are than we were. Since business metrics were applied to public schools during the Reagan years, and we began requiring test scores to climb by X amount per year, and Y amount per dollar expended, I calculate that our children's brains have grown to around 2 1/2 times larger and 5 or 6 times faster than ours were at their ages. So maybe grades haven't inflated enough.

Climbing Trees

I watched an old home movie last week and there was one scene of a kid fifty feet up a hickory tree; myself at age nine. I was always climbing trees. With three children, my parents obviously were not terribly concerned. I was a spare. I'd given it up years before the New Yorker called me to do this illustration, but my familiarity with the sport (can I call it a sport?) made the assignment a felicitous one. There are actually tree climbing competitions, apparently. Wish I'd known this when I was nine. I think what makes the illustration work was my decision to render the tree in black and white. Black and white makes colors more colorful. Owen Philips art directed.

Playing with Real Estate

A few years ago I was asked to illustrate an article about a middle aged hippy dot.com millionaire who was dabbling in real estate. I decided to depict him this way, with a millionaire's top hat, Hawaiian shirt and sandals, playing with houses. Which just about describes it.

Into the Garden

At this time last year our lawn was beginning to green up. This year it's still under two feet of snow. That's March for you. But studies carefully conducted by university scientists have shown that spring does inevitably follow winter, at least in theory. Unless the melting polar icecap has found a new home in southern Minnesota. I did this illustration for the Washington Post, where they've also had their share of snow this year. But I'm sure spring is much further along in DC. I envy them.

Vacationing With Tweety and Sylvester

I did this illustration for an article about vacationing with pets. A concept I've never had the luxury to explore, but, hey, there are people whose pets have more disposable income than I do.

Dreaming of playing the Saxophone

I have the same dream once in a while. I'm in a jazz club, one of those places with lots of smoke and a low ceiling and the sound of ice clinking in cocktail glasses, and I'm onstage playing the saxophone like Stan Getz or Paul Desmond. In this dream, it's as easy as touching the valves on the instrument.

la Tempietto

When we were in Rome we stayed a stone's throw away from what many consider the most perfect building in Europe. It's tucked away at the top of the Janiculum Hill, and worth the climb. There is something felicitous about a quick drawing, imprecise and imperfect, of a precise and perfect building.

Follow the Money

I can't remember who I did this for, possibly for a magazine called Business Ethics, art directed by Mark Simonson. Nor can I remember what concept I was describing. But it could be a diagram of our moneyed lives. I see a lot of Brad Holland influence in the line. I used to do a lot of crosshatching. Also a bit of David Levine, and something of a Minneapolis artist I admired named Pete Bastianson. Wonder where he is today, possibly surfing daily off the coast of Baja. I can picture it.

A Chair

A chair in a photograph in an old house. I just like the look of it. I don't know if it's comfortable.

I am not a Camera

There is a stairway up to a public balcony on a church opposite the Radcliffe Camera, giving you the best view there is of Oxford. The sweep of the High, the spires of All Souls, the narrow streets, glimpses of grass-carpeted quadrangles hidden away from the foot traffic. But it is the Camera that holds the attention. A baroque church dome divorced from its boring liturgical parts, or maybe a church built for one person. I've never been inside, but a photograph taken from this ground level perspective greets my eye when I wake every morning. It is my favorite building in Europe, but most people I tell about it think it is a one-hour photo shop somewhere in Boston.

Barber Shop

The sort of place I went as a kid to read Field & Stream. I'd think about looking at Esquire or Playboy but never did.

Life is a Quest

I did this illustration for Buddhadharma magazine, art directed by Seth Levinson. The article was about finding ones way among many options. Sometimes a metaphor, like this signpost, seems inanimate and I want to add some life to it. I often add birds. They add color too. It's an apt choice in this case, because birds are migratory, and have an admirable sense of direction. The last thing I added was the blue drop shadows, to give it a suggestion of sunshine.

Kids and Toys and Stereotypes

This illustration is one of a series I did for a book titled Rethinking Pop Culture. This chapter was about how stereotyping dictates the toys our kids play with, something majority children wouldn't notice. The art director was the excellent Patrick J B Flynn.

Love-Hate

I did this illustration for Buddhadharma magazine. The concept of loving and hating the same person suggested the mirror image, and the same face expressing these opposite emotions. Art direction by Seth Levinson.

Valentine Art

I drew this yesterday, in pencil, and put it in an envelope. But not before scanning it and converting it into color.

Genuine Mustard

There is a thingness about familiar products. Their printed labels say "genuine" but any certainty is conferred by our own eye that recognizes the brand elements. We know at a glance that it is what it says it is. There's also the guarantee from context. Powdered mustard is less likely to be counterfeited which is why you can seldom purchase it out of the trunk of a car or from a furtive gentleman in a trenchcoat. You have to go to a grocery store, and who is more trustworthy than a grocer? It doesn't hurt to know the royal family likes it too.

The Puzzle of Egypt

I did this illustration for a feature article in the Atlantic, probably something by P. J. O'Rourke, whose pieces called for an ironic edge. Despite everything, Egypt is still there, still sweeping its problems under the pyramid, so to speak. Rioting erupted this week, in reaction to events in nearby Tunisia, and the riot police were called out. The Nile and the adjacent desert appear to be unaffected.

Kids & Science

I did this a week ago for Children's Advocate, a magazine published out of Berkeley, but art directed by my old friend Patrick JB Flynn out of Madison, Wisconsin. (Isn't web commerce marvelous?) It was a fun project, especially since I'd just converted some of our old family videos to DVD and we'd been watching our kids toddling around at this young age. (They are now taller than their parents.) The tilted overhead perspective is something I used to do more often. I think I probably learned it by studying Steven Guarnaccia's illustrations years ago, who probably learned it from Japanese prints. I learned from the same sources that narrowing my palette made the composition more coherent, and that gray and black made the other colors brighter.

Wedgewood

I did this illustration for Shambhala Sun magazine, art directed by Liza Matthews and published out of Nova Scotia. (Who knew N.S. was a major center of Buddhism?) The story told how one man's peace and quiet was disturbed by a neighbor's rock music, and how he restored peace. The suburb he lived in happens to be called Wedgewood, which suggested the ceramic metaphor.

Lightbulb Earth

I did this illustration for Technology Review (M.I.T., art directed by Lee Caulfield). Another metaphor for a technologically advanced planet, but consider the fragile filament, and the fact that the large hand (of fate? of God?) is about to turn it off.

Sometimes I Feel Like A Hamburger

I did this illustration about ten years ago for the Philadelphia Inquirer's Sunday Magazine, for an article about eating habits. I probably went out and had a bar hamburger, just for research purposes. It's interesting for me to look at how much my line varies from image to image. Sometimes it's careful and controlled, almost quiet, other times (like here) the outline darts in quick parabolas. The arms are rubber and the physique is joyously oddball. This is not a careful drawing but it isn't sloppy; I like to say it's offhand. Like something drawn by Bemelmans. It was Bemelmans who gave me permission to quit worrying about all the live figure drawing I never got around to.

The Politics of Tea

I wrote a little bit about the original Boston Tea Party in my book. Those hooligans were as ragtag as the current ones. They too were worked up about politics outside their control; then it was about overseas trade more than taxes to fund social programs. (There were no social programs then.) Today's tea partiers have legitimate fears, fears that many of us share. It's the way those fears are being channeled that should worry us. Also in my book is the story about John Adams, a young lawyer, who in the aftermath of the Boston Massacre, undertook the legal defense of the British soldiers charged with murder. Today he would be hung in effigy. Our early democracy was more complex and open-minded than many of today's so-called "patriots" would like to believe.