In memoriam

My sister-in-law passed away unexpectedly a short time ago. Today is her memorial service. 

A few years ago she asked me to illustrate some of their family stories. Here are some samples of those illustrations. 

From the top: 

One of the daughters learns what it’s like to go camping with the boys. 

Waking up daddy with a head butt rather than a kiss. 

Kids only get sick when they’re on the top bunk, at the top of the stairs or just outside the bathroom. 

Fun times with the blue paint! 

When you’re potty training and wander into the laundry room rather than the bathroom. 

Static electricity makes for a shocking kiss!

We’ll miss you, Jeanie!

From a certain point of view

At work I'm doing some illustrations for a leadership seminar. This illustrates the old Sufi tale of the blind men and the elephant. Each interprets the animal from their limited point of view. 

The elephant is like:

• a snake.
• a spear.
• a fan.
• a tree trunk.
• a wall.
• a rope.

Then comes the question: is each one right, or are they wrong altogether? 

That's kind of where we find ourselves today. Each one is clinging their one part of the elephant, refusing to even consider that other points of view have merit, too. 

Here's hoping we can move beyond that!

Editor's Note: Have you ever noticed how many elephant metaphors there are? Elephant in the room, you can eat an elephant one bite at a time, and many more. What's up with that?

 

Almost an announcement

OK, so today's cartoon isn't a cartoon. It's an illustration from our upcoming book, "The Tale of Abubu." We're just finalizing the files for print, so I'll be sure to let you know when the book is available. Woot!

Now, some practical stuff

Every now and then there's a fun job that comes across my desk at work. We needed to have something to go along with an article on writing for the Web. Originally we talked about doing an infographic, but this idea evolved from that.

My niece is a zombie

This post is a little different than most. Rather than a gag, today we have an illustration and a story.

I've been doing some illustrations for a family history. One story is about my niece. When she was little and just getting a handle on the whole potty training thing, she tried really hard to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Well, one night she passed right by the bathroom and went into the laundry room, opened up the door to the dryer and...took care of her business.

Flash forward to present day. My niece is now a model working in Salt Lake City. One of her recent jobs? Zombie!

Here she is in all her gory.

So if you find yourself driving down the freeway and see a giant billboard of a beautiful blonde zombie, there's no need to be afraid -- it's just my little niece who went potty in the dryer!

The handbook that never was

We just recently remodeled our headquarters building at the Oregon Department of Transportation, and it has several cool new features. As we prepare to move people back in, we're giving employees a new building user's guide.

These are some illustrations from an early draft of the guide -- it was going to be an interactive PDF with little illustrations and factoids to draw people in to the text and make it kind of fun.

Alas, bureaucratic heads prevailed, so the user's guide is now a Word document that's pretty much straight text with a couple of photos and floor plans dropped in here and there. Sigh. Not that it's bad; it just could have been so much better.

This first group shows (clockwise from left) the introduction, restrictions on wall height, the new showers and locker room, noise restrictions, recycling and the new mail system.

This second set illustrates restrictions on eating at your desk (snacks are OK, but take smelly foods to the lunchroom or outside), a ban on personal fans and space heaters (the building has a very sophisticated climate control system), building policies and procedures (always a favorite), cleaning up after yourself, quiet areas, and (center) an orientation to your new cubicle.

Memorial Day memories

When I was a kid, my dad would take me around the cemetery on Memorial Day and tell me all the stories of our ancestors who were buried there. Some of the stories were quite exciting, some seemed mundane. But I thought it was pretty cool how everyone had a story.

After my dad passed on, my uncle took on the task of sharing the stories from family history, and now he's gone, too. It makes me wish that I had paid more attention or recorded the stories somehow.

I've run this as a sketch on Memorial Day in the past. This time around, I thought it was deserving of color.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend!

Maintain

I ran across some old R. Crumb stuff a while back, and I thought this variation on the Keep on Truckin' poster might be kind of fun.

Speed Racer!

The Pinewood Derby can bring out the best and the worst in Cub families. Sometimes a few of the dads forget that it's about the kids learning skills and having fun. It's also a popular topic for cartoonists (if not an obsession). Long live the pinewood derby!

Bowl lickin' good!

February is full of so many things to celebrate! Besides Valentines, groundhogs and U.S. presidents, it's also Scout Month. This is a little drawing I did for a Cub Scout activity. It reminds me a little of the filler drawings in the Calvin and Hobbes books.

Graduation day!

OK, today I get to be a little self-indulgent (isn't that the whole point of a blog?) as it's graduation day! In our neighboring ward they have six seniors who are graduating. One of the moms threw a party for them, and asked me to do cartoon drawings of each of the kids. Congratulations!

Something completely different

OK, this isn't my usual cartoon. I thought I'd share an ad I illustrated for a company in Provo.



The company contacted me through my blog and asked if I'd be interesting in doing a drawing for them. It's not a product I've used or that I'm familiar with, but hey -- I can't say I have any complaints about it, either!

Easter

I've been working a long time on illustrating the Easter story. For some reason, however, I just can't bring myself to do the crucifixion. So in lieu of that, here is a triptych with scenes from Easter week.

Times and seasons

These are a couple of images from my legal notice page on Zarahemla Times. They may not be gags, but I think they're kind of cool, and seriously -- who ever visits a legal page?*

By the way, we've just started a Facebook page for Zarahemla Times. Go on over and give it a like and share it with your friends! Here's the link.





* But you really should visit if you're planning on doing something evil. Not that you, being the refined reader that you are, would do such a thing, but there are others. Oh yes, there are others.

Blinded by science

Sometimes I think the Internet is like a giant refrigerator where people stick stuff up on it and say, "Look what I did!"

This is one of those entries. It's not a gag, just some illustrations I did for a project at work. They illustrate the concept of discovery.

Elves and elves alike

Hey! This isn't a cartoon! It's a "spot the difference" puzzle!

Honk!

Here's one last thing out of the found pile from work. This was a cover for a public service announcement we did about driving styles using animal metaphors.

Treasures of trash

Because of a building renovation/remodel, we are vacating our offices at work. That means we have to go through files and drawers to clean out and pack up to prepare for the move.

As I was going through one of my files, I came across one that took a job from the initial sketches to the finished product. I thought it might be fun to take a look at that here on the blog.

The background is this: as part of a money-saving effort, the Powers That Be decided to cut back on certain aspects of janitorial service. To be specific, the PTB thought it would save money to have us empty our own garbage cans and recycle bins rather than have the janitorial staff do the job. Naturally there was some resistance, particularly from the engineers who thought emptying trash was beneath them.

Our approach was to make light of it, like it wasn't a big deal. So to start things off, I brainstormed some sketches of little cartoons to put on fliers that would be posted throughout the building.

Here's one of the first sketches:


We decided to develop a couple of the sketches a little bit more as we refined the ideas. Here's one that I kind of liked, but didn't make the final cut:


In the end, we decided to just go with cartoon drawings and a fun font. The PTB were afraid that someone might find the gags offensive -- and it was already becoming a way bigger issue than it eve needed to be. Here's what the final flier looked like:

And now, a few years later, emptying our own trash has become second nature, and very few people whine about it any more.

And we all lived happily ever after!

Anybody out there?

Although it's too late for the lesson in Gospel Doctrine, I thought I'd share these two illustrations from Elijah and the Great Contest. These pages show Elijah offering a challenge to the priests of Baal, and then taunting them when Baal didn't seem to be listening to them.

Sometimes the prophets of the Old Testament get a bad rap. But Elijah had a sense of humor. Check out 1 Kings 18. He was cool.

Who can find a virtuous woman?

As per tradition, every July 13 we bring you a snippet of the story of Ruth. This year we see the wedding of Ruth and Boaz.

See, it's my mother-in-law's birthday, and her story is similar to that of Ruth. And just a couple of weeks ago she attended her son's wedding...which just happened to be in Alexandria, Egypt, complete with belly dancers, camels and Bedouins stealing the wedding cake (really!).

So happy birthday, mummy dearest!