2019 is the very auspicious year of the Golden Pig in the Lunar calendar. It’s always a fun challenge as an illustrator to put together a card to go out for the Lunar New Year. Each year comes with a color, and a set of associations that make it fun to work with. In this case, pigs are supposed to be symbols of good fortune and wealth because they have large litters. All those little piglets mean abundance!

I made a print with a couple of pigs, one more naturalistic , the other a bit stylized. I did them in red since that’s always a good color for the Lunar New Year. I knew I would probably change the color to gold to fit with the year, but it’s always good to have different color options.

I decided I like the more naturalistic pig better. I only did them on top of each other because of the shape of the linoleum that I had, but I ended up liking the placement of one pig on top of the other so much that I decided to keep it for the final card. After all, two pigs have got to be better then one, right? I went back and did the type on a separate linoleum so I could have more control putting it altogether in photoshop. And here’s the final!

If you want to learn more about how your sign will do with all this pig energy, check out this lady’s video. Gung hay fat choy!

These covers are real outliers for me. It’s not that I shy away from reading dark stories or subject matters, but I don’t often feel like I want to explore them by making covers for them. I saw this movie and subsequently read the book years ago, but it’s always stayed with me: a story of violence and obsession, of how brutality is passed down like a disease first from mother to daughter, and then from lover to lover, how quickly a perpetrator can become a victim, and how quickly our sympathies as viewers can curdle and revolt. Is it any wonder I haven’t wanted to watch it or read it again?! But still, it stayed on my mind as a cover, so here are the two approaches.

I think any distortion or violence done to the image of a body is very disturbing on an intuitive, gut level. I really dislike the fingers separated from the hand. There’s something almost sensuous about the bruise in the other, which is gross. Gross! And that color all over the rest of the cover makes it feel like the whole book is covered in skin, EW! I’ve grossed myself out so much doing these covers, that I feel like I’ve really conveyed my experience of reading the book.

Both covers focus on the main character’s sadomasochistic tendencies. I mean, you should know what you’re getting into when you pick up this book, right? Erika Kohut holds a position at a prestigious Viennese conservatory where she teaches the most elite and talented of students. For me, part of the fascination of the movie was watching the teacher bully her students into submission, and thinking about how playing an instrument at that level is often a case of a “punishing” practice schedule, a curbing and subduing of students so that they can attain a competitive level of mastery. Erika’s harsh treatment of her students isn’t even that remarkable in this environment; it’s the perfect cover from under which she can freely indulge her cruelty. I wanted to make explicit the link between the instrument and her need to punish herself and to punish others. Do I have to tell you that things go from bad to worse over the course of the movie? I don’t want to go too much into it, so here are the full covers, and a variation on #2.