Mostly, I think of good art direction as deference...to me, of course. But a really good art director can locate the best deep within you and coax it to the top, sometimes with a mere suggestion. In this case, the art director was Edel Rodriguez/TIME magazine. The article is about the question of tieing the solution to the Iraq war with resolving Middle East issues. i presented a few sketches, and we agreed on the strongest of them. Edel asked me to treat the color like the "Death Visits New Orleans" art;  a limited and more graphic treatment of color. Sometime in the course of rendering the illo, a switch was thrown in my head. I've never been completely satisfied with my approach to color, feeling there is nothing distinctive about it. in fact, I have a sign above the drawing board that reads "It's the color, stupid".  Suddenly I felt  a direction. Ever since this job, I see color differently. Not sure if I'm prepared to articulate it fully yet, but change is a comin.