Here's a view into the process of a few recently published illustrations. The first assignment was from Art Director David Pratt at The Globe and Mail. I think I had 24 hours to do this one. The article was about a medical resident from Edmonton, Alberta, pronouncing a patient dead for the first time. In this case I sent two rough sketches, and David preferred the "night hospital" sketch over the other:

The final version of "night hospital":

The following assignment contrasts nicely with the one above because it presented completely different challenges. The Boston Globe Op/Ed department often call requiring an illustration on very short notice. Luckily it's usually black & white and of medium size, say, 5x7. Although, I'm not actually sure if colour or size requirements really change the process of making a great illustration in a short period of time. Short-deadline illustrations can suffer from forced inspiration as much as they can pale due to a lack of time to execute artwork.

In any case, I had 4.5 hours for this one, from the time they called me until the stated deadline. It took me approximately 2 hours to get to my studio and produce two rough sketches. The article was about eating local in New England, how people had done it in the past, and how it might work in the future.

These were my two roughs. I was kindof proud of the first, which I liked because of it's simplicity, and although I don't usually produce "clever" interpretations of a subject, I thought the spider and dragonfly were a neat pun on "eating local" and also had a late-summer feel. If you read the article hopefully it would all make sense. The second sketch I find kindof literal and boring, but, I didn't have time to go past superficial concepts into more creative, second-tier ideas.

Anyway, as it turned out, there was some miscommunication and they wanted a different take on the article. Or maybe, they already had an idea of what they wanted...in any case, the word was they wanted cows eating grass. So, I had about an hour and a half to do this:

I think it worked out for something created on the spot. Thanks to Elaina Natario at The Boston Globe for their work with me on this one.