Before my hot dog days I illustrated a weekly column for PW called On The Radar written by the legendary and hilarious Steven Wells. Starting with an article about gay republican cowboys in 2005 I cranked these out every week. Topics ranged from politics (George Bush as a Trekkie with Boobs??) to music (Lots of articles about how Belle & Sebastian and Henry Rollins are terrible) sports, pop culture, and how Americans were all secretly gay 400 pound gun toting rednecks.
A lot of the old drawings make me cringe.. I still worked in a kitchen back then and some of these were done in 3 hours on a tuesday morning, half an hour before press time and 45 minutes before I had to be in chef whites pounding out 75 tuna carpaccios. One day I'll archive all the illustrations and link back to the original articles, until then here's some of my favorites.
Steven passed away in 2009 and I don't think I really understood how lucky I was to be illustrating his stuff until reading the stories about his life and work that poured in from all over the world.
Along with being a blast to read and draw Steven's rants each week, illustrating On The Radar was really the project that pushed me into becoming an actual professional full time illustrator, so a huge thanks to Steven and art directors Sara Green and Tim Gough for actually letting this stuff go to print.
Check out the PW archives for more-
Philadelphia Weekly - Steven Wells 1960-2009
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