My latest illustration fro UAJ, Burning Sean, required a bit of extra care. It’s for an article about a perfectly innocent yearly pre-ski season ritual/party gone wrong. It also involves a bunch of drunken white dudes with tiki torches burning an effigy of their soon-to-be-married friend, Sean. As a long-time resident of Charlottesville, Virginia, I have to say I had some apprehension about depicting white guys with tiki torches burning something that could easily be mistaken for a cross (Which is where all of the humor of the article come from). Part of my solution was to make sure the effigy clearly had a pair of legs. This would ensure that it had more of a star-shape. The next was to give the effigy some ski poles. The last was to make sure the white dudes looked as drunkenly cheerful as possible. In the end, I think it all worked out pretty well.
