There was an illo by me in this Sunday's New York Times! It was for a Spring poetry page - the theme being allergies. The art direction was by Aviva Michaelov. Just for fun, I thought I'd post up some process stuff.




First Aviva sent me the poems along with sample layouts of how they could be arranged, and I did some sketching and thumbnails.








We both liked the 4th one best. Aviva flipped it and sent me the finalized layout.



I tightened the pencils, trying to incorporate the drawing and the poems without it looking contrived.



I collected a lot of reference photos of allergy-causing flowers, and pollen, and lungs, on Pinterest,



And figured out a color scheme on Color Scheme Designer. This seems kind of bogus, but it's been really helpful to me.



I transferred the text-shapes and did a very light sketch of the lady onto this kind of amazing super-thick rag watercolor paper my friend Kate gave me. This used up my last sheet and I'm sad to see it go.

The lady is watercolor and the flowers are mostly gouache. I didn't realize until recently that it was okay to mix the two! (!?)


Also, the poems were all really good. I was proud to illustrate them.