I was commissioned by Brown University to make this illustration to accompany a story in their Brown Medicine Magazine about their new Alpert Medical School Building.

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This illo was for a story about firms providing non-profits, governments, and businesses in developing countries with free, short-term consulting services while at the same time gaining firsthand insight into the needs of emerging markets.

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How fitting that I am commissioned by AARP for an illustration on the eve of my 50th birthday. This is for a story about phone scamming.

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Above is an illustration I made recently for a story about a pug dog. In the story, she approached a worker out of curiosity. Below is a breakdown of the image layers.

This is the un-cropped version.

Before adding the pattern of rocks to the background.

Before adding the boots.

Before adding the second set of line work for the pug dog.

Below are the rocks isolated from the background texture, included a cigarette butt and a twig.

Below are the boots (see previous post).

Below is the pug dog, two sets of line work, with color. I’m currently using this with some background texture for my website splash page.

And here is the background texture.

I wanted to lengthen the original pants I had drawn so I drew two additional pant legs.

Below is the original line work for the rocks, cigarette, and twig (some additional elements not used in the final).

Pug dog line work three.

Pug dog line work two (not used in the final).

Pug dog line work one with teeth (and shoe/leg that was not used in the final).

Below is a gouache painting of the shoes (not used in the final).

Below is a gouache painting of the pug dog (not used in the final).

And finally here is the rough sketch.

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I’m finishing up an illustration that includes worker’s shoes. So I put on a pair of my old bulky shoes as a model for the drawing, sat on the couch, propped my feet up on the end table, and drew while I watched my daughter conquer Mario Kart.

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A couple of weeks ago, I was commissioned to do a portrait of An Wang, co-founder of Wang Laboratories and creator (along with Way Dong Woo) of the pulse transfer controlling device in 1949.

For this portrait, I focused on a close-up 3/4 view of Wang in a suit and bow tie with his patented circuitry as a background pattern.

A set of thumbnail sketches allowed me to explore translating his features into line and investigate composition and posture. I used this to create a sketch for the likeness.

Next, I sketched out some circuitry to use as the background pattern.

I combined this with the likeness sketch to create the final rough sketch to show to the client.

For the next step, I painted shapes with gouache for the head, suit, tie, and background. For this step, I was only concerned with the edge quality, the shape, and the texture within the shape from the brush strokes and subtle color value variations. I scanned these gouache shapes in grayscale.

Following the gouache step, I created the line work using a Pentel brush pen. I made an alternative line drawing for some of the facial features. In the first ink drawing, I made three left cheek edge lines intending to choose one of them, but then decided to leave all three.

I used the sketch in Photoshop as a guide for placing the gouache and ink elements.

In Photoshop, I converted the gouache elements to Index Color, limiting them to only two values; a medium gray and a dark gray. I then selected each of these grays and converted them each to a color that matched their value.

Next, I introduced a third value for the face texture and then began replacing the sketch with the scanned ink line work.

I decided to make the darker background and bow tie value match the face texture value.

Up until now, I had been working with a monochromatic red palette. For the final illustration though, I wanted the background to be a second color, and first tried a dull bluish hue…

…but then decided on an acid green…

…and finished by completing the final background circuitry pattern.

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I did a quick assignment for the Wall Street Journal this week, a piece for their October 1 issue for a story about how the market is affecting divorce arrangements.

I really wanted to do the bird cage sketch but the art director wisely chose the house sketch and completely avoided discussing the cat sketch.

Below is my Colorforms version, all the vector paths separated.

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I was asked by Kate Worum to create an illustration about water for a project she’s working on at WellDone.

I often use Adobe Illustrator to doodle, to make an image with no plan in mind, just play around with shapes and color and see what happens.

For this illustration, I set up a few simple rules for the doodle. The format was 6×6″ so I began with a blue square. Then, since I wanted it to be a face, I began with two circular eyes. After that, I made a drop shape to use as the only shape for the rest of the image. I could re-size this shape and rotate it, but I could not distort it, redraw it, or crop it (cropping could occur if the shape extend beyond the format edge). The palette was limited to three values, white, black, and blue as the middle value. My final rule was to create a left/right symmetry to reflect the symmetry of the eyes and the left/right symmetry of the drop shape (not counting the eyes, this rule was broken once, can you spot it?).

Again, I had no plan for this, other than a face. Would it be a human face? an animal?

a Proboscis monkey?

a bear?

a lemur?

an odd-looking man with a mustache?

a butterfly?

a clown or masked wrestler?

But, eventually, what began to appear…

…was a tiger!

a decorative tiger!

with a winged one-eyed bug on its nose!

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