About

Jake Donovan is a pen and ink illustrator and digital artist whose artwork focuses on visual texture and contrast to create a clean image that appears tactile.

By overlapping lines, patterns and scribbles within clearly defined shapes, he creates illustrations that are lively and textured, while also bold and clean.  His current collection focuses on the organic beauty of natural landscapes, trees and animals.  The subjects are rendered with presence and character.

 

“I’ve always been interested in the contrast created by pen and ink textures. Not just the black and white, but the juxtaposition between realism and abstraction, chaos and control…I contain the chaos of tree bark in the perfect cylindrical silhouette of a birch tree, and its leaves within green rectangles.  This juxtaposition somehow makes those very specific organic shapes feel ordered and universal.”

 

Jake Donovan offers a collection of original pen and ink illustrations as well as high-quality reproduction prints.  Some prints are digitally embellished with flat geometric colors that emphasize and illuminate the lines and textures of the drawings.

 

As a child, Jake was inspired by his favorite illustrators, including Maurice Sendak, whose dense lines of jungle, hatching, and fur created the mood of Where the Wild Things Are.  Another favorite, Chris VanAllsberg, refined his illustrations until they looked as if they were made of powdered snow.  Jake’s artwork captures a similar whimsical nature to the work of these artists that inspired him.  His pen and ink techniques combined with the digitally printed colors also recall the comic books he admired.

Jake Donovan is available to create custom pen and ink pieces, including natural landscapes, architecture, and animals upon request.  You can reach out through filling out a request on the “Contact” page.  Please include a general idea of the subject and size, and he will promptly return your message with pricing info.  *You may also request a specific size for a print if the sizes listed on the site do not fit your needs.