I have a BS in Art Education (1973) and an MA in painting/drawing (1977)
from Indiana University of PA. I love (mind those italics) teaching art, and
I’ve been doing it since 1973. Around 1980 the idea to do freelance
illustration grabbed me hard—and I made the decision to try a home-based
business. Home at that time was Kansas City Missouri, but I actually thought
I was on route to Los Angeles. Never made it to California.
KCMO is a lovely town that still sparkles in my memory as the best ‘short
break’ of my career. It’s there that I got my first illustration jobs. A brief
staff stint at Abbey Press (in Indiana) led me to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where
I really kicked off all this freelance stuff in earnest. I have lived and worked
in Yellow Springs for 24 years. My client list includes Children's Televison
Workshop, Scholastic Books, F &W Publications, H.W. Wilson, Pictura
(Sweden), Hallmark, Recycled Paper Products, and more.
Freelancing is a hoot—rewarding, challenging, and much fun—a natural
direction for my creative juices. But I’ve always juggled the doing and
teaching of art. Too many teaching gigs to mention, but for the last 5 years,
I’ve been at Edison Community College in Piqua, Ohio (outside of Dayton).
Here I handle a variety of studios, run a Mac lab, and am program/staffing
coordinator.
Teaching at Edison has been invigorating—I won a national teaching
excellence award from the NISOD organization, and presented at their
conference in May of 2004. I also presented at the HOW Magazine national
conference, DesignWorld (in 2002), and at ICON4 in July, 2005.
My writing gigs are the direct offspring of my illustration and teaching
careers. I never would have predicted that I’d be a writer, but here I am—4
books later. My latest title, Exploring Illustration was published by Thomson/
Delmar Learning in November, 2003, and comes on the heels of Starting Your
Career as a Freelance Illustrator or Designer (Allworth Press, 2001).
My first books were for North Light: Getting Started as a Freelance
Illustrator or Designer, and Starting Your Small Graphic Design Studio. I was
a contributing editor at The Artist’s Magazine for many years, and I have
written for a variety of publications (including How Magazine, Step Inside
Design, and Computer Projects, in the UK).
As we speak I am wrapping up book 5, How To Grow as An Illustrator,
for Allworth Press and starting a series called The Visual Artist At Work with
Thomson/Delmar Learning.
Spend some time with me in the studio, and you will hear from various
spots in the house the soft sounds of my wife Joanne Caputo, along with the
not always soft (but just as sweet) sounds of my son Max (15) and Cooper
(18)—the three most important people in the known universe. I am indeed a
lucky guy.