When I was a full time illustrator

An illustration career is dreamy, and when I was illustrating in the 1980's and 1990's, a huge part of my commissions were for magazines, which, before the internet, were the main content producers. They were hiring all kinds of avant grade illustration. It was a good time.

Anna Wintour asked me to choose any restaurant in New York, bring my art supplies, and a plus-one, and draw, expenses and fee covered, to be used in the Brooklyn Academy of Music catalog. So I asked an art director friend where I should go, and he said Indochine, which, by the way, is still there, as charming as ever, but posh now, with gorgeous tropical wallpaper, so anyway, I called Indochine and explained, and they set me up with a table right in the middle of everything, where I spread out my pastels and my paper of choice, 36 x 36" cotton rag cold press paper, Arches 88, actually used for printmaking, specifically silk screen, and drew. On the spot. The woman in the drawing is the lovely server.

Sennelier and Rembrandt Pastel on paper, circa 1990

I like to paint big paintings. You can see that I'm addicted to lines and blobs. Plus warm colors. Personal piece, Untitled. Oil, 1994

I met a guy and this is the portrait I painted of him. We've been married 30 years now. Personal piece, Big Blue. Oil on acrylic 3' x 7', 1991

A lovely art director at Elektra Records/Atlantic/Warner commissioned me to illustrate and letter this page for the Grammys program. I think the art director was leaving the job maybe, I'm just guessing, as it seemed like she didn't care what I did, or maybe it was just the creative freedom I was given, as was typical of the gigs I got, because you don't commission me if you have a strict brief. Anyway. There was a ton of text to letter, which was a challenge, but I adored making the little icons like the saxophone. By the way, the color was done by cutting rubylith overlays with an x-acto knife, with the PMS colors spec'd. If you understand that last sentence, then you are of a certain age.

Elektra Records/Atlantic/Warner page for the Grammys program

Below, my four-page art for a Levi's ad with a media buy in all the major magazines—most of Conde Nast, plus loads of others. After this came out, I wondered if perhaps some young person, I'm envisioning a girl, had been looking at this and thinking to herself that one day she would want to be an illustrator, too, wouldn't that be so beautiful? Just recently someone told me that she had had that thought when she was young. That made me very happy.

The paper is heavier stock and the blue jeans are revealed from a die cut in the page above it. Because magazines were everything then, and that's where you spent your ad buy.

More magazine was one of the many women's magazines, like Ms. magazine, that carved a new way, away from, say, Ladies Home Journal. I was commissioned to illustrate a piece on Bobbi Brown, 2008.

The cover of the Sunday New York Times magazine. Black ink and brush and Pantone self-adhesive colored film. 1997

From a bi-monthly series of covers over two years for the Japanese magazine, Hummingtime. I loved these gigs. The whisk! Pastel and Ritmo charcoal pencil on Arches 88 paper. 1999