2018 Illustration Roundup part 2

Spring has sprung and this girl and her salt and pepper giant Schnauzer are out taking in the cherry blossoms. Dress by Prabal Gurung. The final illustration in my "4 seasons girls with giant breed dogs series".  

This one goes back to the late '30s in style. This series was chosen for the Society of Illustrator's annual show. 

Elon Musk, wearing SpaceX's prototype flight suit with the Falcon Heavy rocket in the background.

Do we need to slow the growth of technology? For 01Net magazine in Paris.

Ultraportable laptops battle it out. For 01Net magazine in Paris.

For an article with various points about voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa and it's spying capabilities. One creepy passage said it can tell when you wake up and maybe even whom you slept with.

Stella by Starlight (星影のステラ) Album EP cover art for Akira Matsumura (松村明) , Japanese jazz pianist.

Should we teach coding in school? For 01Net magazine in Paris. LittleBits is one of the companies that make these modules that can be connected and coded to say, make a light blink or use a motion detector module to sound an alarm when your older brother has entered your room. I wish these were around when I was a kid!

Art for Military Officers Association of America's military families initiative which helps with jobs and their scholarship fund which provides educational assistance. My brother in law was a military officer and gets the magazine in the mail so it was nice to be able to use the fam for this project.

Perhaps my favorite actor, Bill Murray. This is a nod to Groundhog Day, The Life Aquatic, and Moonrise Kingdom.

New Year's Eve 2018

Our sad grey future.

look how dumb bob looks.

we are old now and no one particularly cared about partying on New Year's eve so we just had a little thing at our house again.

poor Jen had to hang out with us. Steven and Foo's Japanese girlfriends were both in Japan so that had nothing else to do but hang out with us.

we spent the ball drop at Buttermilk

don't get excited about 2019 you fools, spoiler alert, it's grey

look how dumb bob looks

Happy New Year....yay

steven got 3 sheets to the wind and we convinced him to sleep over and he really wanted to go home but he came back to our house as did everyone else and he'd take his coat and boots and vest off and lay down and then 2 min later we'd see him sit up, put his vest and coat on and go to the door and put his boots on and then we'd say something like don't go steven we'll miss you, and then he'd grunt and close the door and take his boots off and his vest and coat and lay down again. This happened at least 3 times and we all laughed a lot. Eventually he got a Lyft car home and bob had to go with him downstairs because he kept wanting to just walk off before the car was there. 2019 started with a hangover once again.

2018 Illustration Roundup Part Four

Enjoy summer while you can. Inspired by a photo of Marylin Monroe doing archery on the beach. Poster size 24 x 36".

Inspired by a 1940s photo of Gene Tierney and art by Polish Illustrator WT Benda. Poster size 24 x 36". The center chest tattoo is of Chand Bibi, a woman Indian muslim regent and warrior, best known for defending Ahmednagar against Mughal forces.

Summer is officially over, I hope you got your Summer activities in this year! 

Life on Mars will depend on mining. Humans will need raw materials to live and delivering them to Mars from Earth will be too expensive so the answer is off Earth mining Mars and even asteroids and comets. 11 min read on Medium.com https://medium.com/s/greatescape/our-destiny-lies-in-the-stars-bring-a-shovel-57327bcf87f6

Better, healthier zoos are making animals better at escaping. As zoos design more natural and engaging habitats the animals are getting healthier and smarter. For Medium.com’s Great Escape series. It's an 11 minute read they say https://medium.com/s/greatescape/the-gorilla-in-the-room-37ec8bdb948

Back to school time. Being a teacher in Betsy DeVos’ home state of Michigan for Hour Detroit Magazine. Spoiler, it’s not good.

Savannah Cummins, climber and photographer. For Climbing magazine

Who owns your data? for 01Net magazine in Paris. Oh the French! They didn’t shy away from the nudity based on the famous French Revolution painting, "Liberty Leading the People" by Eugène Delacroix.

After a trip to the rural midwest Chris Rose writes about how bad the crime is in New Orleans in comparison.

2018 Illustration Round up part 1

The future of Business for the Boston Globe

The autumn entry into my 4 seasons of high fashion women with giant breed dogs series. A Borzoi sittin’ shotgun in a 1950 Jaguar XK120 OTS. Centuries old Korean art tattoos, a Bicorne Skimmer hat by Lilly Daché, and the suit is by Frost Brothers. This piece was chosen for the Society of Illustrators annual show. 

For the Radio Times in London about Daryl Gregory’s book, Spoonbenders about a family who pretended to have psychic superpowers in the 70s. The wanted something with a 70s gig poster feeling

In 1870 the Croquet Association outlawed "Sparking", which is stepping on your ball when it's touching your opponents ball, striking your own and sending theirs flying. It is still used in backyard games and is the most fun aspect of the game for me. If you savagely "spark" someone's ball you could be asking for a fight. 1950s stylings, Japanese Ukiyo-e tattoos. Prim and proper meets rebellion and self expression. This series was chosen for the Society of Illustrator's annual show. 

As the Waymo v. Uber trail begins it has Silicon Valley asking where the line between intellectual property ends and theft begins. Uber is accused of colluding with Anthony Levandowski (an early engineer who left Waymo in 2016 to work for Uber) to steal self driving car secrets. Basically there is an existential question of when does knowledge become trade secrets?

When I lived in Tokyo I took up the Japanese tradition of sending a new year zodiac animal postcard. 2018 is the year of the dog. This dog is based on an Inu Hariko (lucky dog toys that are the protectors of children and pregnant women). The bottom left says 2018 (in a special year numbering system) and the character below it is the special character for dog used only for year of the dog. On the top left it basically says Happy New Year.

Bring it don't sing it! 1950s stylings, Japanese Ukiyo-e tattoos. Prim and proper meets rebellion and self expression. This series was chosen for the Society of Illustrator's annual show.

for a story about VR

Insert your best classy yet trashy insult here. 1950s stylings, Japanese Ukiyo-e tattoos. Prim and proper meets rebellion and self expression. This series was chosen for the Society of Illustrator's annual show. 

story about various opioid epidemic points like: how society needs to stop treating the addicted as criminals and treat it as an illness and stop blaming them. The basic moral is that it’s our problem, not solely theirs. For Emory Alumni magazine.

Xmas 2018

I made Guiness and beef stew and bob made Irish soda bread to go with it.

next morning we made Shakshuka for breakfast and bob also made a French batard loaf to go with it.

for dinner we ground up a 50/50 mix of chicken thigh and breast but there wasn't anything available that had skin and fat on it

still have forgotten to get good photos of the nuggs but I tried a batter also this time (too thin for onion rings which is why the few test rings here look so bad). Bob made a copy of Mc'Donald's signature sauce that was pretty good. We still need to have a few more sauce ideas.

we got matching Christmas elf hooded onsie pajamas for the whole family. The are super warm cuz they are made out of microfleece and a lot of the time too warm.

after opening presents this is what xmas morning looks like in 2018

bob got me this salt set. The Welsh smoked salt is a big standout. I also got windproof running pants that are super warm, taster glasses, portable battery, wacom pen, Aaron Weisenfeld art book, pepper mill, wireless vertical mouse, and probably more. Jen got a parmesan cheese grinder, books including my year of rest and relaxation, and a lot of wine. Bob got a present from us that is waiting here to give him on 1/21/19, a chef's knife, and I can't remember what else. We gave mom vintage stamps with Newfoundland dogs on them from various countries like Canada, Guinea, Morocco, Sudan and more. Dad got a lot of coding stuff for arduino and rasperby pi.

Dad smoked this roast and it was amazing.

also challenged ourselves to use parsnips so we made gratin de parnais and wished afterward that it was just potatoes and not half parsnips. It was good though and the star anise made a unique flavor

The annual bouche de noel never even got eaten because there was so much food going on.

Guiness battered onion rings, this time with thicker onion ring specific batter

French dip au jus made with bob's homemade bread and Guiness battered onion rings. Delish

the next morning mashed potato donuts.

He could just eat us all

Good dugs.

So in conclusion there are some tweaks that could make Xmas more enjoyable. We definitely cooked too much which ended up taking over most of the days and our cheer and attention. Dad being post surgery prevented board games etc from happening. There was no snow for winter fun. It's always so hard to stay hydrated. We did make a pretty decent effort to bring the cheer this year like I said we would, we just spent too much time cooking.