I drew a series of well-dressed traveling men for slate.com this week to go along with a project that they're working on with Holiday Inn Express. The project is still in motion, but once everything is approved, I'll post all of the drawings. In the meantime, here's one of the fellows who didn't make the cut.

Jesse was nice enough to hang out with Sebastian most of Saturday so I could take a day trip to Washington D.C. to visit a close friend of mine. The Penn Line runs on weekends now! 

First, we met up with her husband in Arlington, VA to eat brunch and visit their community garden plot. And of course I brought my land camera.

The house we're renting has a tiny patch of backyard that was in terrible shape when we moved in. I've been trying to transform it into a pretty garden all Spring, so gardening and plant life have really consumed me lately. I was really taken with the neon stems of this swiss chard plant. Even though I don't like the taste of it, I plan to add some to our garden next year just for that shock of color!

Good food, leisurely conversation, interesting art, and colorful plants - a pretty much perfect day trip to me.

I just finished up several illustrations for a feature in Carleton College's summer alumni magazine about sabbaticals. The wonderful caveat for this assignment was that the finals were supposed to look like my sketchbook work!

The three illustrations were to be based on specific sabbatical experiences by professors from within the article. I several sketches for each illustration before going to final.

Sketches for the first illustration about the various people and situations one professor encountered in waiting rooms to meet local Brazilian politicians:

And the final, based off of the second sketch:



Sketches for the second illustration, based off of travel one professor took to the Faroe Islands in Iceland for research:



And the final, based off of the third sketch:


And the final, based off of the first sketch: