The Wall Street Journal commissioned me to produce an illustration for an article by departing journalist, Jeff Oppdike. This would be his last piece for his column ‘Love & Money’ for he would be opping sticks and moving to another state. Originally, it was meant to be a colour illustration but the flight path was changed to prevent a near miss. 

Here are the two scamps that I provided after reading the proposed column:

I liked the first one with its appropriate little accounting joke about reconciliation but the art editor in his control tower preferred the drama of the airplane and the project [ahem] took off. 

It was easy to find a reference for a dollar bill on t’internet. I printed out both sides, glued them together and folded the newly minted note into a dart. [It turned out that a regular dollar bill would be far too long to make the shape that I wanted, so I cut of around a third from one end and then began folding]. I then photographed it in my shadow box and used 3B pencils on Arches Hot pressed watercolour paper to complete. I altered the position of some of the note’s text to make sure that its ‘dollarness’ was increased. It’s a pleasure to work monochrome and I think it looks very effective, don’t you? 

We hope that you enjoyed your flight of fancy and look forward to having you on board again soon. You can read the article on the WSJ website, minus the illustration.