Las Vegas Sun: Out of Towners

For an article about people working out of state.

Las Vegas Sun: No Card Required

Aqua Velvet

I was featured in one of my favorite blogs today—Aqua Velvet. Thanks Amy!

Bonus: Vintage Aqua Velva packaging:via neato coolville

Las Vegas Sun: Nevada Budget Cuts

An illustration for the Las Vegas Sun, about balancing the budget. Layout and sketch below:

LCS: Editor's Choice

I was an Editor's Choice on LCS. Somehow having it on April 15/Tax Day makes it even better.

Seattle Met: Rentals

This was for an article in Seattle Met Magazine, about house builders renting houses, until the housing market recovers.  Art Director: Ben Purvis  Below, the final layout and sketch.

Las Vegas Sun Illustration

This made it on the Newseum's Top Ten.

Here is the final layout with the headline incorporated. Thanks to Rachel Perkins and Spencer Holladay at the Las Vegas Sun:



Click below for a close-up of the texture:



A couple of the rough sketches:

Seattle Met: Condos

The Daily Beard

I was featured on a site called "Daily Beard."
I can't seem to find who is behind the site, but there are lots of other cool illustrators on it.
I just put it on my Google Reader.

Little Chimp Society Newsletter

Thanks to Darren et al for featuring me in the Little Chimp Society newsletter.

Must Be Santa

I was experimenting a little with offset color techniques here. And making it look like an old film still too. I showed this to my 8 year old daughter, and she asked me if the bottom part was "sand or snow?" So maybe that old paper color is too much....

LA Times: Children's books 2009

I did this for an article called Children's books 2009: It's all good! says Jon Scieszka

Seattle Met: The Final Straw

This was for an article for Seattle Met magazine. The art director, Ben Purvis, (who I used to work with at the Greenspun Media Group) does amazing work. See his site here and blog here.

Click the image below to see a closeup of the textures:

Holiday Cards for the Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery

I did 2 pro bono card designs for the Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery in association with an ad agency in Minneapolis called Periscope. Click here to buy them. Here are my sketches. The mistletoe was removed by the client. I'm not sure why .

Online Target Gift Card: Snowboarding Polar Bear

I just noticed you can order my Target gift card online here. It shows it as the whole card and not die-cut.

My someecard

I have been saying this for years, when someone asks what to get me for my birthday and Christmas. Someecards.com has a "create your own" option. So I made one. Click the card to send this or create your own.

Welcome Jenn Skiiers

Jenn Ski, one of my fellow Lillastrators, asked me to do an interview for her blog.

Thanks Jenn for the opportunity!
Click here to read the interview.

Target Gift Card: Snowboarding Polar Bear

My Target Gift Card is finally in the stores. About 2 years ago, I did a fake Target Gift card for Spring. And I sent it to Target. It must have got their attention because they asked me to do some winter holiday ideas. Below are the preliminary sketches, the full version with background (before they decided to make it a die-cut), a shot of it in the stores and an alternate color version.

Click images for larger versions:

Illustration Friday: Fast

Cheetah is the fastest land animal and the pronghorn antelope is the 2nd fastest.
I usually use Adobe Illustrator to do the basic shapes, but for this one, I decided to just use brushes direct in Photoshop.

This was inspired by the 1980s era Safari Cards. I used to get samples of these cards in the mail when I was a kid.













Here is my sketch:

Yummy Fresh Grain Feed

Wow! This is a good week for me. A friend just told me he saw my Wild Things illustration on grain edit. grain edit is one of my favorite blogs. So its a great honor to be featured along some of my favorite illustrators like Alberto Cerriteño and Meg Hunt