Communication Arts is the heralded publication in the graphic arts industry as they hold a very high standard. Every issue is practically an exceptional quality collectible book that you can fill your shelves with and later retreat to any issue from any year and still be inspired. To be accepted into the Illustration Annual is quite an honor and a significant personal milestone in my career.

The winning pieces are a series I completed for a feature in Popular Science in January of this year. I’ve blogged about ‘em before, as I knew they were special, so you can read more on what they were about here.

The winning entry was for the Editorial Series category, which can be seen below.These are the good times. Thanks CA!

Recently I finished a series of poster and display artwork for The Oregon Lottery’s Powerball campaign currently placed in convenience stores, grocery chains, taverns, bars, and bowling alleys in just about every city and town throughout Oregon. The easiest place to catch a glimpse of one of these pieces is while you’re at the grocery store at checkout. Usually if you look over by the cigarette counter or ATM, you’ll see the Powerball machine donning a display sign and most likely a poster as well.

The Lottery liked the work so much, they decided to put a few billboards up. They look pretty big out the car window, but you really get a feel for the enormity when you see the ladder one has to climb to change the artwork out. One billboard is in Portland on the 205 by SE 82nd, another in Bend, and the last in Ontario, OR. Here’s a few pics and other samples of the poster and display art.

1. On the clearance table leftover from the holidays was a box containing a jigsaw puzzle of the legendary leg lamp from the movie A Christmas Story. I could tell right away the cover illustration of the lamp on the box and the puzzle itself was from art I created for Warner Bros.’ Consumer Products Division several months before.
2. Then we saw The Game of Life (board game) customized with artwork I did for the Wizard of Oz 50th Anniversary.
3. Finally, we came across a logo design book called The Secret Life of Logos that featured a three of my logos as case studies a few years back. I had totally forgotten about it and there it was just sitting there on the table.

Honestly I think this is one of the best perks of what I do. Sure, I get to kick back and draw all day as a means to put some food on the table and some gasoline in the car, which is pretty great. But it gets even better when you’re out with friends and come across your artwork in the marketplace. It’s raw evidence that the work you do every day in the confines of your studio all alone, day after day, in sequential hours of isolation is actually circulating in society and contributing to the ebb and flow of the consumer conditioned society in which we thrive. Plus it’s cool to say while pointing to a billboard that towers stark and triumphant against the summer sky, , "Hey, I did that."

One of the first points of criticism users can express in an iPhone app is the look and feel. It seems that folks who carry iPhones also carry a high expectation of high visual standards, so I made my best effort not to let them down.

As a game, Dark Nova is an imaginative situational environment where you buy ships and cargo, encounter aliens, and try to live long enough to make a profit based on your intuitive decision making skills. It seems very much like The Oregon Trail game we played on Apple IIe’s in elementary school.

Some of my favorite elements depicted here include the title screen (that’s a custom, manually drawn typeface I designed just for the title of the game), the alien banker with fleshy tones around the lips and eyes, the commander in a moment of vengance, and all the various eclectic designs for ships.

For more information, check out DarkNova.net. They should have a really nice icon pack I created for Mac OS X available for download soon!

Fresh off the newsstand, I just picked up the March 2009 issue of Popular Science issue that has my most recent favorite illustration series in the marketplace.

The article is about scientific reasons why obesity is a huge problem in our culture and opens on page 46 with a large headline above the writer’s byline which is just above my illustration byline right next to it (yes!). Across from the headline page is the opening full-page illustration that goes with the topic of artificial sweeteners making us fatter (top image).

On page 48 is the next illustration of a large man in quarantine and under scientific observation to go with the topic of viruses adding fat to our waistlines (left).

Third, I did a spot for the section on lack of sleep facilitating fat accumulation (left). We all need angels to do their worst to get us get to sleep at night.

Finally, the last artwork was for the idea of how the environment affects our weight (left). The way the character is literally piped into his environment is slightly disturbing to the same degree as when you see Violet Beauregarde encounter the physical side-effects for disregarding Willy Wonka’s admonishment against trying chewing gum that is still in development.

This is definitely the best project of the year thus far. Many thanks to Popular Science for having me work on this conceptual series while giving me plenty of freedom to interpret and have fun with the subject-matter.

Grab Magazine, art directed by Luca Panzieri, showcases modern artists and trends. Visual content is appropriately high and lets the art do the talking, while text content is kept to the minimum essentials. They gave me first billing in the order of artists and five beautifully designed pages. My interview is translated into Italian, which is very odd to see yet extremely cool at the same time. (Read the English version here.)

Also, you’ll see a new personal work I created especially for this interview. It’s called Rooftop Tea Party and I’m extremely pleased with how it turned out. The details really shine in the printed magazine. Many thanks to Luca and Grab for featuring me in the magazine.

Basically, a commercial artist is always available to freely pursue his own conceptual ambitions artistically on his own time as any fine artist can, but once he’s under commission to create art for a commercial project, his conceptual goals target the intended consequence of the client’s ambition(s). Does this stifle creativity? Not necessarily. It merely shifts the intent of the art. The artist still must employ his conceptual, compositional, and rendering abilities skillfully and creatively to produce the work intended. Can creativity be stifled under the employ of another? It can. Sometimes a client can assume part of the artist’s creative role by conceptualizing and directing various details of a project. In cases like this, which for me are thankfully rare, the client chooses to rely on his own creativity and conceptual problem-solving skills, well-honed or not.

When I think of the debate between the validity of fine art vs. commercial art, I think of Michelangelo. He was commissioned by the most powerful commercial organization in the world at the time, the Roman Catholic Church, to paint the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. The client’s required subject matter was limited to the Old and New Testament of the Bible and the history of the Apostolic Church, however Michelangelo still had the creative freedom to interpret, conceptualize, and render according to his imagination. It’s a commissioned work and yet considered one of the world’s greatest fine art achievements.

Instead of commercial vs. fine art, I think what we’re really debating is the integrity of the message or intention behind the art. We value an individual’s artistic expression much higher than we do a company’s artistic expression in the art world because a company has an underlying motive to make money. Terms like "sold-out" are sometimes assigned to artists who have a profitable motive. As a working artist, I wade in the abundance of freedom in the hundreds of open-ended choices I’m instinctively answering each step of the way on a project. Freedom is everywhere for me.

In 2008, I logged 102 projects, which is up from last year by exactly 14. I’m surprised by this increase, because the fluctuation of work was much more dramatic than in years past, expressed by some drawn lulls followed by floods of work only to be floating back in the doldrums again some weeks later. Client budgets were a bit smaller this year, but still fair and reasonable despite a trepid economy. I still (perhaps naively) believe that if you do the best work you possibly can within the time constraints allowed, success will follow. And this year really proved that once more for me.

I’ve put together a portfolio containing 56 of the 102 projects for your viewing pleasure. I welcome any critiques and comments you may wish to offer, but more importantly, I hope you enjoy the viewing. Check it out at tysonm.com/bestof2008.

All the best to you and yours in 2009!

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the air a bit and exploring what’s known as "atmospheric perspective." The greater the amount of dust, fog, and other molecules stirred up the air, the more faded and dull objects tend to look as they recede in the distance. This piece I recently completed for an audio/video components calendar really shows a thicker, more dense atmosphere than usual. It fondly reminds me of a clear, hot, sunny day in southern California with a fair amount of CO2 emissions floating in the air. The look really helps the composition as it pulls the background buildings back and forces the foreground characters to pop up front.

On another note that is reflected in this piece, I’ve also had an interest in illustrating robots with clear heads. I know—weird.

Last year, I blogged about the conundrum of advertising in books like this when my ad for 2008 was published in volume no. 24. Ultimately, I have found it to be a worthy investment in the long term for my business. These books are always hardcover-bound, printed on high quality glossy coated stock, and contain some of America’s best illustrators working today. Art Directors and Designers have been known to hang on to these volumes for reference and inspiration for years.

The piece I used for this year’s ad was originally produced for an editorial about targeting online risk of theft in the banking industry. When asked how he found me, the Art Director said he saw some of my work from a previous Directory ad a while back, visited my portfolio online, and bookmarked my site for future reference. When he got this editorial that needed some art of little fantastical gremlins doing their worst to break into a huge, black safe, he remembered an artist who’d be perfect for the job—me.

I must say, I love illustrating imaginative characters like this and I really like the dramatic angle and perspective I ended up doing. This turned out to be one of my favorite artworks in 2008, making it a solid choice for this year’s ad.