My family has never been a fan of the flowery, mushy greeting cards, preferring instead irreverence, silliness, or sarcasm. Even my wife, whose tastes lean a little more towards the flowery and sweet, understands my family well enough to know that those types of cards are totally inappropriate for us. Unfortunately, we’ve noticed an odd downward trend among greeting cards over the past several years. For some reason, they seem to have drifted away from cards that are actually funny in favor of uniform blandness. Every year it gets harder to find a good greeting card, but this year’s search for a Mother’s Day card was the worst. We went to three different stores and found nothing. My wife finally got fed up and told me I should just make one myself, so I did. I may not win any awards, or have greeting card companies beating down my door to hire me, but my mom had a good laugh and seemed to genuinely enjoy getting an original homemade card.
Category: Illustration
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Outdoor Gear Stickers | Utah Adventure Journal
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.
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Tools, Not Jewels | Ascent Magazine
My latest illustration for Ascent is about not treating one’s ski gear too preciously. You can check out the full article here.
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Guilty Pleasures | Utah Adventure Journal
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.
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Ski Bane | Ascent
Recent editorial illustration for Ascent Backcountry Snow Journal. This was for an article on the types of weather patterns that make for bad or even dangerous skiing. In it, the author fantasizes about founding a government agency that would spare no expense in making sure that winter mountains are brought to optimum skiing potential.
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Three-year Plan | Client: Utah Adventure Journal
Recent illustration for Utah Adventure Journal. The article is about how most people who go to Utah for a job only plan on staying there for a few years before moving on. However, the ones who are into skiing usually end up staying for all the awesome skiing Utah has to offer.
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Comic Book Style Numbers | Client: SCBWI
I had the wonderful opportunity to illustrate a set of twelve comic book style numbers for the upcoming issue of SCBWI’s mid-Atlantic magazine, The Highlighter. The numbers were for an article on twelve tips for writing graphic novels, by Eisner Award-winning author Paul Tobin (Bandette, Plants vs. Zombies). I have to say it was a real honor to be able to prove artwork for such an accomplished writer!
Many of the number designs are inspired by popular superheroes, such as Superman, Batman, Iron Man, The Human Torch, and X-Men’s Nightcrawler. Admittedly, the Fantastic Four one is a little on the nose but I’m still happy with how these all came out. You’ll have to be a SCBWI member to read the article, but you can check out larger versions of my artwork in the gallery below!
[ess_grid alias=”comic-book-numbers”]
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Mountain Music | Ascent Magazine
Latest illustration for Ascent Magazine for an article on the various schools of thought as to what types of music qualify as mountain music.
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Cotton Kills | Utah Adventure Journal
Editorial illustration I did for Utah Adventure Journal for an article called Cotton Kills, about an avid outdoorsman who is super into wearing his high-tech outdoor gear, even in situations that don’t really require it.


