The green revolution, also in black and white

I usually illustrate Sunday's opinion page guest column as part of my job at the Seattle Times. Even though it always runs in black and white, I like to do a color version of the artwork for the website. In this case, I really wanted to get some green in there as you can imagine. The article was a very interesting read by famous travel journalist Rick Steves about the situation in Iran. Everyone should read it.

Steves lives in Edmonds, so we are practically neighbors. One of these days I'd like to visit his "Europe Through the Back Door" headquarters. I have a tip or two about travelling to Spain, I hope that gets me in.

"We got you a sketcher book"

That's what my daughter told me secretly to my ear Saturday night, just before Father's Day. She meant a "sketchbook" of course. I had sketched her playing with a game in the car earlier. On Sunday we had a nice dinner at a pizza restaurant we usually go to and I also sketched my son on the facing page. I wanted to have a spread with both of them to remember the occasion.

Seattle Sketcher in print and on the web

As you know, in late April my Seattle Sketcher alter ego moved to the Seattle Times website. It's been a fun ride so far and I hope it lasts. If you live in Seattle, you can also see an excerpt from the blog every Saturday on the cover of the Local section. This is what it looks like:



My latest story was about the easy to overlook historic clocks scattered around the city. It made it to the website's homepage for a brief time in the morning, enough for me to get this screenshot:



So, in print or on the web, you know where to find the Seattle Sketcher. Thanks for stopping by, for your comments and for the sketching suggestions!

Illustrators as storytellers

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Click on images to view larger

My former college professor Juan Antonio Giner, who runs the newspaper consulting firm Innovation and is the lead editor of the World Association of Newspapers annual report, asked me to write an article about innovative news illustration for this year's issue, which I just got in the mail.

I organized the story into different groups of illustrators I admire for the storytelling nature of their work: combat artists, visual essayists, reportage illustrators, sketchbook artists and multitasking cartoonists. Some of the illustrators I was able to talk to are Paul Madonna, Olivier Kugler, Veronica Lawlor, Steve Brodner and Walt Taylor. Thank you folks for taking the time!

'Best friends,' by Olivia

My daughter is really getting into drawing and coloring. She turns four next month. A few days ago she drew this picture of herself -on the right with three eyes- with her 4-year-old neighbor, who only got one eye for some reason. She drew it with chalk on the concrete floor of the garage and Michelle was really smart to take a photo before it got erased. She said Olivia called the artwork 'Best friends.'

I'm starting to put her drawings on a Flickr set so there will be a record of her progress. As you can imagine, I'm a really proud father!

Sunday morning at the church of coffee

This morning I went to the "church of coffee" Starbucks at the Mill Creek Town Center. I met my friend Pete there. He's even newer to Seattle than I am. Only lived here since last year. He's an industrial designer and is just getting the urban sketching bug. After coffee we moved across the street for a sketch of the singular architecture of the coffee house, where instead of bells on the church looking tower you get the twin-tale mermaid logo. Pete did a good job, I hope he'll get a Flickr account going soon and join Urban Sketchers.

La información punto com

A few months ago I set up a portfolio website and decided to get serious about seeking freelance illustration work, contacting people on both sides of the Atlantic.

This is one of the first projects that has come up thanks to Chiqui Esteban, an art director at lainformacion.com. Chiqui is also a former graphics editor of Público daily in Madrid, and author of the blog Infographic News.

The illustrations are for a series of short stories about how the internet has changed people's lives in the past decade. It was a very fast turn around. I've been doing one every night for the past ten days. I'm exhausted!