New Work: Buffalo Alumni Magazine (with process sketches!)

Here is a new piece I did recently for Buffalo Alum Magazine. It was a small, quarter page spot in their class notes section, where they ask an expert alumni to give the top five answers to a question. Fun idea! For this issue the question was: "Top five ways to beat grocery store gluttony" posed to an alumni who spends her workdays spreading the gospel of healthy food to others as the Buffalo division nutritionist for Wegmans Food Markets. One of the tips was about starting in the produce section and filling your cart with fresh fruits and vegetables before you get to the chip/junk food aisles. So my sketch showed a woman pushing a grocery cart filled with enormous veggies:

Another tip was to make a list and STICK TO IT. So I sketched a woman entering the grocery aisles with her list held high like a torch. She's in a powerful stance, so you know she means business... and will stick to her list.

And the last idea presented went with a tip about shopping the perimeter of the store where most of the healthier options are: produce, milk, cheese, meats, etc. Most of the junk food and unhealthy options are in the middle rows. So my sketch showed a little grocery shopper skirting around the outside of the drawing area that had larger snack food inside.

The client chose the first idea of the crowding out the cart with healthy, natural foods, so I went to final with that. And here's how it turned out. I don't use the color purple in my illustration all that often, but I thought it was pretty perfect as a backdrop for the bright greens and oranges of the food.