David R. Stong

This first image wasn't done for the Penn Stater, but was done for the Alumni Association. They requested images for their web page done in a "non-digital" woodcut style similar to an illustration they had on hand. I duplicated the style in scratchboard, scanned and colored the file digitally. Mont Alto campus liked the style and requested a complete map of their campus similarly rendered.

The article was about a team of Penn Staters who took advanced agricultural techniques to a rural community in Poland. For the illustration, I tried to show contemporary farming in Poland, but in a culturally specific folk-art style. I needed to do research to discover details like costume, building style, animals, and machinery so that the image would be accurate.

Heroic beagles were once used to guard Penn State apple orchards; at least that was the slant of this article. The illustration was painted in acrylic, with a style emulating late nineteenth century milk paint images. It features the orchards, Mount Nittany, and a period depiction of "Old Main".

The line cutting through the beagle is there because the image spanned one and a half pages.

The ragged edge and scribble were a stylization that resembled the illustrations in food and travel magazines like Gourmet. The article was about the culinary aspects in a grad students diet of canned tuna and pretzels. I seem to remember a part about green macaroons for dessert...I liked the idea of tuna dumped out of a can, still retaining its shape.

My first illustration for the Association. I tried to make as many subtle connections in my pictures as I could: this has theinterior of the Victorian Manor, their woodwork and wall paper as well as their caesar cart and many of their dishes. The female in the background was my wife, the waiter based on a gentleman a the Vic. At the time, the Frost Bug Museum was across the street from the Palmer. Inside they had quite a few bug illustrations done in colored pencil- so I chose colored pencil for this bug, too. It was years later that I realized the author of the story had been Doug Stanfield!

I had a piece of scratchboard just the right size for this corner spot. I liked the crispness of the style for this particular letter page illustration. The letters contained some disagreement about disagreements on campus. The arguments on campus, though important at the time , seemed minor in retrospect. They served to point out our human similarities more than our differences; which seemed like a good observation for the letter writers to note.

I especially enjoyed being able to set illustrations in specific, recognizable Penn State settings.

There was a full page to fill, and an article about getting your name listed in someone's rolodex. My only instruction was that the art director didn't want to see a picture of a rolodex. With limited time and materials, I drew this stylized executive getting a "bug" in his ear. it's mostly texture and pattern, with a strong outline as a backbone.

Looking back, it would have been a great opportunity to show a female in the role of "executive". I'm surprised it wasn't suggested. Possibly the female executives I was working for didn't want to offend me?

To start this watercolor, I sat in the central hall of Old Main and sketched the Henry Varnum Poor fresco. The concept was to show in an illustration the results of a lack of commitment to higher education. I used traditional Penn State positive imagery to show its flip side without being offensive.

The art director at the PennStater was the best I've ever known. She was an artist herself, capable of great insight, humor, and skill. This was an article about Golfing for Grades and the art director had this idea for the full page illustration. The concept was bold enough that style could be subdued. The illustration is an attempt to execute, in acrylics, exactly what the art director envisioned.

Pattee Library has a collection of La Vie yearbooks that has served me as a wonderful image and style resource. I had to refer to it often when I did the small black and white spots illustrating noteworthy Penn Staters from the early part of the 20th century.

I feel that a drawing featuring an accurate setting, done in an historically appropriate style adds information to the story for the general readership while it enhances the illustration for the subject of the article. This image shows a gentleman who worked as a parttime laborer constructing the student hall that he moved into. The same style was used in spot illustrations throughout the La Vie for the gentleman's graduation year.

This was a small, one column spot. The article was also short; it was about a Penn State group using mice in lab based cancer research. They had surprising success slowing the disease's advancement when they fed the mice relatively large quantities of garlic. I thought a Beatrix Potter treatment would be cute and readily accepted- especially by people who might ordinarily be upset by experiments with mice.

I think the article was about executive skills training with a comparison being drawn with dog training. The author suggested a dog, and when I came in with this, she showed me a rough sketch that she had done with the dog balancing a pencil on his nose.

I often had an oddly shaped corner space to fill on the letters page. This watercolor spanned two columns. It was a gamble; it had to be completed before Penn State played the Rose Bowl, and was set to be distributed just afterward. We had just joined the Big Ten, and the letter page had much discussion- pro and con! I knew Joe would win…

Another stylization for another food article. This was the first time I used this particular style, and I used it several times in later illustrations. It just seemed "right" to me. The article was about school cafeteria food, and a trend towards upscale menus.