JC/flashback

I can hardly take credit for anything in this 2011 photo, other than the colored tinting. Everything, from the model (actress Hannah Rose Fierman) to the setting or the pose, was brought to me. I can’t refuse anything my friend Alexis Karl, who needed an image for her new perfumes line.

Fernando Relvas dominated Portugal’s 1980s as one of its most prolific authors of  graphic novels. I remember writing a big article about him at some point. We’d sketch each other all the time. This drawing he did of me is from 1984. See here how I saw him in 1982.

Meetings are like subway commutes: either you suffer their fruitlessness or you use them as pretexts to sketch away. In 1994, when I art-directed Chicago’s NewCity, the weekly editorial meetings were kind of a chore, but at least I got good mileage on my sketchbooks.

In 2001 I was recruited by the Russians to spy at the MTV Video Awards Party, a mission I obviously chose to accept. The resulting watercolor drawings showed up in the Moscow magazine New Trends Plus, art directed by my old friend Anton Ioukhnouvets.

In 1994 I spent a snowy evening hanging around Maxwell Street hot dog stands, drawing images for a NewCity cover story. Came home with my clothes stinking of frying oil like you have no idea. Chicago’s South Side is full of unexpected dangers. 

What the hell is inside this package? I found this in a pile of junk from around 2010. The size doesn’t match any of my own books. Which Britney was this, what was I planning to give her, and why didn’t I? Of course I could solve a bit of the mystery by just unwrapping the package. But come on, you understand me.

Forgot what this was for. Probably for circa-2003 Real Simple magazine, for some story on home workouts. (This was the “one-legged squat”). What I clearly remember is how pleasing I find to do this kind of job. Just getting the poses right, from photos or from models, conveying a sooting yet effective atmosphere. No “concept,” no fluff. Almost as relaxing as doing the exercises myself!…

Every women’s magazine will at some point do a story on sex workers, and in 1995 the Portuguese edition of Marie Claire got me to illustrate their piece on peep-show dancers. I was living in Chicago and I didn’t a lot of research. That booth, I’m afraid, is my entire fabrication. I remember sketching a model, though; and also that her friends recognized her body shape when they saw the magazine.

I had entirely forgotten about this until someone blogged it some days ago. First book cover I ever illustrated (and, ahem!, designed), in 1984, aged 21. It’s a compilation of crime short stories jointly written by two Argentine heavyweights under a pseudonym. I remember creating the picture color separations on vellum paper. And the typography? Rubdown type, every single Helvetica Condensed character. Ugh.

“Tossing all sorts of brands in trash”? What was this for? Clearly my client didn’t buy it: I don’t remember ever finishing this illustration, they must have gone with something else. Pity, it was a fun sketch. 2004, that’d be my guess.

San Francisco’s Embarcadero, twice. 1998 on the left, I am about to move to NYC. 2010 on the right, just out from from a meeting Jen Bekman arranged at Chronicle to pitch my book. Ink and watercolor on the left, iPhone finger painting on the right. Each medium has its own charms but boy, do I like painting the correct sky colors right on the spot, instead of recreating it back at home.

My brother Vasco Colombo drew and illustrated this 22-page story, “33 rpm”, in 1996 (it came out in a Portuguese publication called Expresso). I still find it one the best things I ever saw him doing. This blog tends to showcase old stuff of mine, but I guess the family business is fair game… He and I work in very different ways, yet our outlook on behaviors, the details that we spot, the generational references, the way of seeing Lisbon, have quite a lot in common. 

I shouldn’t remember this sort of stuff — I did this sketch late 1982!, you do the math — but I believe this fella was some sort of cultural attaché in Lisbon. Could he be French? And what the heck is he drinking?

I designed my NewCity cover on the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights  and Liberation around a touching picture photographer Genyphyr Novak brought back from DC. Not entirely sure about what led me to surround it with those black and yellow bars.