Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Wounded Charioteer

Sketches arrive early in the planning process for a National Geographic article. By means of these rough, tentative sketches, the art director must convince the magazine's editor to allot valuable space in the article for illustrations.
Wounded charioteer. Pencil sketch for a 
National Geographic article on the Etruscans 1987.

You're competing against the writer (who has reams of text), and the photographer who has hundreds of gorgeous, finished photos.

Sometimes the editor's knife cuts out a lot of visual ideas that might have made exciting paintings, but they didn't add enough to the story.

1 comment:

Matt Mulford said...

Hi James, how much time did you have to complete full illustrations for the Geographic generally? And how often were you sent on-site to the source of the article to collect reference for your illustrations? Thanks!