Latest work for Ascent Backcountry Snow Journal: An Unhelpful Saint Bernard. The story is about a skier who finds that he is no more helpful in a ski emergency than the mythical Saint Bernard with a keg of whiskey around his neck. I really enjoyed this one as I can remember watching Saturday morning cartoons where the Saint Bernard would come to revive Elmer Fudd or Porky Pig but everybody just ends up drunk.
So, what is a Hut Trip Hit List? Turns out it’s a list of the six kinds of people you want to have with you when going on a weekend ski trip in a yurt. I can’t help but notice that “Illustrator” did not make the cut but, if my own skiing skills are any indication, that’s almost certainly for the best. Still, I’m sure I would have a lot of fun camping out in a yurt and sketching the breathtaking views of snow-covered mountains.
Ok, by this point winter is technically already here but I usually don’t post client work until after it’s published. In any case, I was very happy to have an excuse to draw some Game of Thrones characters before the final season is over. I got Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, his
This is the first time in a long time that I was able to incorporate something from popular culture into an editorial illustration. It’s also one of the rare Utah Adventure Journal illustrations where I didn’t need to draw someone skiing. (Even rarer considering the article is all about the upcoming ski season.) Now I miss both pumpkin spice lattes and watching new Game of Thrones…
My latest illustration fro UAJ, Burning Sean, required a bit of extra care. It’s for an article about a perfectly innocent yearly pre-ski season ritual/party gone wrong. It also involves a bunch of drunken white dudes with tiki torches burning an effigy of their soon-to-be-married friend, Sean. As a long-time resident of Charlottesville, Virginia, I have to say I had some apprehension about depicting white guys with tiki torches burning something that could easily be mistaken for a cross (Which is where all of the humor of the article come from). Part of my solution was to make sure the effigy clearly had a pair of legs. This would ensure that it had more of a star-shape. The next was to give the effigy some ski poles. The last was to make sure the white dudes looked as drunkenly cheerful as possible. In the end, I think it all worked out pretty well.
Editorial illustration for an article about the type of compromises that need to be made by rugged outdoorsmen when they become a parent. No matter how much you might hate RV’s, babies can’t really sleep on the ground.
I had a great time illustrating this upcoming article for Utah Adventure Journal on the appeal of entering mountain bike races just for the Burning Man type parties. I tried to include as many of the colorful characters from the article as I could, like the gorilla, the metal heads, and even a Taiko drummer. The Viking and hula hoop girls were my own contribution, just to add some variety.
Click on the images below to get a closer look at everybody.
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This illustration was for an article on the joys of collecting outdoor gear stickers to put all over your favorite outdoor vehicle. (In this case, the ever-popular Subaru Outback.) As much as I love stickers, I don’t think I could ever put one on my car! I like putting them on my sketchbook so I can tell them apart from each other, but that’s about as far as I’m willing to go.
My latest illustration for Ascent is about not treating one’s ski gear too preciously. You can check out the full article here.
I had the wonderful opportunity to take things in a very different direction for this month’s Utah Adventure Journal. The article is about the apparent contrast between the author’s inner sci-fi nerd (guilty pleasures!) and his love for athletic outdoor activities like skiing, mountain biking, kayaking, etc. One of the things he narrates in the story is of how, when he was a teenager, he and his friend filmed their own sci-fi epic, Rusty Hoot. Since they had no budget for things like props or costumes, they just used things they had on hand- old ski gear, a rubber gorilla mask, a jester’s hat. I thought it would be really fun to imagine what the movie poster would look like if this were a big-budget movie from a major studio and that the cheesy costumes and props were somehow important to the story. The result reminds me of a cross between Planet of the Apes and Spaceballs.
