Recent Work: Auditor Portraits

Every other month I do a spot portrait of a featured expert profiled in Internal Auditor Magazine. I am given a few photographs to choose from and a manuscript of the interview. I understand little of the technical information, but I try to pick out a couple of elements to include in the illustration, whether it is a part of the globe, an acronym, or a type of currency. Here are a few samples from the past year or so.

Client: Yacinski Design
Art Director: Carol Hardy

Recent Work: Military Timeline

This was a recent piece for creative director, Lynne Woychik, at Military Officer Magazine. The article discussed the media’s attitude towards the military throughout the history of the U.S. Lynne wanted a creative approach to the standard historical timeline. It’s always a bit more of a challenge for me when the client supplies all of the photographs, so I tried to have fun with the background, mimicking a sort of “Rauschenbergian” approach. Everything was pretty much built and painted traditionally, except for the photos and a few minor elements, which were added digitally.

Recent Work: Dead Flower Print

This is a recent print I have been working on.

My wife and I love flowers. We are not gardeners, but we like them enough to buy fresh ones every week. I am always inspired by them, and I’ll say to myself, “boy, I’ve really got to draw those flowers,” or “I have to photograph those flowers.” But for some reason, I never get around to it until they are dying or dead. At first I thought this was just procrastination, but now I think I just like them in a state of decay. I felt better about this somewhat morbid preference after recently hearing this quote by the British novelist, Jim Crace, being interviewed on The Diane Rehm Show:

“[Many people today think of nature as consisting of] rainbows and nightingales and daffodils, things that look good and smell good. Actually, a greater truth about the natural world is that it is made up of compost, and until we start to recognize that the earth is made up of creatures and death and putrefaction and glorify that as well, we are going to lose touch with the world.”

Recent Work: “How Safe?” Illustrations

These illustrations will appear on the cover and interior of the March/April issue of Common Ground Magazine. The title “How Safe?” refers to what extent a community can provide security to its residents, specifically how much security is enough and at what cost? Art director Mary Prestera Butler wanted me to come up with a symbol or metaphor that would express the emotions of fear and vulnerability along with specific content such as alarm stickers and video cameras. I came up with the image of a crow to represent the “criminal threat.” I love bird imagery, and I had been waiting for an opportunity to use these reference photos of crows I had taken some years ago. I am also tentatively trying to introduce a little hand-drawn imagery into the work, which I was able to do in the interior piece. Below are some of the stages of the final Photoshop composite for the cover image.

Texture Studies

One look at my work will tell even the casual observer that I love texture. When I first began making montage illustrations in the early 1990’s, the background textures were all lifted from previously finished or half-finished paintings of mine. One thing I loved about digital montage was that it gave me a use for many unresolved works that maybe had small passages that I really liked. After a couple of years, I was doing more digital illustration than painting, and I ran out of paintings to pillage. So I began a practice of painting just backgrounds, and it remains one of the favorite parts of my job, a welcome antidote to staring at the computer screen ( something I must guiltily admit I also love). I like to use a variety of techniques, I think it fulfills my inner dilettante. Here are some samples from the last couple of weeks:


These were made by applying a fairly thick coat of Golden Crackle Paste to a sheet of heavy cold-press watercolor paper, left to dry completely. An acrylic wash is painted over that for a color foundation. A dark oil wash is the next layer, then, while not yet dry a thicker, more oily layer of white oil paint over that, with portions of the layers underneath left to show through. Sometimes I use a brush, sometimes a palette knife. I may add an oil glaze on top of these, but that’s another thing I like about the digital component; I can record and make use of progressive states.


The three above were made with Lazertran Inkjet transfer sheet waterslide decals. First, an image is printed on the transfer sheet (in this case, one of my previously painted textures). Coat the surface to which you will be applying the decal with turpentine gum spirits (must be real turpentine). Soak the decal in water, then slide the decal off the backing paper onto the surface. Use a rubber squeegee to firmly adhere the decal. My favorite part is that if you continue to gradually apply the turpentine to the decal after you squeegee it, it begins to decompose and crack in all these wonderful ways. You have to be careful, it’s easy to end up with nothing. The texture on the far right has some layers of varnish and oil glazes added later, which made it darker and richer.


No art supply alchemy to these last three, just good old acrylic and collage. Lots of layers, with varying degrees of transparency, some drawing. I am trying to move towards making use of the hand-painted backgrounds more as a compositional foundations, not just textures. Stay tuned...

Francis Ford Coppola and Self-Doubt

We all have periods of self-doubt about our work. I felt better about my own small struggles after hearing this excerpt from an interview with Francis Ford Coppola by his wife, Eleanor, during the filming of his future masterpiece, Apocalypse Now. To say things were not going well would be an understatement. Martin Sheen was having a nervous breakdown on camera, Marlon Brando arrived on the set obese, Dennis Hopper could not remember his lines because he was strung out on who knows what, and production costs were forcing Coppola himself into bankruptcy:

“What I have to admit is that I don’t know what I’m doing… I don’t have any performances, the script doesn’t make sense, I have no ending… this is one crisis I’m not going to pull myself out of. I’m making a bad movie, so why should I go ahead? I’m going to be bankrupt anyway…why can’t I just have the courage to say it’s no good?”

—Francis Ford Coppola, on the set of Apocalypse Now,
from the documentary, Hearts of Darkness,
directed by Eleanor Coppola.

Recent Work: “No Pretty Pictures” Book Jacket

This must be the month for holocaust book covers. No Pretty Pictures is the powerful wartime memoir of the well-known children's book artist, Anita Lobel. The project art director is Paul Zakris of Greenwillow Books.

Born into a Polish Jewish family in 1934, Lobel, along with her younger brother, spent most of WWII fleeing the Nazis in the Polish countryside before being sent to a concentration camp near the war's end. Miraculously, they were liberated in 1945 and eventually reunited with their parents.

Above is the finished artwork depicting the small "framed" figures of the author and her brother silhouetted on a lonely hillside. At right is the b&w photo (taken shortly after the war) which I used for the figures. To make the photograph of the figures in the landscape, I made a table top model and placed small colorized cutout figures (about 2 or 3 inches high) on the "hill" against a sky backdrop. Much of the detail ended up on the cutting room floor when I digitally added the frame, branches, and painted textures in the finish, but such is life.

My intention is for the weathered, hanging frame to suggest the abandoned possessions of the many victims, as well as to tie in with the title.