Stone Hedge Fund

Sup Blog. First off, the title/bad pun is slightly incorrect as the following piece is about long/short investing, not hedge funds. However, hedge funds made for an interesting title, and it resides in the financial world, sooooooo FUN!

Anthony Scerri from the Institutional Investor asked me to illustrate the failures of long/short investing. The main concept is that long/short investing tactics have been around for so long, but due to the financial crisis ultimately failed Wallstreet's expectations. So here's the initial sketch:


First of all, Wacom tablets are amazingly awesome. Of course I still draw all my final images on vellum paper with ink and brush, but the Wacom has allowed me to do quicker sketches with TONS more conceptual clarity. Second of all, props to Anthony because I threw some wacky ideas at him and he picked my favorite idea, so the process was pretty painless. And here's the final:


I followed the layout of the sketch, but really tried to get in there with little details to create a sense of scale. This was a really fun piece to make, and definitely one of my recent favorites.

And extremely off topic, my niece Emily Marie Tumang-Atienza is being christened tomorrow, and I'm her godfather! Me and her dad Jeff are looking forward to wielding shotguns in front her potential suitors.

Peace Blog.

Not Half Bad

Hey Blog. Life is good, as the recent Mos Def single would have us believe. Here is a preview of the MFA Thesis Show postcard that was surprisingly painless to organize. Many of the images are cropped due to the limited size, but that won't be the case for the eventual poster. Asking everyone to submit work in layers was extremely effective, and gave me a lot of choices in terms of layout. If this card is any indication, I feel the thesis show is going to be one of the strongest ever.

For those who don't know, the concept of the postcard and poster is a 'yearbook page', and everyone involved was asked to randomly pick a classmate's name and create a portrait of him/her. Starting from the top left, the roster is:

FIRST ROW
Lisel Ashlock - drawn by Rich Tu (me)
Russ Spitkovsky - drawn by Lisel Ashlock
Y.J. Lee - drawn by Andre Da Loba
Anna Raff - drawn by Joanna Neborsky
Heejin Roh - drawn by Maria Berrio
Sybille Schenker - drawn by Russ Spitkovsky
Youngsun Liu - drawn by Rachel Allison

SECOND ROW
You Byun - drawn by Ray Jones
Joanna Neborsky - drawn by Anna Raff
Edowyn Vazquez - drawn by Matt Cavanaugh
John MacConnell - drawn by Josh Bayer
Nu Ryu - drawn by Sybille Schenker
Matt Cavanaugh - drawn by Heejin Roh
Maria Berrio - drawn by Yuriko Katori

THIRD ROW
Rich Tu - drawn by Youngsun Liu
Josh Bayer - drawn by Edowyn Vazquez
Yuriko Katori - drawn by You Byun
Ray Jones - drawn by John MacConnell
Rachel Allison - drawn by Nu Ryu
Andre da Loba - drawn by Y.J. Lee

So that's it for now Blog. More Soon!

Lisel Ashlock Ish My Clashmate

Hey Blog. No long story tonight, I'm coming off of a cold and still feel slightly terrible. I just wrapped up a couple of jobs and will be putting those up once they get printed, but in the meantime here's my contribution to MFA Thesis Show poster that I'm organizing.


*Update* I changed the image slightly and gave Lisel black hair. I wanted more volume at the top after spending more time with it. Art is never done!

That's the freakishly talented Lisel Ashlock. I wanted her peeking out from behind an animal mask, because her work has a mystical quality that makes it feel appropriate. Her hair's a little longer now, but I gave her a shorter bob haircut because that's what she wore when I first met her and that's how I picture her in my head.

Anyway, the portraits are looking amazing so far, and once its laid out I'll post that too. We're thinking about either silkscreen or offset press. Hopefully we can do offset and send it out, if anything to save ourselves the trouble of spending sleepless nights in the silkscreen lab (not to insult you silkscreen nerds).

So that's it, goodnight Blog. And feel better Me.

The Handsomeness of Randomness

Hey Blog, what it is. I've been fairly busy lately, yet here we are. The final semester (!) is going pretty well, and I'm onto a good start for the second part of my thesis. I've realized a few things and I've created a loose narrative to focus the pieces more. I'm not going to post them yet, as I want a few in the can before I start declaring them "finals". Also, I've taken on a couple of outside projects that will occupying a decent amount of my spare time, but they're well worth it. One of them is a promotional poster for SVA's MFA Illustration Thesis Show in May. Its a large collaborative effort, and difficult to pull off, but the artists involved are so ridiculously talented that I don't see it failing. In fact, I'm usually dumbstruck as to the talent in the room sometimes. I see this as a last group hoorah before we go our separate ways into the ether of commercial art.

Anyway, since I'm not going to show new stuff at the moment, I thought I'd post a few gems that I've overlooked for this blog due to either time constraints or wrongful neglect.


First up is the spec sheet for the Alternative Pick's annual Double Deck that went out to the participating artists last Summer/Fall. Its fairly simple, but I dig the colors. Also, its worth noting that the type for the cards itself changed during the creation process but definitely for the better. On a sidenote, the previous year's version had MUCH more copy. When I put this together, I forgot about the previous year's copy and almost wondered why I had so much room to work with. However, Maria (Altpick's founder) was all about it fortunately, and added only a couple of essential notes. Once again you're a savior Maria!


This is a piece I did for Timeout New York in October. Once again Jeff Quinn gave me an opportunity to expand the pre-existing image into a much larger panel. There's no punchline, and its not funny, but this might be my favorite of the few Photo Finishes I've done. Also, note the presence of newly elected senator Al Franken (I don't know you Norm Coleman, but Al has given the world laughs since before I was born. What have you done?). Please forgive the scan btw, I was looking frantically for the original file but probably deleted it by accident; but for some reason not having the original makes me feel like a real illustrator.


This last piece goes back to '07, when I was on the train heading to the Big Apple Circus. A homeless man had fallen asleep on the train, and his boots left a large pile of dirt on the seat. I thought the image was too powerful to not capture somehow. In hindsight, I truly wish I had woken him up to show him.

Anyway, that's it for now. The new pieces will be up soon, but until then, peace Blog.