I've decided the time has come to post some of the professional illustrations I used to do for a magazine called Ruralite.

First things first -- some information about Ruralite. Although it has a circulation of about a quarter million, it wasn't what you'd call a major magazine. It was free to the subscribers of a rural electrical co-op in the Pacific Northwest, and I suspect that if it had competed with other magazines on a rack, its circulation might have been closer to 500. It was a very old fashioned magazine too, serving a readership who's median age might have been around 50.

The assistant editor was Walt Wentz, and he and I become acquainted through a mutual friend in comics. I did my first piece for Walt near the end of 1987, and he threw as much work my way as he could over the next few years. The pay was modest to start, but gradually grew to as much as $150 at the end. This was just for publication rights, mind you. I kept the original. It was a sweet deal, but unfortunately it had to come to end sooner or later. It came when a new editor-in-chief made it clear he preferred photographs and more literal diagrams than my cartoons. It got harder and harder to talk the chief into giving me assignements, and finally impossible. Walt himself wasn't that happy at Ruralite any more and retired shortly after my last job there. Such was my brief career as a professional magazine illustrator. I had one book job some years later, but essentially I had outlived my usefulness in illustrating at about the time I switched to comics.

I've selected the better pieces to show here. Actually, I've selected about half of them 32 of 60. They're numbered in the order I drew them for Ruralite, and I'll post them in reverse order so that the final gallery is in the right order. At least a couple have been posted earlier on Fur Affinity. I won't be putting them up all at once either, but over three installents I figure.

This piece obviously illustrates someone's remembered Thanksgiving. I hardl yremember the content of any of the articles I illustrated in any detail, which can't be surprising. It was a considerable while ago, and few of the articles were in the least memorable. In this case, it would seem the author once caused the holiday feast to be spoiled. In as much as the writer was recalling something from childhood, and was likely elderly himself, I depicted the people in very old fashioned dress. I presumed the readership of Ruralite would identify with it easier too.

Oddly this is one of the few Ruralite drawings I had to re-do. The first effort wasn't frankly very good and was rightl rejected. This only happened once or twice in the ten years I worked for them. I also delivered on time every time. Walt treasured me. But unfortunately the souless so-and-so who was his next boss was no art lover.