Chris Gash

I am so happy to finally have a chance to post some news and updates. We just had a baby last month and it’s been bananas around here…

AARP The Magazine asked me to illustrate a new Q&A page. The inaugural column was about a woman who feels her husband’s snoring is ruining their marriage. The reply mentions the sleep mask as a possible solution (and one that could have amorous results), so I tried both angles in the sketches:

I have done two of these pages now, and I’ll post the next one soon. Here is the final for snoring:

This is the latest installment of the Sean Foley advice column for Golf Digest, about maintaining inner peace throughout your game:

One of my projects for 2012 was to start a blog to record my weekly assignment for the NYTimes Science Times. It will show all the unused sketches and alternate versions, as well as bringing back some of my favorite spots from the past 8 years. You can check it out here:

I will still be posting some of the Science images here, like this one about the evolution of a grooming claw in a very early primate:

And I’ve been mentioning the upcoming live drawing video for NYU for a few months now. The video will not be officially out until April, but here are a few pics from the shoot last week:

Thanks to Dian, Doug, Peter, and everyone at NYU who couldn’t have been more fun to work with. And, to all the art directors who blew out my deadlines and gave me extra time since the baby was born, thank you, thank you, you’re the best!

Happy New Year, visitor!

Here are the past couple of weeks of Science and BizDay spots from the NYTimes…

Rats will free a trapped cage mate even if there is no reward involved:

A giant gas cloud is being sucked into the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy:

Drought and poor water management contributed to the collapse of the Khmer empire:

And for Business Day – two columns about a train ride up the east coast and a follow up to the column about all the guns that show up at airport checkpoints:

And finally for the New York Observer for an article about a Chinatown smoke shop where machines roll your cigarettes for you. This little trick means they can skirt NYC cigarette “pack” tax and charge only three bucks for 20 smokes. Needless to say, they are taking over the city and the mayor is fuming.

Thanks to Peter, Joe and Scott.

By any count, it’s been a good year around here and so as I get ready to take off for the holidays, I just want say a big thanks to everyone I worked with in 2011 and all the wonderful illustrator pals I have made thanks to Twitter (I never get tired of us telling each other how smart we are)!

Here is my Best of 2011, not a complete list and I’m sure I’ve missed a few things that I’ll remember as soon as I leave the house, but here goes…

My first moving parts were done for Golf Digest and the 23 illustrations we did for their inaugural iPad app:

In April of 2012, I will have been illustrating Joe Sharkey’s travel column in the NYTimes for 10 years, I can’t believe we’ve had a such a great run. Here is a favorite from 2011 about the new traffic cams designed to catch drivers who race the yellow light:

And likewise it has been another great year at Science Times with Peter Morance. Here is one of my all-time favorites from last year about the new most powerful microscope in the world:

And two from Science that earned a place in Communication Arts and 3×3 in 2011:

I had a wonderful time working with Dian Holton on this package for AARP:

Thanks to Nick at Adweek for this one:

And it was very nice to be the first illustrator to ever do the cover of this Hanley Wood magazine (these guys are great, they use a lot of illustration in every issue of their magazines and couldn’t be nicer to work with):

This was for the Boston Globe about a woman who spent a scorching weekend at an Arizona golf camp, and was definitely one of my favorite images of the year:

For Bloomberg Businessweek, another top pick:

I always sweat while I’m waiting to hear back from NB at the NYTimes Book Review, but this one worked out AOK:

And this cover for the Miami Herald was a lot of fun and surely deserves a nod:

Over the summer, while off from school I had a chance to post some doodle-mations from my sketchbook, and these two were my favorites:

And finally, of course, the New York Times Picture This video was a year and career highlight. Thanks to everyone involved, it was a lot of fun to do and to be on the cover of the Times for a whole week. Here are some screen shots, and you can watch the video here:

Happy Holidays!

Here are a few jobs from the past month…

This was a section opener for American Medical News about legal help for doctors when online reviews cross the line into defamation:

So it turns out that the Border Patrol, responsible for busting gun-runners and drug-smugglers, are in fact running guns and smuggling drugs, according to this cover story for the Phoenix New Times:

And here is the latest Wisdom Circle for AARP The Magazine, this one about a woman who can’t let go of the anger she feels toward her ex:

Science Times from two weeks ago was about how dolphins waddle under the weight of pregnancy; this next one was about people with grapheme-color synesthesia – the kicker is that we weren’t sure if there would be color on the page that week so the illustration couldn’t rely on it, that was a head-scratcher:

The NYTimes Biz Day spot last week about alliance airlines and how you never know who will be flying the plane regardless of what your ticket says:

For Remodeling Magazine, a story about how a quick personal response can satisfy an unhappy customer:

And finally a quick one for the Saturday Wall Street Journal about how best to complain to retailers in order to get your way (I thought for sure it was going to be one of these “squeaky wheel” sketches):

But we went with a parody of Lichtenstein for more graphic punch (to which I would add that I did this with absolute love and admiration for one of my favorite artists):

Thanks to Jennifer, Peter, Joanna, Peter, Joe, Mary, and Mark (and Roy)!

It’s been great getting to work regularly again for Golf Digest, here are a few recent assignments (with more coming soon)…

For this one they needed three spots for an article about a golf trip to Las Vegas. And as it happens the story never came in so they asked me to just run with “golf” and “Vegas”. Here are the sketches:

I usually never do the kidney shapes, but for this it seemed appropriate…here are the picks:

This was a very last minute quickie for a sidebar about scoring to balance handicaps:

This column was about killing your swing by gripping too tightly, here are the ideas:

And the final:

Thanks to Doug, Ken and Riva!