Intelligence Report: Southern Poverty Law Center

Southern Poverty Law Center: Intelligence Report

Happy Thanksgiving!

This week I’m posting a spread I did for Intelligence Report, a magazine that’s geared to law enforcement personnel that specialize in tracking hate groups. You probably shouldn’t read this if you’re about to eat your Thanksgiving dinner.

When I was asked to illustrate the following spread for art director Russell Estes, I was initially put off by how gory the story of Amanda Crow was. In short, she was a skinhead who was brutally beaten, stabbed, and paralyzed and almost murdered by other skinhead “friends” who had decided she was a threat to their organization. In the story it says she lay in a wash in the Arizona desert where they left her to die for three days before someone came upon her broken body.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to take on the assignment because I don’t like to illustrate blood and guts very much, but I was up for the challenge to see if I could do it in a classier way while still keeping the intensity.

My goal with this piece was to create an image that was both beautiful and disgusting, focusing on both Amanda’s broken body and all the amazing little details of nature that you might notice if you were to lay down there, bugs and all.

I felt very strongly about the design I wanted to do so I only sent in this one sketch. Happily, Russell and the editors gave me the go-ahead based on this design and I got to work gathering tons of photo reference for plants and trees and bugs and stuff online to work from.

Over all I’m very proud of this piece–it’s the first spread I’ve done in a year and was such a challenge that it reminded me of the days when I was back in school and drinking coffee to stay up all night and work on a painting for Jason Holley’s class.

Two more follow-up spots were commissioned as well, obviously not as detailed, high-lighting other parts of the story, as well as a couple extra blood-droplets.

Thanks for reading!

Frank