The kids around our town have this fun tradition. It's called "Ghosting". It consists of going up to a friend's door, leaving a bag of candy, ringing the doorbell, and running like hell. It was a lot of fun to let the kids be borderline delinquents for a night.

Here's a very quick (about 20 minutes from drawing to where it is now) study of my son Liam. I love that kid!

This is a portrait of author John Updike for a review of his latest book. I looked at a lot of Rembrandt's self portraits for this. I don't know if it's clear to see, but I even put the cracked surface in there.
Digital.

Another busy week coming up. I'm working on a cover for the Nashville Scene, Nashville's weekly alternative paper. Also, my regular spot for Golf Digest's Johnny Miller column, and another spot for Sail magazine. They're all fun projects, and I'll post the finals and maybe sketches as I finish them.

In the meantime, it's halloween time, so here's the superhero of the house.

Well, here's my entry into the blogosphere. I'll try to keep up with it and show what I'm working on on a regular basis. We'll see.

First, I'll post something I just finished for Sail Magazine. It's a story about how a Russian cargo plane was transporting a cow for some reason, and when the cow went apeshit at 30,000 feet and started to kick the hell oput of the plan, they opened the cargo door and threw his flailing ass out. If a cow could say, "Oh shit, I'd like to have that one back", that's probably what she would have said. Instead, the bovine plummeted through the clouds and landed smack dab on, and through, a Japanese fishing boat. Sunk it right away. The fisherman were picked up by the authorities and charged with some kind of drunken boating offense. "No, really, a cow fell out of the sky!" Somehow, the true story came to light, and most importantly, I get to make money from it.
I do love this job.

By way of introduction, I'm an illustrator working mostly in the editorial field for the past 15 years. I started out in the drawing business drawing caricatures at parties. After thoudands of Bar Mitzvahs, anniversary parties, corporate and college functions, I became bored with it, although the constant demand for production did keep my hands and mind sharp. Somewhere along the way I became interested in political cartooning and somehow ended up working regularly for USA Today. I'd have cartoons reprinted in Newsweek, Time, and most of the major daily newspapers nationally. I think this led to an air of perceived legitimacy (deserved or not), and I landed a twice a week gig with the Boston Herald, which lasted for 13 years. Along with the cartoons, I was aked to produce full page illustartions for the Sunday opinion section, which led to more freelance work. After a while, I was supporting myself with just the freelance stuff, which was a good thing, because my time with the Herald had run it's course. They had shitcanned most of their freelancers, regardless of the quality of their work.

So now I'm out here in the woods hacking out my own path. Sometimes it's very high profile and exciting, and sometimes it's just mundane lttle spot illustration jobs that I try to turn into something fun.

Some interesting facts:
I once worked worked as Santa's elf.
I was once one of the top butterflyers in the country.
I once pulled a young boy from a burning car.
My father once held a world record in swimming (220 freestyle)
I used to practice playing the guitar for a minimum of 6 hours a day.
I think an interesting story you can take something from is more valuable than the truth.
I've never read a blog.