Illustrations

I attended Massachusetts College of Art in the late 1960s and early 70s. During some of those years I studied graphic design and illustration. When I finally graduated, it was pelton turbine illustrationwith a degree in painting and fine art, but to earn a living I made some half-hearted forays into the world of textbook illustration and technical manuals. In 1982 I was hired to do some cover illustrations for a new trade magazine called Hydro Review. The publisher was a graduate student at the Harvard Business School and the magazine was part of her senior thesis. The magazine took root and I ended up doing almost all of their cover illustrations for twenty-eight years – over two hundred covers in all. pelton turbine illustrationThe magazine re-visited a number of themes each year and my job was to come up with a cover image that didn't look like a re-hash; to be honest, the success rate was mixed. Still, I'm grateful to the magazine's publishers for sticking with me. I used the job as an opportunity to learn airbrush, a demanding and nerve-wracking technique dating back to the late 1800s; and more recently to learn the digital tools of both illustration and print design. The latter has re-kindled my interest in design. When I studied this in college, computers were still mostly science fiction. The selection following includes some of my favorites. I'm glad you're not able to see the ones that are not. At the bottom of each page in this section you will see a description giving a bit of context for these sometimes puzzling images.