I was contacted by Broken Sword Publications to do spot illustrations and book design for this project.  The book features essays, short stories and poems about lowriders and lowrider culture, but its main focus is the amazing photography of Art Meza.  

 

I decided that I wanted the focus to be on the photographs, and that everything else should look crisp and light with simple typography and generous amounts of white space.

 

I tried to bring this approach to my illustrations for the project as well.  I wanted the images to maintain the important visual history of lowrider arte, but to look new, fresh and smart.  I opted for simplicity and a clean, cartoon aesthetic over the more detailed and heavy traditional style.  I also kept the color palette limited to red and gray to give a connected feel to all of the pieces.

 

The images below are much larger than they appear in the book itself.   I set each one in the center of a page at a size of 2.5" x 2.5".  This way, they add to the book and helped define its attitude without influencing surrounding content.

 

Not all of the images which appear in the finished book are shown below.  

 

UPDATE:  The book is doing great, and my work in it got a shout out in this review.

The image above appeared on the opening splash page of the book, along with the title and author info.  This in the only full-color illustration I did for this book.

The lowrider bicycle!