Sneak peek! Just a sliver of the latest cover illo I finished today for an East Coast rag.

A recent piece for ModernFarmer.com for a story about some goats ransacking a farmer’s house. Top one is the one they ran, bottom one is my preferred abstraction.

Thanks to Jake Swearingen for the assignment.

National Public Illustration: Author Mark Bittman spoke about his new “Vegan Before 6pm” or VB6 diet and how humans don’t need cow milk for calcium.

An old coworker from a summer job during college used to always say “milk is for baby cows” and that phrase has stuck with me ever since so here it is (not a Mark Bittman quote).

Cheers to Saul Bass, a design an illustration legend who would be 93 today! I would not be the designer and illustrator I am today without his influence.

You can purchase prints of this piece here. Free shipping until May 12th!

National Public Illustration: pieces inspired by the news I hear on NPR when I wake up. Today it is about how researchers are trying to develop computers that can read our thoughts and predict our emotions. Welcome to the future y’all.

Some late sketches from the news last week about Jason Collins.

The start of my new National Public Illustration series … stay tuned for more newsy concept sketches.

Sneak peek teaser of an illo I just finished. Coming soon to a newsstand near you (if you live in the pacific northwest that is…)

NEWS FLASH! This is not a real New Yorker cover but I wish it was

A recent piece inspired by NYC that I did for my Hartford Illustration MFA program.

Prints are available HERE.

Forgot about this one … runner up in Graphic Design for Creative Quarterly 31. Check out a different color version over on my site .

Cover illo for the Houston Press story about how chemically altered drugs sold online killed the teenagers who bought and tried them. The bottom image is my after-thought reworking of it.

Thanks to AD Monica Fuentes for the assignment!

Moving along… this is a tricky one but it’s getting fun.

Molecularific! Setting up a molecular grid so I can draw object-shaped molecules. Science!

Here’s my first work outside of SF Weekly to be published. Cover illo for a story about how heath care coverage was being denied to those in substance abuse and mental health recovery programs, after they had already been in the program for a few months.

Ideas started with removing a bandage from someones head, the ol’ bandaid cross on a  brain, the blue cross symbol falling out of a head, and someone trying to cling to a cross being hoisted away (an idea I will save for another time).

Art Director Mike Kooiman liked the bandaid idea but thought it should show the human head. I agreed as that sketch is a bit impersonal.

I tried some variations on the bandaid idea.

As well as the missing cross idea.

Mike and I both agreed that the cross was a better approach.

Since the City Pages cover is newsprint, I had to stay away from the color scheme I liked best - black background, white head, blue brain - as white would have let the ad printed on the other side show though and too much black is not a good idea on newsprint. Plus, Mike had a dark/black cover the week before. So red and gold it was.

I struggled a bit with how to show the cross cut out of the brain without using drop shadows or 3D effects. I had it in my head that black was off limits, but duh, in a small quantity it would be fine.

Below are the two finals I submitted. I wasn’t super happy with the textured version when I finished so I went back to the drawing board and drew up a more graphic brain. I’m glad it was the version they used.

And finally, below is the version that I feel better fits the tone of the story. I guess having glossy covers to work with over the past three years has got me spoiled…

Big thanks to Mike Kooiman at City Pages for giving me one of my first assignments and my first cover as a freelance illustrator. Cheers!

It’s on like Donkey Kong! Whatever that means… Check out this dude’s work.
I hear it’s redonkulicious™.

Illustration by John Hersey