Yesterday I shared a new cover illustration that I created for City Pages, an alt-weekly based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Later in the day, my friend Stephanie Glaros (Art Director of Experience Life, formerly of Utne Reader) spotted some palettes behind the City Pages building and took these great photos for me.

What I love about these images so much is that they perfectly show one of the reasons that I and many other illustrators get into this business in the first place, which is to create art that works its way into the daily lives of the masses. Sure, I’ve seen my work in print before, but it’s a thrill to see these pictures of my work just before being unleashed upon the people of Minneapolis. They look so hopeful and unassuming before being delivered to newsstands and coffee shops, as yet uncrumpled, untorn, and untarnished with coffee stains and the scars of human contact. Travel well, my children.

Thanks so much to Stephanie for taking the time to take these pictures and send them to me.

Here’s a fun project I got to work on for City Pages, based on an article about violence and bullying in the workplace. Once I got the idea for this visual it made me laugh out loud, because it’s pretty much how I used to feel about clocking in to a day job, and it seemed to be a good fit for this article.

I was honored to have my illustration work featured in a recent issue of MacUser magazine, which is based in the UK. Here’s a look at the magazine spreads. Thanks so much, MacUser!

Here’s a new piece for a touching Globe and Mail article about an elderly couple deciding to get married amidst a string of medical complications.

Here’s a new editorial piece for one of Portland’s alt-weeklies, The Willamette Week. This one is for an article about the Lake Oswego city council voting to cut off public access to the public lake, due to pressure from the Lake Oswego Corporation. The Art Director was Ben Mollica, and this was the first overnight deadline I’ve had in a while, so it was a nice challenge.

I’m very excited to announce that the above illustration, originally created for The Globe and Mail, was “chosen” by the jury of this year’s American Illustration 31 annual. Thanks again to Art Director Cinders McLeod, as well as the following American Illustration judges for the recognition:

Jen Bekman, 20×200
Steven Charny, Rolling Stone
Mia Song, Men’s Health
John Gall, Random House
Aviva Michaelov, The New York Times
Veronica Reo, Young & Rubicam
Paul Sahre, O.O.P.S.

Here’s a full page illustration for the latest issue of Euroman magazine, to accompany an article about China buying up the world’s economy bit by bit. During the research and concept stage for this piece, I kept coming across some crazy images of Chinese workers transporting outrageously large loads on the backs of bicycles, and thought it would make for the perfect visual metaphor. The Art Director was Sune Ehlers, and he was a great collaborator on this project.

On a side note, my father-in-law is notorious for strapping a bunch of stuff to the top of our car for our trip home every time we visit them, so much so that it’s often easier to just cut the ropes and straps rather than try to undo the labyrinth of knots and clamps. While working on this illustration, I was definitely trying to channel him and make sure it looked like the load would actually stay somewhat in place. Hope I made him proud.

This first piece is a cover illustration for Our Town/West Side Spirit meant to illustrate a trend of con men in Manhattan targeting wealthy female retirees. I was really glad that the Art Director (Ed Johnson) and I chose to take a chance on a more conceptual approach, because any ideas that were too literal just seemed cheeky and cliché.

Next, I was contacted by Suji Allen at The Portland Mercury to visualize a hypothetical article that outlined a minute-by-minute account of an imaginary large earthquake hitting Portland, Oregon. Being a Portland resident, the extreme detail of the fictitious account put me in the perfect squeamish mindset to create this image. I could even hear the creaking and cracking of metal of the crumbling Hawthorne Bridge.

Beyond that, I tried to suggest a deeper, more emotional story with lighting, figures, and other details because this is something that was lacking in the text, but that I felt after reading it.

I was really excited to get a call to create the cover illustration for this week’s Nashville Scene. The topic was an opinion piece based on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The Art Director and I thought that the concept of a pirate ship sneaking through a computer’s circuit board would make for a unique approach.

I recently completed this new personal piece based on my favorite recurring scene from my favorite book, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. The main character, Santiago, often dreams about lions playing on the beaches of Africa, which is something he witnessed in his younger days. The imagery of this recurring dream always struck me on an emotional level, and I have wanted to illustrate it for a long time. I was lucky enough to have a recent break in client work to see this concept through.