Custom Illustration Work by Mark Boehly: A Look at the Range
Every custom illustration starts as a drawing
Before it becomes a label, a poster, a sticker, a print, or a logo it is a pencil sketch on paper. That is where every piece of custom illustration work shown here began. What happens after that depends on where the work needs to go.
This post is a look at the range. Client work, personal series, live events, limited collections. The through line across all of it is a sketchbook habit that started before there was a reason for it and has not stopped since.
If you are a creative director, art director, agency producer, or brand manager looking for an illustrator to bring into a project reach out at graphicsbyte.com/contact.
Elakha Alliance: Ecological Storytelling
A nonprofit working to restore sea otters to Oregon’s coastline needed custom illustration that could carry ecological weight without feeling like a textbook. The result was a biomechanical sea otter built in the same industrial-organic visual language that runs through the personal Creature Collection work.
The piece appeared on a call-to-artists poster for Dinner Time and was followed by the official logo for the 2025 Oregon Otter Beer Festival at OMSI. Scientific subject matter, surreal execution, conservation mission. That combination is where illustration earns its place beyond decoration.
Looking for an Illustrator for Your Next Project?
Custom Illustration work is available for client projects across industries. Brand campaigns, packaging, event posters, editorial pieces, character design, and more. Every engagement starts with understanding what the piece needs to accomplish before a single mark gets made.
Siempre La Guitarra: A World Built Season by Season
A classical guitar concert series needed a visual identity that could attract a younger audience without abandoning the tradition behind the music. The solution was a fictional Pacific Northwest lumberjack with a passion for classical guitar and a world worth returning to season after season.
What started as a poster series became a complete illustrated universe. The lumberjack character evolved across six years of shows. New posters, new merchandise, new versions of the same character appearing in different landscapes and situations. Concert posters at 16 by 24 inches, hand-sketched and vectorized. T-shirts, stickers, guitar pick packs. Each piece connected to the last.
This is what custom illustration as a brand system looks like in practice. Not a single hero image but a character with a life that keeps developing.
Centered Water: Character-Driven Packaging
A CBD water brand gave full creative control and one brief detail. One of the co-founders has Hawaiian heritage and thought it would be funny if the brand had a Hawaiian mascot. Joe the cartoon was born from that conversation.
Three flavors, three illustrated scenes, one character living his life in the Pacific Northwest. Joe in a hammock for cantaloupe. Joe at a fruit stand sharing pears with forest animals. Joe’s A-frame home at the base of a mountain at night for the original flavor. Custom illustration as product narrative, giving customers a reason to pick up the bottle and actually look at what is on it.
Creature Collection: A Personal Body of Work
The Creature Collection is not client work. It is the custom illustration practice that runs alongside everything else. Biomechanical creatures built from pencil sketches, scanned and refined in Illustrator, colored and detailed until they have a specific presence.
The collection spans insects, arachnids, fish, mammals, and reptiles. Each creature starts from observation of the real animal, then gets rebuilt with mechanical anatomy. Hydraulic systems, exposed gears, plated structures. The resulting creatures exist somewhere between the biological and the industrial.
The collection has produced sticker singles, postcard packs, and apparel. The Rocky Shore series was built around the coastal ecosystem. The Elakha Alliance work grew directly from the same visual language.
The Collection Is Available
Sticker singles, postcard packs, and apparel featuring original Creature Collection illustrations are available in the Graphicsbyte shop. Each piece is printed on premium materials and ships from the studio.
Monster Drawing Rally: Live at the Portland Art Museum
The 4th Annual Monster Drawing Rally at the Portland Art Museum was exactly what it sounds like. Illustrators drawing monsters live in front of a public audience in real time. No sketch, no revision, no safety net.
Live drawing in public is a different discipline from studio work. The decisions have to be fast and committed. There is no undo. What goes on the paper is what the audience sees happen.
This video documents that session.
Cup of Tea: Process on Camera
The Cup of Tea project produced one of the more interesting behind the scenes looks at how illustration gets applied to a brand. A video from the project captures the process of taking a hand-drawn tea illustration from initial concept through finished apparel artwork.
The Cup of Tea identity required over 90 custom icons for the bulk tea wall, illustrated packaging for three product lines, and a color system that organized more than 150 tea varieties by flavor and mood. All of it rooted in illustration that started on paper.
Dear America: Hand-Drawn Typography
The senior thesis project from Portland State University was a fictional political movement called Dear America: What Would You Change. Every letter, every word, every headline in the piece was hand drawn. No digital type. No fonts. Pure hand lettering built around a message about civic participation.
This is the furthest end of the range from my usual creature work. Different subject, different technique, different intent. The same sketchbook instinct behind both.
Halloween: The Holiday That Gets Its Own Category
Halloween has been a recurring subject for years. It is the one holiday where the subject matter aligns completely with the aesthetic. Strange creatures, dark atmospheres, controlled chaos on the page. The Halloween drawings are not client work. They are the most honest version of what comes out when there is no brief.
Available for Illustration Projects
Client illustration work spans brand campaigns, packaging, editorial pieces, event posters, character design, and concept illustration. Work is available on a project basis for agencies, brands, and direct clients. Every project starts with a conversation about what the piece needs to accomplish.
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