I was invited (rather persistently) to contribute to Grand Central’s 10 year anniversary show. The prompt is “___ism” so I chose (after getting the curator’s go-ahead) to explore eroticism. I wanted to do a series of these, but I’m currently taking a class so we’ll see if I have time.
I think texture and material are so important. I am aroused by a man’s skin, but I am also aroused by his hair growth patterns, the play of shadows across his body, and this interest is heightened when contrasted against textures that hold equal fascination for me—-stone, wood, and porcelain.
I think it will be a while before I’m satisfied with the colors I can get from my watercolors in this regard—-I’m not Milo Manara—-so for now I’ll go back to doing my erotic works digitally. But it was still fun to do.
Anonymous: why did you tag the mail byBob as "hate mail"? I don't see any hate in it, just an opinion on your work. I also don't see the point in posting this "hate mail" to tumblr instead of just answering them.
Why did I post it? because I thought it was hilarious and beautiful.
Avocado and coconut smoothies are what we have instead of air conditioning. (Taken with instagram)
My first lamb korma and kaahmiri pulao! (Taken with instagram)
I wish I could like your 5/17/12 cover for The Reader, but I can’t get over my annoyance at the imitation Sears Tower; perhaps it has artistic validity, but I don’t see it.
Sears Tower is a really elegant design - certainly far more elegant than the 1959 Cadillac! It is a bundle of nine tubes, each square in cross-section, terminating at different stories: 2 at the 50th, 2 at the 66th, 3 at the 90th, and 2 go all the way to the top. A good diagram is at
http://www.som.com/content.cfm/bruce_graham_interview_4
The concept was by Fazlur Khan, probably the greatest structural engineer in the world until his sudden death of a heart attack just short of his fifty-third birthday. Khan and architect Bruce Graham together designed a number of masterpieces for SOM, including also the Hancock Building, and I think their work deserves a closer look than you gave it.
Bob
— I got this email the day the Chicago reader came out. My AD and his architect father thought my Sears Tower looked fine, so I’m guessing what this guy’s real problem is is that it doesn’t look like a photo. Had my AD asked me to correct it of course I would have! Still, I respect Bob’s passion for the Sears Tower. Apparently he is a head librarian at an engineering and architecture library so he does have some expertise. Yet while it’s his job to know the intimate details of such buildings, my job is to draw pleasant pictures for vacation guides.
Paul Higgins recently asked me to do the cover of the Chicago Reader! The second pic was just an alternate sketch I gave him, but he liked it enough that he made room for it in the intro. Thanks Paul!
humansofnewyork:
Mission Control
Oh hey! Gimp got on HONY! I remember when he came to my community college to talk about his art.
Hadn’t done one of these in a while!
Last weekend I picked up a few things from H&M with a friend, and we just happened to be there the day their new spring collection debuted. It was a mad house! I saw these minty capris on a mannequin and knew they had to be mine, but they had just sold out, every last one T__T. It was really pathetic how much that depressed me. But I came back an hour later, just as we were about to leave, and BAM! Tears of joy as I snatched the lone set of minty capris that must have come back from the changing rooms; and there they were, a perfect size 6 all for me.
Baltimore pride!
paperalligator:
DONE!
Guys, I can’t tell you how satisfying and nervewracking it is to build a promo pack. But, here it is. 200 of these (printed with love!) will be trickling out to select publishers, animation studios, editorial, packaging, and design firms. The awesomest of the awesome. And I hope they (and you too) will want to work with me.
It’s been a little slow on the illustration route (quality over quantity right now!), so let’s make some awesome things together, world. I’m ready!
this looks so awesome, I’m sure you’ll hear back from them! If I may ask, is that a booklet of some sort on the very right, with the blue banner across the bottom?
Hey, I love hearing from people! Thanks for saying hi <3
Your work is super cute too!
Studio desk right now. (Taken with instagram)
When I was very young, my parents took me to a flea market in France. I remember being overwhelmed by all of the turkish rugs, samovars, morrocan-painted porcelain dishware, like a watershed of all the middle eastern culture and objects that are the backdrop of WASPy french life.
I fell in love with a little porcelain stallion I saw in a display case, painted azure blue, and my parents bought it for me. I still have it, although one of its hoofs broke off over the years. It seems to disappear and then reappear without any sense. When it turns up, I’ll have to take a picture of it.
Here is the piece I did for the NYT Book Review April 29 issue. From the Amazon description:
The Right Hand Shore
A masterful novel that confronts the dilemmas of race, family, and forbidden love in the wake of America’s Civil War
Fifteen years after the publication of his acclaimed novel Mason’s Retreat, Christopher Tilghman returns to the Mason family and their Chesapeake Bay estate in The Right-Hand Shore.
It is 1922, and Edward Mason is making a call upon Miss Mary Bayly, the current owner of the legendary Mason family estate, the Retreat. Miss Mary is dying. She plans to give the Retreat to Edward, the closest direct descendant of the original immigrant that Miss Mary can find. Edward believes he can charm the old lady, secure the estate and be back in Baltimore by lunchtime.
Instead, over the course of a long day, he hears the stories that will forever tie him and his family to the land. He hears of Miss Mary’s grandfather brutally selling all his slaves in 1857 in order to avoid the reprisals he believes will come with Emancipation. He hears of the doomed efforts by Wyatt Bayly, Miss Mary’s father, to turn the Retreat into a vast peach orchard, and of Miss Mary and her brother growing up in a fractured and warring household. He learns of Abel Terrell, son of Free Blacks who becomes head orchardist, and whose family becomes intimately connected to the Baylys and to the Mason legacy.
The drama in this richly textured novel proceeds through vivid set pieces: on rural nineteenth-century industry; on a boyhood on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; on the unbreakable divisions of race and class; and, finally, on two families attempting to save a son and a daughter from the dangers of their own innocent love.”
I feel really lucky that I got to work on a subject that I personally have a lot of love for, for my first pro-editorial assignment. :) Thanks to AD Nicholas Blechman.
