Last InsideOut of 2012

Hey there blog readers,

The Forward's latest installment of the InsideOut series is up on the site. This was a hard article to illustrate and a harder article to read. In the wake of the Weberman trial and conviction, Judy examines abuse in the Hasidic community. It's worth a read and is, as always, well-written and thought-provoking. Check it out.

Stay tuned for further InsideOut pieces from Judy and illustrations from me in 2013!

InsideOut: The Loss

Howdy folks,

The lastest installment of InsideOut is up on the Forward's website and is in this week's print issue of the paper.

This week's piece is about grieving the loss of one's entire community and leaving an old life behind as one starts anew. Judy uses some wonderful images, using colorblindness and seeing colors in a black and white world as metaphors.

I started out, as usual, with a whole bunch of sketches. I played with themes of loss and loneliness and Judy's imagery and color.

The folks at the Forward chose the last sketch, emphasizing her isolation and loneliness, even in the midst of new discovery.

In my mind, the most important part of this image would be the use of color. My initial idea was to only render the sky in color - a vibrant, popping blue.

 This didn't feel quite right to me. There wasn't enough emphasis on the main character. She's having this moment of discovery, so perhaps she ought to be rendered in color as well.

Better still, but something about it felt a bit cold... so I added a warm tone beneath the black ink of the street.

This is ultimately what we decided to go with, but I also went a bit further with the color at the request of the art director... just to see what would happen. 

If the trees were green...

 Or one tree was green...

 Or the whole world was rendered in color...

This was a neat article to illustrate. The piece itself was touching, and the visuals in the text, exceptional. It's especially exciting when the imagery in a written piece practically begs to be illustrated.

The Sun

Hey blog-readers,

The second article in the InsideOut series is live on the Forward's website! Check it out here.

InsideOut with The Forward

Hey there blog readers,

It's been a while. Apologies for the hiatus. Since returning from the conference, August has been an incredibly busy month. Ages ago, I hinted at a new project that I can finally talk about. I just started working with the Forward (or פֿאָרווערטס) on a new, bimonthly column called InsideOut. Penned by Judy Brown, the essays are wonderfully written pieces about life as a Hasidic woman and about Judy's very personal process of leaving the community. My work will appear alongside her pieces every two weeks - each month, one article in print and a second online.

The first piece appears in print this week, and I wanted to share a bit about my process. As with the last piece I did with the Forward, the medium and process are different from my children's work.

My favorite part of the process is the initial brainstorming. After reading the article, I sat down and worked my way through a stack of computer paper trying out ideas. Here are a handful that I sent in:

Each sketch dealt with similar ideas - being/looking/feeling different from or at odds with the surrounding crowd - but each had a slightly different emphasis. And, yes, I did send in that last "sketch" (I do use the term veeery loosely), but rest assured, I also sent in notes with those indecipherable chicken-scratch pencil lines.

After some discussion with the folks at the Forward, we agreed that the image that worked best was the  woman in front of the pantyhose display.

Once we settled on an image, I blew the rough sketch up to about 11x17, firmed up the sketch directly onto my good paper, and taped it to my board.

Final sketch

And then it was time to start adding ink...

Beginning ink

 Darker

Until I had something that I was satisfied with.

Once I was happy with the ink, I pulled the image off the board and scanned it into the computer. For this piece, I cheated a little bit... rather than handletter the packaging, writing "Beige" 64 times, I did it once and then copy and pasted it.

 Thank you Photoshop!

Next step, color! The most important color for this piece was clearly the beige of the stockings. It took me a while to find a tone that I liked, but after that, the rest was easy. 

Ta da!

The final piece

You can check out the article and the final illustration in this week's daily Forward or online here.

Many thanks to Naomi and Dan and all the excellent folks at the Forward and of course to Judy for such wonderfully written essays.

Freelance for the Forward

Hey there blog readers!

Exciting things. I recently did a job for the Forward (or פֿאָרווערטס , for the Yiddish speakers among you). Because it's the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, loads of news sources are running articles. The Jewish Daily Forward ran a bunch of interesting pieces, and one in particular about two passengers on the ship, Isidor and Ida Straus. Straus, a NY resident, was co-owner of Macy's department store. On the night the Titanic sank, both Isidor and his wife refused places in the lifeboats and were last seen sitting on the deck together. In addition to a place in Woodlawn cemetery, there's a memorial park dedicated to the couple on the Upper West.

My favorite part of the job was doing some outdoor sketching uptown at Straus Park. These are my two favorite sketches from the afternoon.

I also spent some of the afternoon following around older folks along Broadway.

Once I had some decent reference, I went home and started playing with possible compositions. These are five of the samples I sent in.

Once we settled on a sketch, I did a tightened version so the folks at the Forward had a place-holder as they worked out the section layout. 

Before starting in on the final illustration, I inked a small sample, just to play around and loosen up.

Ink!

And finally, color.

Exciting things, indeed.

You can check out the full article here.

Many thanks to Dan Friedman and Lil Swanson at the Forward and Liz Marcus for putting me in touch.