Editorial illustration

Caracas Cocuy Crawl

Year

November 2025

Client

Roads & Kingdoms

Sector

Editorial / Food and drink, print magazine

My role

Illustration for a print magazine feature

Medium and tools

Watercolour, ink and gold leaf

Tasting the revival of a once-forgotten drink. A feature by Rafael Tonon on cocuy, Venezuela’s agave spirit, in Roads & Kingdoms’ first print magazine. The issue won the 2026 James Beard Award, and this article was nominated for one.

The brief

The writer drinks his way through Caracas for a week, following a spirit most people outside Venezuela have never heard of. The pictures had to feel warm and a little blurred, like the night they describe.

Process

I painted the bottles loose and wet, letting the watercolour spread beyond the lines, then added gold leaf where the light catches the spirit. One bottle carries the hand-lettered label “cocuy de penca”.

The paintings were scanned and layered across the opening spread, under the headline and into the text column.

Outcome

An opening spread and a set of bottle paintings that run through the feature, published in Roads & Kingdoms’ first print magazine in November 2025.

The issue won the 2026 James Beard Award for Food Coverage in a General Interest Publication, and this article was nominated for a James Beard Award.

Images

The artwork