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[July 7, 2008 ] Recently you were asked to illustrate a book for Manta Ray, the famous Israeli restaurant. How did you get this dream job? The Manta Ray restaurant book is actually a recipe book and my illustrations and drawings are only a part of the design. The book also includes photographs by Avi Ganor who is also one of the owners of the restaurant. I studied at the Bezalel Art Academy with Michal Suday, the designer, and she remembered my work and recommended it to the owners of the restaurant.
What was the most appealing part of this project?
The restaurant is located on a beach in Tel Aviv. I went there several times on different days and different hours of the day to take the photos of people sunbathing, playing, doing yoga, and families with kids. I also took photos inside the restaurant
of the waiters, the dining people and even inside the kitchen.
The interesting part of doing the sketches from these photos,
each time I discovered interesting little details.
How was the project's design executed?
You are based in Israel, but some of your clients are located in the US. What is the process once the job has been assign to you? This is very simple, I actually don't see a big difference between someone who lives in LA or SF and works for NY and myself living across the ocean in Israel. Since I'm 7 hours ahead of NY, it's even an advantage because I have all the morning to work until it's morning in NY. Usually, I get the text by email, email back the sketches and then I email the finals. Work is very simple these days, I work directly on the computer in Photoshop. I've been working with clients from the US for over 15 years and also lived for a few years in NY, so i know how things work more or less :)...
I loved working for the New Yorker.. this was really early on my career, maybe too early. I felt very pampered working for them and I felt that they appreciated the kind of work that i enjoy doing myself - the sketchy black and white drawings. I also loved working for Food and Wine magazine, food and restaurants are one of my favorite subjects to draw. I also try to take only projects that I will enjoy and feel comfortable with, otherwise it's very difficult to work on. There has been many projects that I've enjoyed working on during the years basically where I have enough artistic freedom and I can bring my own ideas. I'm happy.
Which one was your most challenging?
Describe your studio and a typical work day.
A typical work day for me is reading the text then looking for reference and images online and printing the reference photos. I never work from my imagination! It's always with the help of reference. After collecting the reference images I start drawing little images scanning them then creating the final image. My work is actually a collage of images and I work mostly in Photoshop using the layers option.
In a perfect world, what would be an ideal project?
When did you first realize that illustration would be your career? I was one of those kids that always drew and all the other kids asked them to draw nice things for them in their notebooks. When I was in 2nd grade I drew the 10 plagues at bible class in my notebook and was very proud of that! But seriously I think it was when I was in the fourth year of my design studies, I studied at Bezalel in Jerusalem and was sent for one semester in SVA in NY. There I had the opportunity to study with few wonderful instructors and realized that illustration is actually a real profession. That was when I decided to start looking for illustration work.
Did you have any mentors? If so, who?
I would probably invest more in keeping also a small design career together with the illustration one, I think that illustration is much more difficult since you invest more emotionally in the work.
Who/what are your daily inspirations?
What does your future hold for you?
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