From the doctor’s summing up Ivan Ilych concluded that things were bad, but that for the doctor, and perhaps for everybody else, it was a matter of indifference, though for him it was bad.

And this conclusion struck him painfully, arousing in him a great feeling of pity for himself and of bitterness towards the doctor’s indifference to a matter of such importance.

- Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

A few illustrations of mine have just gotten published in The Writer magazine on articles on literary fiction. One of them even made it on the cover.

The first image shows a little man balancing on a four-row stack of blocks with letters inside which say, LITERARY FICTION (see the spread below).

Image number two is of a little man looking up at a huge stack of books (this is the one that made it on the cover, in part).

And the last illustration (see below) shows a little figure writing on a sheet of paper with some thought balloons coming out of his head.

These are a bunch of images on the art of living, and the art of surviving – from wall street disasters to The World’s a Stage to finding some peace and quiet.

Here’s a male portrait I made which consists entirely of scrap paper and cut-outs from postcards and magazines.

Here’s an image visualizing different approaches to writing a novel: Some authors have a lot to say, while others don’t – but are fortunate enough to compensate through their larger-than-life egos.

McDonald’s is not just about great food and great service, it’s about the freedom to be yourself, the opportunity to learn and a sense of community.

A worldwide management training center, Hamburger U is everything we imagined–and everything you need to further discover your true potential.

(From the McDonald’s career site)

These black sheep images displayed here have never been published – I got them scanned in only a while ago.  They give a little insight into my goings on two decades ago – my state of mind, my many ups and downs, and the great many big questions so prevalent back then…

When I look at them today I am, of course, reminded of my life at the time; but so much has changed ever since that it feels strangely peculiar as well to see these – a little like glancing into the  life of another person even. That said, I really like these gouache-color black sheep a lot – hope you do, too :-)

TOP: Diving Deep Down
BELOW: The Witch, the Witch!

TOP: Painting Red
BELOW: Taking a Ride on the Sine Curve

TOP: Full Moon
BELOW: The Dance

TOP: Flying High
BELOW: The Difficult Walk

Here’s an image  showing some creepy crawlers in my bed. Yikes!

Oo-aah. I come as a friend. Please trust me.

I got selected illustrations from a book on quirky animal behavior printed in a little promo booklet. At A7-size, which is half of a postcard, it is really, really tiny – and über-cute :-)

The book is called Das tierische Kuriositätenkabinett (Little Bestiary of Wonders), and was written by Dirk Steffens who specializes in animal documentaries for television. It was published by Rowohlt last fall. You can download the digital PDF file of the promo booklet here.

>MORE ANIMALS

Here’s a mixed-media image depicting the multifaceted Hungarian-Austrian writer, Arthur Koestler, who rose to fame with novels like, Darkness at Noon.

It seems that I have created a whopping 15,000 illustrations in my career so far! At least that’s what my image stock archive software tells me.

Now let’s see… That’s 750 images per year within my 20-year career. Or two images per day. Or one image every eight hours, given a 16-hour day. Or one eights of an image per hour, which amounts to, say, twenty brush strokes. That’s one stroke every 3 minutes – make that one stroke centimeter per minute.

That’s 0.2 mm per second, which is equivalent to 200,000 stroke nanometers every second of every day over a period of 20 years. Jeeez – you do the math.

This small collection of cartoon-style b/w illustrations is on the topic of learning and knowing – and knowing that one knows nothing.

A pretty violent picture to illustrate a love-hate relationship. The colors are kept in black and red to add to the overall aggressive mood.

For the German second edition of Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment, Goldmann Verlag/Random House was looking for a wholly new design.

Can you learn to be happy? Yes, according to the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular course grounded in “positive psychology.” In his book, Tal Ben-Shahar combines scientific studies, scholarly research, self-help advice, and spiritual enlightenment.

I have come up with a completely revised jacket design featuring an illustration of mine—a crawling ladybug, a symbol traditionally associated with luck and happiness. The typographically challenging design incorporates a giant rendition of the capital letter G (for “Glücklicher”, Happier).