Finally, a Tax Rebate for NJ Homeowners

2008 New Jersey Presidential Primary

Well, New Jersey has voted to move up with the pack and have their Presidential Primary on February 5, 2008. According to Wikipedia, there are 22 states that are either holding or considering to hold their primary on the same date. And Florida and Michigan are seeking to move up from there! So I'm not too sure what New Jersey is trying to accomplish by lumping itself with the pack.

Despite this, there are two people that will actually benefit from this move - Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani. They are New York-based candidates that emjoy a strong following in New Jersey (one of which has the Governor's endorsement), and knowing New Jersey is in their pocket while other states may be a bit more competitive means having to spend less money here to secure the vote.

Here's the sketch:

Photo Referencing: The Debate Continues

Over on Comic Book Resources, Stuart Immonen has recently written an article on the use of tool and reference material to help make the process of drawing comics as efficient as it can be. And in response to people who think he is "cheating," he says:

"Picasso (a macho artist if there ever was one) said, “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”"

Check out the article for yourself. Read it here.

Tip of the hat to Drawn.

Illustration for at the Shore

Sorry for the delay in posting. This week has been really busy for me. Between everything that's going on with the Delaware Art Museum, the Delaware Press Association, plus all of my normal free-lance stuff, I'm fortunate that my head hasn't exploded!

So I thought I'd post something different. I've had a lot of illustration work recently that I'll get around to posting one of these days. This particular one is a cover for At the Shore, a New Jersey magazine around Atlantic and Ocean City. They wanted me to come up with a "New Yorker" style cover for their Spring issue, so here are some of my initial sketches.

My initial thought was to have a funny cover to show spring, like a bear that has just woken up from hibernation just chilling on the beach. I also thought of a Robin, and how funny it might be to have a family of them on the beach, since they're not beach dwellers. This led to the intial sketch that the editor liked, an out-of-place Robin on the beach with a bunch of shorebirds

I finalized the idea, which ended up being the Robin sitting on a shovel to help out the composition. The editor liked it, so I did a color rough...

...and finished it up for him. Below is the final artwork with the logo for the magazine. Let me know what you think.