Had 24 Hours to Complete the Job

PHILADELPHIA (June 4, 2009) - Tim O'Brien, an adjunct faculty member in the Illustration department at the University of the Arts, painted the portrait of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor that graces the cover of the June 8, 2009, issue of Time magazine.

O’Brien received a call from Time’s design director Arthur Hochstein on Tuesday, May 26, to inquire about creating a cover portrait of Sotomayor. The deadline was the next day – May 27. Using various pieces of photographic reference, he worked all day Tuesday and received approval to move forward at about 6 p.m. He worked through the night and into the morning, finally finishing at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

“It's very exciting to know a piece I did is going to be seen by millions of people,” said O’Brien, who has been doing Time covers for 20 years. “I love fast turnaround jobs, but while I’m working on it though, it is a pressured situation. In recent years I get assigned a cover if a subject is being presented, like an election cover or a person of the year. In many cases, I'm used when photography fails to satisfy the desired mood and iconic look they may be looking for.”

Time’s Managing Editor Rick Stengel unveiled the cover on May 28 on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Iterations of the portraits can be found on O’Brien’s blog.

O’Brien has also painted a number of portraits of President Barack Obama for the covers of Time and other news magazines. His work has been published in Newsweek, TV Guide, The Atlantic Monthly, Business Week, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, National Geographic, Playboy, Penthouse, Premier, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Worth, Avon Books, Ballentine, Dial, Harper Collins, Penguin, Times Books, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Viking, Warner, and many others.

The University of the Arts is the nation’s first and only university dedicated to the visual, performing and communication arts. Its 2,300 students are enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs on its campus in the heart of Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts. The institution’s roots as a leader in educating creative individuals date back to 1868.

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