Hal Mayforth sketches an editorial illustration in his East Montpelier studio. Photo: Stefan Hard

Hal Mayforth draws funny. Thousands of his stressed-out, bewildered, bug-eyed little men with bulbous noses and his arsenal of anthropomorphic animals, letters, fruits, vegetables, hotdogs and machines have accompanied articles in "The Wall Street Journal," "The New York Times," "U.S. News & World Report," "Time," "Newsweek" and various other publications for the past 20 years. They're all done by hand, with an ink-dip pen (a Crow Quill with Hunt 102 nib, to be exact), often water-colored, and never, ever, penciled.

Indeed, the 54-year-old Mayforth, a native Vermonter who lives with his wife and three sons off the beaten path in East Montpelier, may be the state's most celebrated illustrator. And, possibly, the least recognized.

"Here no one knows what I do. I'm under the radar. What's interesting is that everyone's seen my work, but no one knows it's me," he says with some relief from his East Montpelier studio.

The room is a crazy amalgam of family photos, posters, artwork and supplies, catalogs, light tables, drawing boards, an old opaque projector, new computer equipment, a standard poodle named Maude (named after his wife Ellen's aunt) and a cat that comes in with muddy feet and walks right across his artwork.

The cat has a cosmic link: Mayforth's favorite cartoonist, George Herriman, was the creator the comic strip Krazy Kat, which was popular in the late teens through the 1940s.

Mayforth is a self-described editorial illustrator: a humorist illustrator with a cartoon style. His clients expect him to summarize, usually with a single image, an entire article or essay. The challeng is to draw people into reading his client's copy, based on his illustrations. "It has to be arresting so that people stop and look at the image and want to read the whole article. I try to come up with a number of concepts."

One of his early assignments was to provide an illustration for a piece on pornography. "The big thing about sex is finding a way to skirt the issue. I just pictured this guy holding his pants open and these flames coming out. It wasn't overt, but it got the idea across," he says with a laugh.

Mayforth's foray into the art world began at the University of Vermont where he spent two years studying liberal arts. "It really worked out well because as an illustrator you really need to know a little about a lot. He says he always had an interest in drawing.

"I was the kind of kid who would take copious notes the first five minutes of a lecture, and then the rest of the time I'd draw."

But becoming a successful illustrator also required dogged discipline and strokes of good luck. He transferred to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., near where his parents had relocated. A drawing instructor required students to keep sketchbooks of their work.

"I finally found a place where all my doodles could have a home. I kept a sketchbook with me, and I drew all the time. I've been doing it ever since," he says. "My sketchbooks are the backbone of my career." He says he filled some 20 sketchbooks before he refined the style that is his hallmark today. (At last count, he has filled roughly 160 sketchbooks. Mayforth begins each day by drawing for up to a half hour, free flowing sketches to get the creative juices stirred up.)

In Boston, where Mayforth moved after leaving Skidmore, he says his portfolio would often be met with a lukewarm reception from prospective clients and critics. "I'd always bring my sketchbook, and they always kind of dug the sketchbook because it showed process. 'Your portfolio doesn't show what you can do, but your sketchbook's pretty cool.'"

While in Boston he taught himself graphic design, something he says he could always fall back on. "One of my early freelance assignments, a corporate brochure, I made a $20,000 printing error," he says with a grimace. The grimace fades as he remembers his first published illustration, which appeared in a Boston health publication. It was a drawing of a dog in bed with an ice pack on his head. He was paid $40 for the black-and-white illustration.

It was the emerging computer industry that helped launch Mayforth's career in earnest. "The stuff was so boring. I was able to do conceptual stuff and humorous stuff. There was a group of us whose line style was spontaneous, a very expressive line. We were dipping back to the styles of the early cartoonists like Herriman. People were taking the early guys and taking them a step further."

"By the time it (the Boston computer industry) crashed in mid 80s, I was advertising nationally, and getting national clients." His success made it possible for him and his family to return to Vermont in 1992 and build their East Montpelier home.

In recent years Mayforth has been painting with acrylics on wood, part of new movement that he describes as funky lowbrow stuff, but very technically amazing. "A lot of the people who are making big in this field are former illustrators."

The difference between his work as an illustrator and artist is simple. The paintings are his own and are not created for a client. Mayforth, the artist, showed some of his acrylic works and other oddities at Montpelier's Lazy Pear Gallery in earlier this year in an aptly titled exhibit: "Unencumbered by Critical Thought."

"A painting's a lot like walking on a tightrope: There's a point where it could go either way, it could either fall off or it could be successful."

Knowing Mayforth, bank on the latter.



Patrick Timothy Mullikin writes regularly for Vermont Sunday Magazine.