Good Bye.

This is the last post for this blog.  You can follow my updates at: http://mattrotasartnews.tumblr.com/

Warcraft cyber spying

Here's a new piece for the New york Times Sunday Review, It's for a fun article written by the esteemed Margaret Atwood, about U.S. spy agencies using the online gaming universes Warcraft and Second Life to spy on potential terrorist activities and exchanges that may take place in these virtual worlds.

Joyce Carol Oats and Flannery O'connor

  

I've been playing with different ways of combining traditional drawing with digital in a collaged fashion.  Portraits are always a good subject to explore new materials and esthetic ideas, these are two I came up with recently.  Joyce Carol Oats, and Flannery O'connor were two fun subjects for this.

Telephone

This is a new short comic I've been working on over the past couple of weeks, first time I've actually attempted a painted comic. Painting comics takes forever.

Check out the larger version Here.

Pat Benatar and Brian Wilson for Smithsonian.

 

   

These are two portraits of mine that just ran in the latest Smithsonian Magazine. The issue was about  the Beatles coming to America, and their influence. It features spotlights on several musicians. I had already done a portrait of Brian Wilson as a personal piece, which the art director had seen and asked to use, and then asked for a second portrait, this one of someone I never thought I would be commissioned to draw....Pat Benatar!  I had to reformat the Brian Wilson piece from the original, which had a blue background with palm trees and with Brian in a white tee shirt, to one where the background had to be white, so I took the background, and turned that into the tee shirt.  Pat Benatar being Pat Benatar was a pleasure to draw just because she's so outrageous, the illustration practically drew itself. 


The original Brian Wilson:

Picture in Picture original comic art show

I have a piece in this show opening tonight curated By Jess Worby. Located in the Launchpad Gallery in Crown Heights, hope to see you there.

Washington Post: Book Review piece on the Kennedy Assassination.

This is a new piece for the Washington Post Book Review of the novel Top Down by Jim Lehrer. The book's about the guilt of one of JFK's secret service agents who blames himself for the assassination, he let the president ride that day without a protective roof.  The agents daughter and a reporter associated with the assassination decide to reenact the shooting with the plexiglas roof on the limousine to prove to the depressed secret service agent Kennedy would have died either way.