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.