Willamette Week's Cheap Eats Cover

Destined to inspire the consumption of low-quality meat, dirt-cheap burritos and greasy pizza before collecting dust on Oregon coffee tables.

weekly illustrations

These are three recent illustrations for the willamette week. All ink wash on watercolor paper, drawn with a fine watercolor brush. A simple, clean style works very well for their final presentation on newsprint. I'm particularly fond of the image in the middle, for a pho tasting, and the skull form lurking in the background. I'm a pho fan, but the illustration is supposed to account for the anxiety of trying new food.

EcoTrust!

Deborah Kane contacted me through Threepin.org to complete a series of line drawings in under a week on the history of food in the schools, leading up to the present moment. It was a very interesting learning experience to see how we have changed so dramatically in this area as a country, from digging up baseball fields to plant gardens in the hopes of fattening up our young soldiers, to seeing school lunches as a way of getting rid of surplus food produced in the marketplace, to coming back to gardens and cooperation with local farmers. Happily, at least in Portland, this series ends with a positive. Deborah puts out a great quarterly, Edible Portland, worth checking out if you are up here in the Pacific NW.

Walk There!

I'm working right now on a cover for a walking guide of portland and the surrounding areas that Metro is putting out to encourage people to be more active and to explore some interesting sites in the area. Hot Pepper Studios is putting the book together and have been a joy to work with on this one. I'm also illustrating the book, with a series of six line drawings. The image above is the rough color version of the cover, which will change somewhat before we are through.

Warts

It's been a busy couple of months working on animated commercials. At this moment one of my character designs will be transformed into a moving, shouting puppet WART for an upcoming national spot for a certain WART creme. In the end, the final WART design was the product of a series of over 200. I'm looking forward to seeing the final edit in the upcoming weeks. This is the second national spot I've worked on, the other being an ad for Ring Pop, and the first where I designed all characters. Stay tuned!