Arthur Miller

On the shelves since past friday is the special issue «The 100 All-Time Greatest» of Entertainment Weekly.

Mark has already posted his brilliant image and explained a bit of what the magazine's about.

I was so thrilled when Kory  Kennedy called me to work on Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman for the theatre section. I'm a great fan of all this period of american writters.

This is the kind of assignment that reminds me why I love editorial illustration at first. 

Illustrate a text you really like is just fun.

Anyway, I went to the bookstore cause I couldn't find my old copy of the play, and I really wanted my image to reflect the ambiance of the play, not of a movie.

After my memory got refresh by the reading, it was clear I wanted to show it was a set on a stage, as well as pay tribute to different levels of light Miller explains for each character entry or the different backgrounds.

For once I did all the sketches directly on photoshop, and here are the different stages of the process.

I've just shown Sketch 1d to Kory, the other are only for me, when I try to improve the setting.

Kory liked it but wanted to see how it would work from the front.

To do so I had to change the set, I thought a lonely hotel room, without uncovering to much the final drama, would work well.

Again, I did it only on the computer.

In the end, Kory and I agreed the back was more interesting and we went for it.

Here is the final in the spread.

Thank you again Kory for this great one.