Originally from Hawaii, R. Kikuo Johnson is an illustrator and comics artist based in Brooklyn, New York.
His illustration clients include Apple, Random House, Penguin Books, Marvel Comics, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and the New York times, among others.
Johnson maybe best known for his wonderful covers for The New Yorker. The image above, top is an example. I don’t know about you, but it took me a second glance to catch the point of the illustration; I love that.
He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, and has returned to teach there.
Johnson’s work ranges from dramatic to subtle, and often has something of a feeling of the ligne claire style of European comics — little variation in line width, flat color, but within those constraints producing a naturalistic feeling of time and place.
