What explosions in our inbox this week! July 4th seems to have prompted some exceptionally beautiful and thought-through images. As a French woman living in New York City, I thought there would have been more fun poked at old Uncle Sam, but the show of joyful celebration and patriotism was great to see. Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit, these were fun to go through and once again very difficult to narrow down. As always, we look forward to hearing which ones you liked best and why in the comments. Happy beginning of summer!
Fireworks, barbecues, American flags, folding chairs — it may not be exactly how our Founding Fathers celebrated, but it feels like the traditions are old as time. July 4th is a celebration of summer and of America - which makes it a good time to poke fun at America too (see Christoph Niemann’s covers below). How will you be celebrating this year? Pull out your red white and blue crayons and get sketching! (Perspectives from international artists more than welcome.)
- By Harry Bliss
- By R. Sikoryak
- By Christoph Niemann
- By Christoph Niemann
To enter each week’s contest, please send sketches on this week’s theme. Use the submissions page or email submissions to blowncovers@gmail.com. I prefer sketches to finished work and good ideas to good drawings. Please send files in as jpegs under 1mb, and label the file with firstname.lastname. The deadline is Thursday at noon (NYC time). The themes on the Blown Covers website closely mirror what I suggest to the New Yorker artists I already work with. This blog and contest are informal and not affiliated with the magazine but I’m always on the lookout for ideas. Please keep submissions confidential in case they are selected for later publication. The winning sketch (according to my own subjective whims) will be posted here on Friday.
Two July 4th covers by the wonderful William Steig - He drew the first in 1937, when he was 30 years old (and still a boy at heart) and the second in 1982, when he was 75 years old.
Behind the scenes atThe New Yorker with art editor 