And 1

Prelims:  8.5" x 11", graphite on bond
Final Drawing:  20" x 32", graphite and blue pencil on Rives BFK

James' comments, from www.processrecess.com:

I was contacted by 72andSunny to create an illustrated ad for AND1 shoes. Initially, I was hesitant to accept the job since they wanted the illustration to surround a photograph of a basketball player (I'd much prefer to create a complete illustration than to decorate a photograph), but I relented after some negotiation over the fee.

The agency and the client liked what I had done with the Black Parade cover, and, in essence, wanted something similiar. I tried to push the piece towards something more surreal, but this sketch was ultimately deemed too weird, and the giant demon on the right too dominant. I reused a 'character' from one of my sketchbook pages, inspired by an Mayan sculpture I had seen in a documentary. We planned for the figure to stand between the wolves, a picture of the shoe to be placed on the left, and for a logo and type to be placed on the cape elements in the composition.

I revised the composition and unfortunately had to lose the large vulture on the demon's arm, which I thought was the most interesting part of the original sketch. I moved the shield away from the gutter to accommodate the "AND1" logo, and resized and shifted everything around until all technical and personal demands were met . . . that is, I wanted to create a composition that could work with the photographic elements and type but also stand on it's own.

We took out the branches to allow for more depth in the piece, since the agency felt it was too crowded. I drew the flames in blue because I wanted to isolate and extract the lines later on in photoshop.

With each assignment, I try to find some kind of 'innovation' or idea that's new to my visual vocabulary -- it's been really interesting to see how things have grown and evolved over the years. In this case, I took the 'paper tree' effect from an illustration I had done for Entertainment Weekly and applied it to the flames, and I carefully draw some more ornate orange flames to add some moments of incidence to the composition.