there's no better way to begin spring than with a springtime illustration! i was contacted by the local magazine, new york spirit, to do an illo for their spring book review/reading list. below is the final product as well as a couple of the sketches that got me there:



i think my initial sketch/concept was a little too elaborate and ultimately unbalanced. with the hope of simplifying it a little, i may have gone to the extreme, paring it down to just two birds, a few leaves, and the title in a speech/tweet bubble. in the end, i decided to combine the two...leaving me with the above.

my little tubby street-cat, edy. she used to be so tiny!

p.s. i am on a yellow kick!

as you may have noticed, i trashed my original john updike. i realized that i had rushed through it, not bothering to improve my sketch or rework some colors. below is the revamped version. while i still have some reservations, i feel much better about it. yellow!