Pete McDonnell

My professional career started at the age of 14 when I sold a cartoon of a little girl shaking her fist at a little boy, saying "If you weren't a boy, I'd flatten you!", to Gloria Steinem's new Ms. magazine. My career started in earnest after I spent a few years at two art schools -- as a cartoonist, illustrator, caricaturist, storyboard artist, I worked for whatever client was willing to pay me to create something for them. This included clients such as Hewlett-Packard, Nestle's, CRACKED magazine, National Geographic KIDS magazine, Capstone Publishing's Graphic History Library, the J. Walter Thompson ad agency, Colorforms, Lewis Galoob Toys, Sega/Activision, Benefit Cosmetics, to name just a handful of clients. Since 2016, I've been drawing an editorial cartoon for my hometown paper, The Petaluma Argus-Courier a weekly with a 20,000-strong circulation. In 2010 I began in earnest to find bookings for drawing caricatures at private events throughout the Bay Area, from Willits to San Jose to Sacramento, for corporate clients like Jackson Family Wineries, Medtronic, Twitter, Apple, Google and Facebook + weddings, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, picnics and birthday parties.. I live in Petaluma, a nice little town known for chicken ranches and dairies 35 miles north of San Francisco, with my painter/illustrator wife, Shannon Abbey, our son Jacob, and our dog Molly.