From the magazine that brought you bear doing the limbo...

Comes these little gems. Its spring, and that means I'm back working with Cottage Life. Ahhhhh Cottage Life, takers of my most outrageous ideas - so much fun to work with. First piece was about Loving your dock spiders ... or at least being buddies with them - I had some personal problems doing this piece - as I HATE AND FEAR spiders with all i have in me. But i put it past me and decided to soldier on - My first idea was my fav - I thought it would be funny to make the dock look like a bunkbed - where two bestfriends would be having a slumber party! just my luck, cl was already doing a feature on bunkbeds this issue, so it wasnt meant to be :(the best friend theme was pretty easy to run with though, and they ended up hangin' out on the end of the dock - enjoying the day.
The second feature was about the healing aspects of going to the cottage. good for your mind and body - the "prescription" aspect was a no-brainer.
final \/there is also a third, equally zany illustration in the issue - so pick up the mag to check it out.
Finally, big shout of and thanks to Dan, Dan, John, Kate, Jenn, Victo, Robyn, and Dadu - for showing me a great time this past week in New York. Hope to do it again soon :)

metronome chomsky

Recent full pager for OPC about focusing on various areas of reform to produce overall education consistency. was really psyched about this idea as it seemed to really speak of consistency in a fun way by using a metronome. Let me know if the saturation is way up, or down - I'm using Jills computer while mine is in the shop and her monitor is calibrated differently - couple of roughs below, there were a bunch of others - the first one addressed a a part of the article that spoke of common direction / goal - liked that idea too.

double your pleasure

Heres two more pieces - a spot and a larger one -
First for Registered Nurses Journal - this article was about nurses helping and guiding people in difficult times, like death. nurses are always there offering hope and support. the article refers to nurses as "bridges" a lot - so that was the direction we ended up going.couple of roughs - i really liked this tissue idea -Second for Education Forum, about one particular school thats "lifting the veil" so to speak on why their students were not performing. through a number of infinitives teachers and volunteers were able to turn it around so that all students were doing well and actively participating. i wanted to show a blind being lifted on a classroom door - but the blind actually doubled as the window into what we see in the classroom. the part being rolled away shows students that dont care - are not engaged. the window beneath shows happy attentive students. took a lot of drawing for me to feel like it looks like the blind is going up, rather than down.there was something i really liked about leaving the hand unfinished -
some roughs, there were lots of others:Both projects were Art Directed by the fantastic people at Fresh Art & Design - really great group there!!

sponge bob

This was a half pager for Canadian Wildlife Magazine. The topic, was about spring runoff, and how to prep your property so it absorbs the water, rather than letting it damage the land. Lots of my roughs focused on the damaging part - but we ended up focusing more on what people should do, instead - and i think that was the right choice. The AD was Steve Balaban who has recently started his own design studio called "Studio B". Needless to say, it was fun to work with him again.
some roughs and some pics Jill took while i was painting - note what we're listening to - awesome.

rhino what you did last summer...

I have a mountain of work to post, but the sheer thought of that is semi terrifying, so I'm going to take it slow. one piece at a time. This was for Cincinnati Magazine, about indian rhinos getting pregnant. Im serious, thats what it was about. It's apparently very difficult, especially in captivity. many dont make it to term, others die shortly after birth. is there anything more sad than a dead, baby rhino?! We decided it would be a fun juxtaposition to show a massive rhino being carried by a struggling stork. Incidently, the clouds were painted with the help of a youtube tutorial on "Painting clouds at night" - its really did help. The AD was the very wonderful Megan Scherer, she was totally open to my ideas and very fun to work with. Here are some roughs that went with the final, as usual, there were many many more...

Come back soon, I'm going to be posting lots this month...