Over the years, Randal Birkey has created hundreds of line art drawings in pen and ink style using actual pen and ink in the early days, then graduating to digital pen and ink using software such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel (Fractal) Painter. These are just some of the many line illustrations done over his illustration career.

Commercial Jet Airliner	Camera
Business Woman	Concert Tickets
Dice	Grocery Shopping Cart
Sunglasses	Travel Luggage

Buick Cutaway Line Illustration

Randal created this line illustration of the side view of a Buick to illustrate an computer controlled automotive fuel system. The work was commissioned by a Chicago area ad agency in the 1980′s.

Testing Water for Toxicity

Randal Birkey did this line illustration for Newmont Gold, depicting a lab employee testing natural stream water for toxicity near a gold leeching facility. This illustration was done as a part of a series of illustrations on “How Gold Is Made” which has been featured in company annual reports, as well as on printed posters. The company pays close attention to the environmental impact of the gold mining and reclaiming process.

Isometric Line Drawing of Tugboat

Randal Birkey completed this isometric line drawing of a tugboat as a part of a series of illustrations for a ship and barge manufacturing company. This cutaway reveals the bulkheads and inner structure of the tugboat.

Randal Birkey put together this self-promotional ad for the 1997 Black Book.

It features:

• Pharmaceutical Product Logo
• Globe – Product Illustration
• Retouched and digitally altered 5 dollar bill with 2 Abe Lincoln’s
• Close-up diagram of a chain product used in a road grader
• Watercolor boot
• Watercolor tractor
• Nascar line drawing sketch
• How to measure for a swimsuit diagram
• 3D clock tower projecting from a 2D blueprint
• 2 whimsical vector art graphs

1997 Black Book Ad

Randal Birkey put together this self-promotional ad for the 1998 Black Book.

It features:

• A series of vector line art icons
• A Nuclear Fission Reactor Core Vessel
• An Atomic Level Fission Nuclear Reaction Diagram
• A Medical Doctor Digital Vector Illustration
• Youth Science Fair Project
• Automotive Engine Turbocharger See-Through Cutaway
• A Harris Branch Bank Architectural Line Illustration

1998 Black Book Ad

Randal Birkey created this ad for the 1985 Chicago Creative Sourcebook, to promote his architectural and technical line art illustration styles and services primarily in the Chicago area.

The ad features:

• Drinking Fountain – stipple style
• A Commercial Office Building at Night – croquil board
• Goodyear Eagle Automotive Tire – stipple
• Mercury Inboard-Outboard Marine Engines – line art
• Credit Suisse Gold Bar – stipple
• Office Chair – stipple
• Godiva Chocolate Basket – stipple
• AT&T Mobile Telephone – line art
• Hi-Rise Office Building – Line art

1985 Chicago Creative Sourcebook Ad - Randal Birkey

Randal did a series of scientific illustrations for Dr. John Delly, scientific advisor to the McCrone company in Westmont, Illinois. This diagram of a Biaxial Indicatrix was used in a training manual for lab technicians to learn how to identify optical light refracting properties of crystals. The reason this is important is that forensic labs get lots of different “white powder” substances to identify. One part of identifying what the substance is, is by studying what happens to light as it passes through a crystal of the substance. This is often done in a forensic lab environment using sophisticated optical microscopic equipment.

Biaxial Indicatrix Diagram

Caterpillar, Inc. desired to explore moving a portion of their extensive parts catalog from a paper only, to an interactive CD-ROM computer-based solution back in the early 1990′s. Randal Birkey worked with Lou Morelli in producing an interactive CD-ROM demo for Caterpillar, Inc. to evaluate. The graphics were done in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, then moved into Macromedia Director for sequencing and interactivity programming. Morelli provided the programming for the “hooks” into the parts database.

The Item Catalog - Opening Screen

The Item Catalog - Main Menu Screen

Randal Birkey created this quick felt tip ink line sketch showing the location of a “piston pin” in the layout of an automotive V-8 engine.

Automobile Engine Piston Pin - Technical Sketch