JAMES O'BRIEN STUDIO

An illustration for Quanta Magazine for a story about the beauty of math. On one side, the abstract beauty represented by a natural number line. On the other side, the curio cabinet beauty represented by more complex elements.

An illustration for Quanta Magazine for a story about epistasis–the nonlinear interaction between bits of genetic information. Epistasis is a powerful but unpredictable force in the study of genetics because of its surreptitious effects.

An illustration for Macalester Today for a section containing essays about how the humanities relate to some of today’s most urgent questions.

A banner illustration for The John Templeton Foundation for their paper on Immortality.

This illustration was for a story about an author returning to her home town to visit a graveyard of black Union soldiers.

An illustration for Quanta Magazine for a story about the control and manipulation of the evolution in nature.

An illustration for the New York Times for a story about workers taking time off away from their career.

An illustration for Notre Dame Magazine for a story about using AI in education.

Cover illustration for Bulletin, the official magazine of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in the UK, for a story about disorders of consciousness.

An illustration for Moravian University Magazine for a story about mental health.

An illustration for Quanta Magazine for a story about angles in billiards.

An illustration for Tablet Magazine for a story about classical education.

An illustration for Quanta Magazine for a story about Dark Energy.

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's Diversity in Academe Supplement.

Cover illustration for Wake Forest for a story about their Rhodes Scholars.

A spot illustration for The John Templeton Foundation for their paper on Immortality.

Feature illustration for San José State University’s Washington Square Magazine for a story about the future of autonomous cars.

An illustration for Quanta Magazine for a story about the connection between our tongue and our sense of touch.

An illustration for Quanta Magazine for a story about periodic tilings.

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

An illustration for Macalester Today for an essay about the trans rights debate.

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

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

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

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

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

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 The Wall Street Journal for a story about teen depression.

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

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

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 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.