Art101 began making design and digital imaging in the early 1990s.
The dawn of our brave new digital world.
Taking some time to reflect, revisit, and punch the reset button.
Here's a retrospective of the work.
In the early 1990s, I had the good fortune to work with the late, great John McWade, founder and publisher of Before & After, as a lead illustrator and copywriter. I made this vector art with FreeHand MX; it's still my favorite drawing program.
Someday, the Universe will buy me a 1957 Thunderbird. This is the first vector illustration I made on a Mac with FreeHand back in 1986. Drawing with a mouse felt like drawing with a bar of soap at the time. I eventually got the hang of it.
One of my first professional commissions after I went solo to found Art101. Circa 1996, I think? Time flies. It features a technique I helped develop while designing articles for Before & After. Three elements were snipped apart in FreeHand, then woven together. The typography was hand-drawn on my Mac.
Things got interesting when I started experimenting with early 3D software in 2005. This work is based on a dream one night, when three massive spacecraft flew in formation over sulfur hills on an alien planet.
Blue Formation surveys a barren ice world orbiting a binary star system consisting of a blue supergiant and companion yellow dwarf star.
Circa 2004. Logo and brochure design for Camellia Symphony Orchestra, Sacramento, California.
Circa 2016. One of my favorite logo projects. The letter D, rendered with FreeHand MX to arrive at a minimalist solution. The correct answer to this puzzle was found by playing with negative and positive space.
Speaking of negative and positive space, I try to always look beyond the obvious. See the letter K in this logo design by yours truly? In an animated version, the four red logo elements spin in to their finished position.
April 2000: Designed for Rain Records and Sony Music Special Products, this retail poster announced the final album by legendary singer-songwriter Jimmie Spheeris. I also designed the CD packaging for a reissue of his original four-album catalog.
June 21, 2006: The Sugar Bean Sisters premiered off-Broadway at the WPA Theatre in New York City in 1995 and received an Oppenheimer Award nomination from New York Newsday for "the most impressive debut of a new American playwright." I designed this poster for a production in Sacramento, California.
October 17, 2016: Hybrid illustration created with Photoshop and FreeHand MX for the play The Sugar Witch by Nathan Sanders for Samuel French, Inc., New York. Typography was hand-drawn on my Mac, based on a font called Birch. Baseline of the title treatment was curved into an arch, enhancing the dramatic effect.
May 5, 2021. Vector art created with FreeHand MX for a lifelong friend and patron. It's a drawing of a Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio Glaucus).
Washington Mutual, Inc. (WAMU) was an American savings bank holding company and the largest savings and loan association in the United States until its collapse in 2008 during a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the U.S.
Prior to WAMU’s collapse, I was commissioned by its Sacramento division to design a direct mail postcard. I’m including it in this retrospective because I like the overall design and the illustration of a gift they were giving away: an SOG CrossCut pocket tool. File this under "If I knew then what I know now."
Circa 2024. Cover art and inside spread, CD package design for music by Nan Geary. Learn about Nan's remarkable body of work here.
Fine Art:
1957 DeSoto, November 20, 2025