Number 142 of 150

October 16, 2023October 5, 2023Leave a comment

Here’s an illustration of a police officer in uniform. This is the last illustration for the set of images depicting people in recognizable professions. This was made as part of a larger commission for the children’s educational publisher Learning A-Z.

One detail when drawing police for the children’s market is that you want to be careful about depicting guns. This might sound like a silly concern to have, but children’s publishing tends to be very sensitive about showing weapons. Particularly for the younger age ranges. Normally you just wouldn’t draw guns at all, but police in America are pretty much always armed. It would be weird to show them with an empty belt. It just wouldn’t quite look like a cop. But you also don’t want to show the weapon too blatantly for your audience. To solve this problem, I like to draw police officers turned slightly away from the viewer so that their hip holster is on the far side, either partially or completely hidden from view. In this case, she’s facing the viewer almost full-on, but her hand position obscures those blocky items on her belt. Undoubtedly one of those is her firearm, but it’s not too obvious.

A Police Officer

Number 141 of 150

October 14, 2023October 5, 2023Leave a comment

This is a cartoon illustration of a commercial airline pilot in her traditional uniform. It was part of a larger commission for Learning A-Z. This set depicts diverse people with recognizable occupations.

I was pleased that this one called for a woman with short hair, since we hadn’t had many of those so far in the project. I also kept forgetting to add jewelry to people, since it was rarely mentioned in the specs. For this one I made a point to give her earrings and a wedding ring to make up for that previous oversight. I don’t remember why she didn’t get a pilot’s hat, but there was probably a reason.

Did you know that there is a reason the flight crew greets the passengers with one hand behind their backs like this? It’s nothing nefarious. They have a little counting device that they use to count the number of passengers that board the plane. They want to make sure it matches the number of tickets scanned. (Either stowaways or missing passengers would be bad.) They keep the device behind their back because they are trying to be discreet about it.

A Commercial Airline Pilot

Number 138 of 150

October 8, 2023October 5, 2023Leave a comment

A chef. Probably from a more upscale restaurant, if they’re wearing the traditional chef’s uniform.

This is image 138 of 150 images commissioned for Learning A-Z. Each one is a cartoon drawing of a person isolated on white. Diversity was a key priority in the series and so the characters represent many different races, ethnic groups, genders, ages, and included individuals with visible disabilities. Previous batches were focused mostly on children, but this batch are all adults.