I am very thankful to have gotten to know Roy Doty, who has been illustrating for Make magazine for the last six years. I first became familiar with Roy's work in the late 1960s, when I saw his pleasing and deceptively simple illustrations in Popular Science magazine.
For many years Roy drew a comic strip called "Wordless Workshop," which featured a pipe smoking suburban dad who wandered around his house and neighborhood observing the minor irritations that his family and neighbors experienced, and then coming up with an elegant solution to those problems that involved making a nifty contraption out of easily obtained materials. Roy is not only a very gifted cartoonist, he's a wonderfully resourceful inventor!
Roy is 88 years old, and he still works full time for a wide variety of publications. He can turn around a drawing in a matter of hours, and I admit I have occasionally taken advantage of his ability to do this.
Every year Roy sends out a Christmas card, and they are always very inventive and delightful. This one, titled "A Holiday Alphabet," features a number of Santa's elves contorting themselves into positions that resemble the letters of the alphabet.
