This weekend, instead of preparing for being a guest blogger, I made two illustrations for The New York Times. I thought I’d share some of the process.
The first one was about polar bears and the climate changes. I made a polar bear in bright somewhat icey colours at first. I couldn’t help myself from thinking that this was a job for Loise. They didn’t like the tear and it was supposed to be in black and white. I rarely make black and white illustrations, you have to think in another way - in light and dark. So I started over but kept the same bear and gave it a polar bear friend, new icebergs.
They didn’t like the friend, too cartoon like, this was a serious article. And there was changes in the size. Now the polar bear friend is floating on an iceberg outside the picture and the size is changed. I think the new size made it better. This is the final illustration. It was on the Op-ed page this saturday.
The second illustration was about a homeless man who get his identity stolen. He get’s aware of it when he visits the hospital. This time I was braver ;) and started with a really rough sketch, just to show the idea. I had worked with this person one time before so I knew she was familiar with my work.
They liked the idea but didn’t think the nurse was necessary. I started working with that, first I made the hospital beds then I place a “homeless” person on them, looking much alike each other. What does a homeless person look like? I thought they had to have much clothes to keep warm, no bright colours. They wanted to have some scribblings in the back, as from a chart or something like that. This is how it came up.
Here is a link to the Last Iceberg that would fit well with my polarbear illustration. Via Joanna’s blog.