Long before your Kindles or iPads books were printed on real paper and bound together. I know, sounds like a waste of paper, but it’s true! Here is an image of a girl from such time reading one of these old-fashioned books. She looks real focused, doesn’t she? This week’s Illustration Friday theme is “focused” so here’s my submission. It’s also available for stock use here.

It’s been a while since doing a fun, simple illustration in Adobe Illustrator. So, here you go. Not sure why I chose a clown. Clowns really don’t appeal to me that much.

This image is available for use at iStock. Click here for more info.

I wanted to draw people’s attention to an important event happening in Portland this week (Thursday, January 21). It’s a concert called Songs for Haiti, held at the Aladdin Theater in SE Portland. The concert features some of Portland’s musicians Thomas Lauderdale (bandleader of Pink Martini), Cool Nutz, Portland Cello Project, Storm Large, Grammy-nominated pianist Janice Sroggins, and more.

I’ve had the pleasure of creating some newspaper and flash banner ads promoting the event. As you can see from the fancy graphic I designed, 100% of money raised goes to Mercy Corps. You get to have a great evening, and help out the relief effort in Haiti. How cool is that?

More info available at Aladdin Theater’s website here.