Baseball’s hidden-ball trick. In exchange for the promise of beer afterwards, I convinced a couple of my buddies who weren’t too old or out-of-shape to pass as athletes to put on their finest baseball togs and pose as duplicitous infielders. I took a bunch of reference shots of them, then they took shots of me, since I posed as both the pitcher and the clueless baserunner. I then traced the pix I thought worked best in Adobe Illustrator (I freely admit to shaving at least one chin, at least 20 years, and at least 20 pounds of beer fat off myself). (Oh, yeah, I think that’s former Indians and Phillies manager Charlie Manuel playing the base coaches. No, I don’t know Mr. Manuel — I must have traced him off a couple of wire photos …)
Ginormous invasive carp
Pittsburgh Steelers coaches vs. Cleveland Browns coaches. The Browns have had a few more coaches since this ran, while the Steelers still have Mike Tomlin. We're guardedly optimistic about their future these days, but the Browns have been really, really bad for a long, long time...
A car show graphic
Graphic from a different car show
Old vs. New Clevelander. This was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun. Plain Dealer writer Michael Keaton came up with about half of this guy’s attributes, and I came up with the rest. This is, I believe, the only piece in this entire portfolio where I actually drew something (I don't know if tracing my own photographs in Illustrator counts as "drawing"). The powers-that-be kind of beat drawing out of me over the years …
Race for the Governor's mansion
The then-new line of iPods
This is one of my pages from when I was acting art director of the Plain Dealer's business section. The story was about the increase in available models in a specific vehicle class over the course of a few years. A lot of days the biz centerpiece was a portrait of a middle-aged white guy with a hundred dollar haircut wearing a thousand dollar suit, so projects like this were an enjoyable change-of-pace.
Another PD biz front. I include this one because I had to make a centerpiece out of almost literally nothing.
Another PD biz front — I didn't have to make a centerpiece out of nothing, but I was working with about the next-closest thing ...
