In this, the 2nd of my regular "column" for the UK Illustration magazine, Varoom, the theme was "Knowledge". So I decided to create a map which refers somewhat to the "known" beyond which lie monsters.

I had a lot of fun making this ...

It's fun to give directions on the map. There are places of elation and places of despair.

All sorts of destinations and paths we end up in in the pursuit of knowledge.

Including Brain Town ...

This was typeset in the font Absara by Xavier Dupré.

For the New York Times Week in Review, I created this illustration as a response to the following summary:

“In many ways Ringo turning 70 and celebrating by playing radio city is exactly the kind of counterpoint that gerontologists like Robert Butler, who died this week, dreamed of when they first talked about “ageism” forty years ago. It shows the world that elderly people can be creative, vibrant, active. At the same time, the pressure is increased, which Butler also talked about: to “successfully age,” we think we have to be active. The stories we hear are at two poles, it’s either early onset Alzheimers or the skydiving 92 year old. The pressure is particularly acute in the 70s, which is now thought of as the time just after you retire. In fact, life expectancy is still in the 70s.”

And a closer look …

For New York Magazine’s end of decade issue, Chris Dixon asked me to create a full page illustration of the words “The 00s” with the most emphasis on the 00 part. Other people were creating title pages as well, and they would be distributed throughout the magazine to separate the sections.

This piece is officially dedicated to Henrik Kubel, for giving me the idea of working in foil. This assignment conveniently came up shortly thereafter and I was overjoyed with the results. Depending on how I shot it, it reflected colours, had different hues, and was just generally all-round pretty.

This is the one I chose in the end for the mag, because they wanted it to be “punchy.”

However … as it turns out, editorial ran over and many of the title pages didn’t run. Well … it did, as a 1×1.5-inch thumbnail on the contents page.

Sigh.

My good friend Brian Morgan called in a favour to get me to do this cover for The Walrus. I then worked with Kelsey Blackwell toward the final.

They wanted me to illustrate the words “We’re Sorry” relating to a story about the Canadian propensity to apologize, and the troubles that ensue from public apologies for past national crimes. I had hoped to trick them into letting me draw snakes, but just as I was relishing the prospect of a triumphant coup in getting snakes on the cover of a magazine, they nixed that idea. Disappointed but not surprised, I switched to string … or the entanglement of yarn. I don’t think Brian thought I was serious when I suggested a fluffy kitten to go with it, but I was! Alas, no snakes, no kittens.

However, I quite like the way, from a distance this looks like some gruesome viscera … but on closer inspection it reveals itself to be only harmless, friendly yarn.

NO. I have to tell you right now, that NO, I will not recreate this for your romance novel, Love article, lingerie store, etc. Sorry.

Michael Biedowicz approached me from Zeit Leben, the magazine of the German newspaper Zeit to do an illustration for an article on mistresses. As well he wanted 2 illustrations for the magazine cover: two, because they do a double cover on every issue: one image on the front, and another related, but different on the first page.

The 2 covers were to say “Er will mich” and “Er will mich nicht” (He loves me / He loves me not) to show the love and the pain of being a mistress.

This was interesting to me because it was not purely romantic, and I wanted to see how I could use basically the same curving forms to create something that was soft and lovely, or sharp and spikey: petals and thorns.

Then, for “Die geliebte” (The mistress) I was able to combine the two.

And yes, it is quite lovely in the end.

These three oil paintings were made for issue #11 of The Creator Studio from Barcelona, published in March 2008. The theme was “Rituals” and they asked me to address the “full moon.” So I thought of “A spell”, “an incantation” and “a curse.”

Amusingly, on their website it says “Canadian artist Marian Bantjes toyed with the idea of casting a spell up to the full moon, using it to conquer the man responsible for her restlessness.” I really don’t recall ever saying that or having that in mind. But honestly, if I’d’a thought it would have WORKED, I certainly would have done so!

This is not, ultimately, what was used for an article in Fortune magazine. Only a tiny portion was used. It’s made of dirt.

This is a little spot illustration for a review of the film Beowulf (and The Golden Compass) in the Jan 13, 2008 issue of The New York Times Books. The review talks about the reinvention of this Old English poem, so of course a little reinvented Textura and a little play on the word resulted in my own interpretation: “neowulf.”

An illustration for Michael McCormick at Philadelphia magazine. I did a few different colour options, and I’m not sure which one they ran. Probably a blue one, or blue and black (not shown), but not, unfortunately, the multi-coloured one, which I prefer.

I made this for the cover of Superinteressante magazine, out of Brazil (Adriano Sambugaro, Art Director). It’s about the power of positive thinking, made of little plus signs and happy all over.

The Fader magazine asked me to do a diagram of Jerry Garcia’s influences, contemporaries and influenced. Now I’m no Deadhead, and I’m not responsible for the content of this, only the look, so if you’ve got complaints (as I would imagine Garcia fans would), don’t come cryin’ to me.

This is in issue #46, and you can’t mistake it, it’s got a big photo of Jerry Garcia on the cover.

And

The folks at The Fader liked this well enough to decide to print a 7-colour silkscreened poster of it.

This was a piece I did for Computer Arts magazine out of Britain. The final piece has text in all of the blank areas, but I don’t have a copy.

The Dec. 2 2006 issue of the New York Times Books. Here’s my cover:

Knitting in vector art is way harder than you’d expect, by the way, and takes a surprising amount of computer fire-power.
Here’s some titling inside (tho the scarf got changed to b&w):

And here’s the cover version that never made it, with a deer, a pug and a moth:

With thanks to Nicholas Blechman and special thanks to Steve Heller.

Garret Yankou at InStyle hired me to create borders for a feature in their Wedding issue, titled “Bridal Looks for every budget.” I decided to create custom hand-drawn lace for the borders and headings.