The Ever-Lovely Mayor of Toronto

This may be my favorite assignment of 2013 (click to link):

Owls!

Owls are in the air, so to speak...
This year I've had two lovely owl-themed commissions. The first was for a logo for "Little Owl Urns". She needed a logo to imprint on the bottoms of the ceramic and wooden urns she creates for beloved pets.

The second commission is for the wine merchant Rookwood & Perry in the Hudson Valley. I'm not sure why the owl connection, but oh man I enjoyed drawing it!

Wendy's "Hidden Message"

I have been receiving links to this all day, re: the hidden message of "MOM" in Wendy's collar. Ha! My mom actually detected this way back when it was unveiled, and I did not disabuse her of the notion. But no, it was not intended. My work is so calligraphic, I expect it is full of unintended messages like this one.

The Pope Saga...

In honor of our new pope, The Stranger pulled this hilarious feature by Lindy West from the archives, a brief history of the papacy, highlights of the great and not so. ..

"The Cat and the Mouse Set Up House"

That is the title of the Grimm's Fairy Tale which these accompany in the holiday issue of Waitrose Magazine, a lovely glossy publication full of recipes and ideas for foodies. This is one of 50 of Grimm's tales, as retold by Phillip Pullman. It features a good-hearted, over-trusting mouse, a salivating cat, and a small pot of fat. I am sad to say, two of those three subjects do not survive to the end of the story...

Wendy!

FINALLY! I have been sitting on this secret for two months, and it has been three years in the process.  Today the new Wendy, based on my work, was finally unveiled. I had the good fortune to be found by Tesser and together we went through scads of revisions to arrive at the final a really good looking final. Here is my final version. She received a few final tweaks from the artists at Tesser, noticeable mostly in the hair. I am delighted.

Newsweek

It was years in the process, but I finally became a Newsweek contributor in 2012. Here is one of my favorites: Mr. David Frum. I had a great time with his pronounced features.  I also get a kick out of his career trajectory: Former Bush speech-writer, now calling his party out on its strident looniness. This portrait + 8 others (including of Tina Brown) viewable on the iPad edition of Newsweek/Daily Beast.

Kurt Vonnegut

The Stranger Magazine, Seattle's alternate weekly, runs a "Regrets" issue at the end of every issue, in which they list all of the errors, regrets, etc., of the paper's staff and contributors. This year they solicited regrets from area artists & writers. I wrote in that I regretted that I have drawn many authors, but had never yet had the opportunity to draw Kurt Vonnegut. The paper responded by asking if I would like to draw him as the feature illustration for that segment of the paper, thereby allowing at least one citizen the opportunity to conquer one of her regrets!

Fierce, Ghostly Didion

I was so delighted to get the assignment to do Joan Didion for Intelligent Life Magazine. Her apparent frailty in appearance totally belies her continued ferocity. I find her the epitomy of cool.

In Airports Everywhere!

The new James Patterson book, Worst Case is finally out, and full of my illustrations! I was asked to conjure up the lead character's 10 adopted children. It was a hoot: I was given only ages and ethnicities, with maybe two words of description for each. Despite the meager descriptions, I tried to instill them with a lot of character. I can't even fathom the idea of millions of fans contemplating these characters, whom they have tried to imagine all of these years; it's a huge responsibility!