Illustrations for feature article in Cleveland Magazine

I recently had a super fun opportunity to illustrate a feature article for Cleveland Magazine. The April issue highlights the favorite hangouts of 5 local Cleveland celebrities. Everything from the hottest nightclubs, to the trendiest shops, to the city's best eats are included in "The City List". So it was also a unique opportunity for me to get the inside scoop on this cool town!

The art director, Kristen Miller, was really great to work with and had a very cool vision for the format. They photoshot each celebrity, and I created "mind maps" of all the attractions mentioned in the article. These "mind maps" were made up of icons representing the attractions and hand-lettered quotes offering up fun tidbits about what these celebrities love most about their city. So, I got to really dive into researching—which is always a part of the process I love—and was able to use a combination of drawing, lettering, and design to make these images work together, while also integrating with the photographs, to create an informative visual for the article. 

I had a lot of creative freedom with this, which always makes a project extra fun. And with 5 full-page spreads to fill, I got to draw so many different, cool things! Plus, really feel like I got to know Cleveland on a personal level—now I might just have to plan a visit! :)

You can also check out the full article & spreads in the online magazine.

Blog Illustrations for "Secret Lives of the Unemployed"

I was recently asked to illustrate a fun story on a cool short-fiction blog, by writer Elizabeth Bartucci, that chronicles three Brooklyn neighbors, who after a year of being unemployed stop looking for work and embrace their lives of permanent hooky.

I created 3 pieces to accompany the post "Strap of a Jock", a humorous glimpse of a neurotic woman's traumatic wash-n-fold laundry experience. This entry made me laugh out loud, and I really had fun making the art! Here are the finished images, and the full story can be read at Secret Lives of the Unemployed.

Call For Unity poster

Here's the final piece as they used it for the promotional materials for the event:

Call For Unity Art

I just finished up a job for Sacramento News and Review. It was a really cool assignment--creating art to be used for the cover of a program guide and posters/promotional materials for an Interfaith Music Event. It's completely up my alley as far as subject matter-and the Art Director really encouraged alot of creativity with this one.

The annual event has taken place in Sacramento for the last seven years and has a focus on peace and acceptance through sharing music and culture in a diverse community. The image of a bird had become iconic for this event, and so they wanted to somehow include a bird of some sort. They also had a theme this year of "Caring for Creation" So I tried to communicate music and nature, and ended up with this:

They have a headline/logo which will go at the top. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and especially excited to see it with the design and reproduced at a large poster size.

Harvard

I just finished a job for Harvard University magazine. It was a really cool assignment, with a great art director. It was a very mature, introspective article about a girl reflecting on her dreams of going to Harvard and her communicating that to new prospective students upon her graduation from the college. I approached the article with a metaphoric/symbolic approach in my 1st set of sketches, which I was pretty excited about.



However, they preferred a more literal, less whimsical approach. So I submitted a 2nd set, these with a more narrative scene--



In the end, I was asked to combine some elements from the 1st and 2nd set of sketches. Here's what the final image came to be: