Cost of Doing Business

This spot illustration appears in the latest issue of the Pittsburgh City Paper, and describes the practices of some club owners that result in musicians paying for the privilege of performing in their venues.

CP's Art Director, Lisa Cunningham, and I bounced around several ideas involving parking meters, instruments with coin slots, bouncers holding musicians' gear hostage, and feeding money into a vending machine to retrieve an instrument.

I thought that an upright bass would work well, offering a nice expanse of space to add a large, readable coin slot, and a natural-looking way to show the player inserting a coin. At first glance, it just looks like a guy playing bass, and then those details emerge.

Even when doing illustration work, I am, for the most part, a cartoonist.