Have a Green Day!

Two years ago I received a phone call from Rolling Stone magazine asking if I was available to do an illustration. Unfortunately, I had just arrived in San Diego on vacation and was forced to decline the job.

“No problem,” I told people, “they’ll call back.”

In April of ’09 they finally called back. The timing wasn’t so good. If it wasn’t the Rolling Stone and I didn’t know how long it took them to get back to asking me to do a job for them, I would have said “no.” But Rolling Stone is one of the four magazines I’ve always wanted to have as a client, so I made it work.

The topic was Green Day’s new album, “21st Century Breakdown.” The review described it as theatrical, ambitious, and patriotic.

I don’t do a lot of portraits, so this was a challenge, but I was really happy with the composition that I came up with. I tried to invoke a bit of the composition from Queen’s second album cover (Green Day’s new album was also compared to Queen in the review for the theatrical content).

Also, I tried to make them look as patriotic as possible. I did two versions, one with a colored U.S. flag, and one with a black and white flag, and the AD rightfully chose the colorful version.

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After the issue came out, I excitedly went to the local magazine rack to see if it had hit the stands yet. It had–last month’s issue with Bob Dylan on the cover–and opened it up to the page with my illustration.

Much to my dismay, the image had printed far too yellow, in a way that made the figures look very acidic in their coloring. The subtlety of the muted reds and blues had been spoiled in the translation from computer to print.

This is why I like seeing my work in print. People coming across your work in a magazine or book is much better advertising than sending out a postcard or email, so I like to see how things come out.

My first thought when I saw the printed version was “is it my fault?” As in, did I do something in Photoshop that made the colors this way, or did the designer alter my final version himself. Reason being is that I want to be sure to make necessary changes so that next time this won’t happen.

A couple days later I emailed the art director and asked him for some tear sheets, and I asked if they altered the image or if what I did made the image too yellow.

The art director told me that the yellowing of the printed image was the printer’s fault, and that he had already spoken to him about it.

While I’m glad it wasn’t one of the first two possible reasons for the faulty appearance, I’m still kind of bummed that it didn’t print out how I had envisioned. I hope that the next time I do a job for Rolling Stone that it comes out pristine and beautiful.

Just goes to show you that there are factors outside of our control as illustrators.

Thanks for reading,

Frank