Editorial all day long

Just to show you that my time isn't spent doodling super-heroes all day long, here's a batch of editorial illustrations I've done recently.

The first is for Maisonneuve Magazine, illustrating an article on interesting villains in literature. I chose to go with an illo of my personal pick for most interesting villain: Satan, from Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost:



Next, and in keeping with the biblical theme, is a small spot for the New York Times Book Review, accompanying a write-up on the book "Jesus Boy":



Finally, shifting the focus from religion to money, here's a spot for Briefings Magazine, accompanying an article about Chinese market manipulation of american currency:

A Night at the Opera Pt. 2

These are the other seven illustrations I did for "Les Adventures de Madame Merveille", a comic-themed opera performed earlier this month in Montreal. There were ten illustrations in all, and you can check a previous post of mine for the other three paintings, as well as more details on the production.

The colour choices for these drawings were a bit more saturated than I would normally use, but that was because the drawings were to be projected and I knew they might lose some intensity along the way.

The Marvel Superhero Hour Pt. 2

As I was mentioning in a previous entry (see 2 posts down), I took some time recently to do some new super-hero paintings to take to TCAF, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Here' the rest of the batch, for your viewing pleasure. Most of them sold pretty quickly, so I think I might do the same thing for the Fan Expo show later this year, and bring some new artwork created specifically for the show. And yes, that's another Iron Man drawing -- I actually ended up drawing 3 of them for the show.

I'd like to thank all the people who came to TCAF and visited my table. It's been 2 days and I'm still not fully recovered from the show, but I was very happy to meet and chat with the people that came by. I hope you all had a great time at the show.



And here's another painting I did recently, this time of Superboy. It was my contribution to the Doug Wright Awards fundraiser auction -- if you're quick, you can still bid on the art on ebay!

Best American Comics 2010

This was a fun assignment, and a real honour. I was asked by Houghton Mifflin and series editors Matt Madden and Jessica Abel to design and illustrate the cover for the 2010 edition of their annual Best American Comics anthology. They gave me free reign to draw what I wanted, so over the course of a couple of weeks early in January, I sat down and worked out this image. Like most of my favourite cover assignments, the concept for this one came together pretty intuitively and I had an idea of what kind of response the image should provoke. This deluxe hardcover collection of excellent comic stories ships in the fall.

This year's guest editor, Neil Gaiman, also chose to include my 14 page story "Trinity" (a non-fiction comic about the creation of the atomic bomb) as part of the collection. Again, a real honour.