I’ve been on vacation since last Thursday, so I forgot to take screenshots of the glory until yesterday, but for nearly every day in the past week, Nextbook.org has been running stories garnished by illustrations I commissioned. Two are by artists you’ve seen here before—Samantha Hahn and Vanessa Davis—and two are by new! people!—Jonathon Rosen and Leela Corman.

You can see the pretty pictures at the following links (I’d do an image map on the banner above, but WordPress.com won’t let me):

• Samantha Hahn: The Rise and Fall—and Rise—of “Jewess” by Daniel Krieger
• Vanessa Davis: The Dangers of Salmonella by Danit Brown
• Jonathon Rosen: Inherit the Windbags by Peter Bebergal (home page screenshot)
• Leela Corman: The Half-Life by Rebecca Spence (home page screenshot)

Yay, illustrators!

The lovely Vanessa Davis has drawn a three-page comic for Nextbook.org to celebrate Purim. You do not need to know much about Purim to know that this is awesome.

I’ve been swooning over Matthew Woodson’s work at ghostco.org for months, so when a story landed on my desk that actually involved a ghost, I knew whom I wanted to ask to illustrate it.

I love the simultaneous attacking/comforting embrace of this ghost, as well as the little details like the texture of his hair and the pattern of the living boy’s sweater vest. In fact, I like it so much that I printed it out large and stuck it on the wall behind my desk. You can see an uncropped, larger version of the image on the story page: Brother’s Keeper (scroll to the bottom).

I’ve already asked Matthew to do another drawing for us, so watch this space . . .

My friend and fellow club member Eric Skillman, an associate art director at the Criterion Collection, has been interviewed over at WizardUniverse.com. They’re rather in need of a proofreader, but Eric’s intelligence and charm nevertheless come through.

For example I’m looking over the DVD’s on my desk —[Aikira Kurosawa’s] “Drunken Angel”, which is one we did with Jock (The Losers, Green Arrow: Year One, Faker). There’s a scene towards the end of the film where the characters are wresting around and the Matsunaga character knocks over into some cans of paint, and the paint spills in an artful kind of way and what was his black suit gets covered in white paint, so its a sort of a transformative moment where he’s rebelling against the Yakuza influence, which is represented by the snazzy black suit that he’s been wearing and he becomes purified in that scene. We took that and said that sort of scene and idea is what we want to riff off of. We took that to Jock, along with this idea that there’s this sump thing in the middle of the town that’s full of mud and its like this sucking hole that the center of town is being sucked down by the Yakuza influence, so we said maybe give us a backdrop of this muddy, crappy, sumpy grossness then a slosh of white paint with the character sort of crawling through it, and then he took that and abstracted it one step further and did his thing and then that became the cover.

Do freelance artists usually get notes like that?

Usually.

The Wizard Q&A: Eric Skillman, by David Paggi, posted 2/11/2008.

To see more of Eric’s work (other than at your local video store) and to read a lot more about his design process, see his fine, upstanding blog: Cozy Lummox.

RTFM

Creative Commons licenses are a wonderful thing. Without them, I’d probably be unable to do my job, so I am extremely grateful to all who apply a CC license to their photos.

All, that is, except people who mark their work with a CC license and then get huffy when someone actually uses it.
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On Monday my bossfriend, Joanna Smith-Rakoff, explained to Bookslut what it is that we do all day at the mysterious place where we work.

What would you say a normal day at Nextbook is like?

Our days vary somewhat greatly and they’re different for different members of the staff. Let’s see: In the morning, we generally spend some time making sure that the day’s feature is ready to go, which means coordinating with our art director, India Amos, to see if art is ready. Having someone give the story a final proofread. Perhaps asking one of our assistants to add links into the story. Sometimes we’re running behind and desperately trying to come up with a hed and dek (or heds and deks, if we’re doing a package, or running more than one story); so we’ll email a few choices around, or gather at someone’s desk to brainstorm. At the same time, our assistants will be surfing the Web, choosing stories for that day’s Filter, then checking in with Sara Ivry, the senior editor who oversees it, about those stories. They’ll then write up the Filter and sit down with Sara to edit it.

On Tuesdays, we have our story meetings at lunchtime—we order lunch in, which is nice—during which we check in about various pieces in the works, bat around new ideas, suggest new writers, present pitches from writers, and sometimes discuss larger plans and initiatives. Often these meetings are long—two hours, sometimes more—because we really help each other shape story ideas (which is necessary, being that we never just say, “Okay, let’s do a review of the new Philip Roth novel”).

Hey! That’s me!
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Tuesday’s story by Jessica Apple about her wacky-wonderful grandma required a wacky-wonderful illustration. And who better to do that, I thought, than Martha Rich, whose daily paintings at Freedom Wig are so . . . well . . . you just have to go look at them. I’d been wanting to hire Martha for months, but this was the first story to come up that I thought really needed her.

See the whole painting and read the story on the site: Repeating History.

I confess that I Botoxed the wrinkles on the woman’s face a bit—we received word that Bashy, the subject of the story, was in very poor health, so I thought a more tender representation was in order (though I’m sure this looks nothing like her, anyway—I didn’t ask for any reference photos).

If you’re in L.A., go see Martha’s show at La Luz de Jesus gallery. It’s up until January 27. And if anybody wants to buy me Good Girl Pie, I’d appreciate it.

Happy New Year!

Here at my office, we’re celebrating with fizz, per tradition: our first story of 2008 is about seltzer.

Today’s illustration is by the delightful Vanessa Davis. I had to crop her drawing closely to fit it on our home page—and, of course, there’s that nasty brown stripe with the type over it—so do visit the story to see the complete piece: Eli Miller’s Seltzer Delivery Service.
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Happy Hanukkah!

I hope you’re not getting sick of all these posts about illustrations, because I’ve got a whole week’s worth to crow about, and not a whole lot else. Nextbook.org is publishing a story about Hanukkah on each day of the holiday, and we decided to (a) get each one of them illustrated, and (b) have an image of a menorah (or, more specifically, a Hanukiah, as I learned yesterday—thank god for Wikipedia) on the home page, which will change each day as a new story is posted. Read the rest of this entry »

Through the magic of technology, even though I am "on vacation" I can happily inform you that today Nextbook posted this hot new illustration by Samantha Hahn, proprietress of the blog Maquette and frequent guest on Moldawer in the Morning, the Moldawer in question being her husband. Do go look at the version on the story page, as it differs from that on the home page in several ways (not least being its not having type slapped on top of it): The Girls’ Guide to Hot Rabbis and Tattooed Chefs.

If all goes as planned, Samantha’s second illustration for Nextbook will appear on Monday, so keep your eyes peeled.