Liam

I don't mind when the kids play video games because it means they'll hold still long enough for me to draw them. I think Liam was killing Darth Vader at this point.

Ted Kennedy sketch

I'm just starting in on this Kennedy piece. I'd like to do an Andrew Wyeth-esque sort of thing. I've been making a conscious effort to try to let the pose and mood of the work say what I used to say with a funny background or situation. We'll see where this ends up.

Sinead sketch

Here's a sketch of Sinead O'Connor done from a photo my friend Laura Levine shot of her back in the 80's just before Sinead became really famous. This is just messing around, hopefully ending up as a promo. For the sketch I used Alias's Sketchbook Pro, which is a great piece of software for drawing.

Rick Rubin(sketch)

I'll expose myself here as a music geek. I'm a big fan of certain music producers. While alot of people like to play name that tune with the radio, I like name that producer. It's not as hard as it sounds after you get to know someone's sound. Think about 80's era AC/DC, Def Leppard, and Bryan Adams. It was all John "Mutt" Lange, who's married to Shania Twain (who has a similar sound.If there's a musician you like who seems inconsistent from album to album, it's probably because they're surfing producers. Sometimes this is good, sometimes not.

Now my favorite guy is Rick Rubin, whose Zelig like presence in music has more of a zen feel. That is, once you know he's produced a band, you say "yeah, yeah, I hear it now", but it doesn't hit you over the head like alot of guys whose fingerprints almost obscure the artists voice. Rubin cofounded Def Jam, worked with the metal band Slayer on their most memorable album, and plucked Johnny Cash from the waste bin, shined him up and let us hear what a treasure we nearly lost. Listen to Cash's American Recordings from the 90's to hear what I'm talking about. He tried the same thing with Neil Diamond with excellent results.

I've included just a few of the more popular artists Rubin has worked with here:The Dixie Chicks, Jay Z, Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Beastie Boys. I would usually try my best not to have this many people in a piece, because I think it waters down the impact of an image, but I'll try to make this work.

Norman Mailer sketch

I'm starting in on a portrait of the writer Norman Mailer for a review of his new book "The Castle in the Forest" It's about how Hitler became Hitler.

It was about 8 degrees outside today, and about 40 in the studio. I felt how this guys looks.

Uncle Mike

The Road (sketch)

I've been reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. I'm not a writer, so I'll spare you a book review. If it was a painting, I'd say it's a Norman Rockwell painted by Francis Bacon. It's giving me nightmares.

Juggling

Man, when it rains it pours. I'm working on jobs for Bloomberg News, Sail magazine, Portland Monthly, Golf Digest, and one I won't name because I'm putting the sketch up here. This will accompany an article on how Howard Stern basically did what the Borat movie has done as far as using anti-semitism, racism, and misogyny for years. I decided to take the offensive approach a lttle further and do a satire on a Madonna and Child icon. Thanks god for art directors who aren't afraid of offending!

Here's the first stage of the Clinton portrait I'm working on.

I got a decent sketch together, then scanned it full size. Then in Photoshop I adjusted the levels so that I had a neutral gray background. I made another layer and started painting using a semi tranparent brush with the opacity knocked back to about 40%.

This whole John Kerry joke thing has really pissed me off. If I was still doing editorial cartoons, this issue could keep me going for a week.

Here's today's sketchbook page.