Mad Men Party

What happens when a collector of 50s-60s ephemera, books and various what-not gets a chance to illustrate a Mad Men-themed party? Well, here you go. For The Boston Globe G Magazine. Big thanks to Martin Gee for being such a swell client.

In order to pull this off, I had to endure an all-nighter - which, by the way, gets harder to recover from the older I get. Not like it was when I was in college, that's for sure. But anyway, it was worth it. I'm quite pleased with how this looked after sleeping throughout the next day. I think I was worried that it was looking too busy, with some of the colors looking jumbled and crazy. But I simplified the colors to the partygoers in the far background, near the top, and that seemed to do the trick. I also played around with the starburst in the middle of the composition. I know that it's something I tend to do a lot, but here, it worked out pretty well since we are focused on the TV in the middle. Plus, the starburst motif is mirrored by the starburst clock in the upper right corner.

I'll do a step-by-step progress post on this illustration once all the dust settles.

Boston-ites, this will be for tomorrow's Boston Globe: Thursday, July 15th. Look for it! Here's a sneaky-peek before it goes to press, thanks to Martin: