Scott McKowen

Scott McKowen (born January 16, 1956) is an American illustrator, art director, and graphic designer. He was born and raised in Michigan, and his studio is in Stratford, Ontario. He designs posters for theaters and other performing arts companies across North America, and he creates illustration for books and magazines. He is known for his drawings on scratchboard, a process in which he uses a knife blade to carve white lines onto a black board. It is somewhat similar to engraving or woodcutting, in the sense that images are formed by carving white lines. In the last stages, color is often added to the illustrations.

Describing his technique for creating theatre posters he has said, “I think of the play as a road map for any graphic design assignment. The first page of a script usually indicates the time and place in which the story occurs. I read the text to get the story in my head, but at the same time I’m watching for clues from the playwright about the world of the play.”

Book illustration He has created illustrations for a variety of projects including book covers. He has illustrated the covers of over thirty books, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Alice in Wonderland, Oliver Twist, Peter Pan, Around the World in Eighty Days, Anne of Avonlea, as well as Neil Gaiman’s comic book series Marvel 1602. A recent project is to illustrate a series of children’s classics for Sterling Publishing.

As a freshman in college, he and another art student, Sam Viviano, turned out silk screened posters for the theater department. Viviano went on to work as the art director at Mad Magazine in New York City. McKowen graduated from the University of Michigan School of Art in Ann Arbor, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, magna cum laude.

McKowen is known to create images that “capture the essence” of plays by authors that include Shakespeare, Shaw, Chekhov, and Molière. He has described that while working with pen and ink in the 1980s, he began to feel frustrated that his lines were too delicate for the graphic strength that he wanted, and so he took up scratchboard. Noted illustrator, Milton Glaser, has said that “Scott McKowen is one of the great illustrators of our time”

McKowen's wife, Christina Poddubiuk, is a theatre set and costume designer and has an honors English degree. Together they have a design studio, Punch & Judy. A selection of McKowen's works is featured in A Fine Line: Scratchboard Illustrations..