JAMES O'BRIEN STUDIO

Two illustrations for a story about corporate monitoring of employees.

An illustration I created for a story about education and technology. The client wanted to show a teacher and a student walking into a tablet as if it was a doorway.

For some reason, I thought laptop rather than tablet, so I sent initial rough ideas showing a laptop as a doorway. Big oops! so I sent in new sketches.

The top right idea seemed to be the most interesting, the tablet as a doorway on a path in a park or school quad. The client agreed.

I used graphite and ink on a textured paper to create the frame of the tablet and some of the background elements. I also made a pattern of dots that I thought might be useful as additional texture, wasn’t quite sure at this point how I would use them.

I used ink to create line work for the figures and the app icons that would appear in the tablet.

Generally, I work larger than the final cropped size. This allows me to re-evaluate how I crop the final image and allows for ample bleed.

For the background, I used a few gouache elements that I had painted for previous work.

An illustration for Quanta Magazine for a story about the double-life of black holes.

An illustration for The New York Times for a story about an former boss who wouldn’t let go.

An illustration for Habitat Magazine for a feature story about land leases.

An illustration for Stanford Social Innovation Review for a story about the next phase of business sustainability.

An illustration for The Wall Street Journal for a story about teen depression.

An illustration Quantum Magazine for a story about networking and financial planning for singles.

An illustration for The New York Times Sunday Styles section for a story about a 37-year-old snowbird. This was a quick two-day job. The concept is cold on the left and warm on the right, and this idea is repeated as a color gradient within the running figure.

An illustration for Harvard Magazine for a story about new treatments for patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The idea relates to a treatment referred to as "meaningful engagement."

One of the effective activities discussed involved patients taking care of plants. I wanted to make a decorative portrait that showed this relationship between the patient and the plants, as well as the internal isolation within the patient’s mind.

The larger portrait represents the external activity, the patient taking care of the plants, and the smaller internal portrait represents the patient separated from reality.

An illustration from 2007 for a story about cloud storage.

An illustration for The Chronicle of Higher Education's Diversity in Academe Supplement.

An illustration for Notre Dame Magazine for a story about rites of passage.

An illustration for Quanta Magazine for a column by Frank Wilczek about anyons.

An illustration for D Magazine for an article discussing how doctors choose to die.

An illustration was for The San Francisco Chronicle for a review of Daniel Mason's "A Far Country," a story about a young girl's search for her missing brother.

The background pattern represents the jungle he disappeared into. The eye shapes represent the girl's view, her memory of her brother walking away from their home. The white figure represents her memory of her brother and the shadow represents the mystery of his disappearance.

An illustration for The Wall Street Journal for a story about sliding pay rates for executives.

An illustration for The Wall Street Journal for a story about coping with a smaller management role than one expected.

A portrait illustration of An Wang for Softmart's 2012 calendar.

An illustration for Tufts Magazine for an article about inflammation. The idea for the piece was a pattern of abstracted cell shapes surrounding a helpless floating figure that also contained some of these cell shapes.

My first idea was to show a hand with inflammation. The inflammation was concentrated in one part of the hand as if stemming from an injury. I also included a sketch using a figure.

The client felt the figure better fit the story and chose the sketch where the cell pattern was also within the figure. She also asked to have the figure upright rather than upside-down.

An illustration for the Chronicle of Higher Education for a story about reading Jane Austen to students.

An illustration for The New York Times for a story about how technology is affecting how we tip.

An illustration for the 2013 New England TB Symposium, used for their program as well as on handbags and mugs.

An illustration for Quanta Magazine for a story about big data.

An illustration for Independent School Magazine for a story about a student focused school.

An illustration for the University of Minnesota’s Alumni magazine‘s summer issue for a short story about the manager of a fast-food restaurant, Mr. Ted.

I started out drawing quick concepts about grease and the deep-fryer and grill, and since the story was also about two of Mr. Ted’s workers, I worked up some ideas about them. My first thoughts were about the environment, the grease and heat, along with character studies of the workers and Mr. Ted. The story was a mix of humor and melancholy; Mr. Ted was trapped in his career choice and his two young workers at first saw Mr. Ted’s life as humorous and made light of it but eventually gained respect for him.

The client wanted the image to focus on Mr. Ted rather than the two workers so I sketched some variations of him at the grill with drops and flames (top two rows of thumbnails). The drops pattern serves as a symbol of the environment and the mood; grease, rain, tears, sweat.

The final direction was to combine the background of drops with patty shapes at the bottom, no smoke or flames, so a combination of the third and fourth sketches in the top row. Another request was to change the “RB” (the name of the restaurant) to Mr. Ted.

An illustration for a story about genetic markers and second-hand smoke.

An illustration for a story by a writer reminiscing about a motorcycle romance.

An illustration for The New York Times for a story about high impact interval training.

An illustration for The Wall Street Journal for a story about the arrival of a new CEO.

An illustration for the Village Voice for a story about Uber and unions.

An illustration for City Pages for a story about an Oscar Night Dinner. Couples bought tickets to watch the Oscars broadcast live in a theatre while they ate dinner.

Portraits of community leaders over the age of 50, also includes a series of category spots and an animated gif created by the client for their website.

An illustration for a story about different types of investments.

An illustration for The Wall Street Journal for a story about commercial real estate businesses owned by NY families forming an investing group to foster technology development in the real estate industry.

A cover illustration for the Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing for a story about discussing contraception.

An illustration for The New York Times for a story about swimming deaths.

An illustration for Quantum Magazine for a story about self-organized criticality in the brain.

A series of spot illustrations for qualities of cities; housing, jobs, crime, and manufacturing.

A series of portraits of Southern writers commissioned by The Oxford American Magazine. Top to bottom: Roy Blount Jr., Madeleine Blais, John Franklin, Michael Pollan, Gay Talese, Patsy Sims, and Walt Harrington.

An illustration for Christianity Today for a story asking if Jesus would visit a strip club.

An illustration I did for an essay by Jeff Chu, author of Does Jesus Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America. The essay was about the author’s visit to his family after coming out as gay, his boyfriend texting him the words, “Be humble” as he was about to meet with his family, his Midtown Manhattan subway rides, and his research for his book. The illustration represents the author’s conversation with the people he met on his journey. But this wasn’t my first idea.

In the essay, the author described the 49th Street subway station he used as, “brick, glazed a garish orange-red that always has made me think of the flames of hell.” He went on to describe how he felt each evening waiting for his train, fretting about his family as well as his conversations with his friends who were atheist.

So my first idea was to show him as a lone figure set against a hellish train pulling into the station. Other ideas I had related to the text sent by his boyfriend. But the client wanted a more positive image and asked me to instead, create a sketch about the conversations he had during his yearlong journey across America.

This is a personal piece I made while in grad school about a visit to the Ft. Worth Stockyards and Billy Bob's Texas Nightclub.

An illustration for a story about planning for retirement investments.

An illustration for The New York Times for a story about government snooping.

A personal piece of a fountain made from a sculpted head.

Two illustrations for an article about getting inside a CEO's head. One was used for the cover and the other for a full-page inside illustration.

An illustration for a story about sleeping.

An illustration for Brown University for a story in Brown Medicine Magazine about the new Alpert Medical School Building.

An illustration from 2007 for The New York Times for a story about Apple products in China.

An illustration for a story comparing physical and mental health costs.

An illustration for a story about funding large and small genome research projects.

An illustration for a brochure promoting continuing education courses.

A personal piece about a boxer.

An illustration for a story about racial discrimination.

A personal piece of a sculpted head falling from a pedestal.

An illustration about failing in business.

A personal piece of a hand holding leaves.

An illustration for a story about the death of a young disabled man.

An illustration for a story about combining work and leisure.