Chasing the Pack Painting

“It’s hard, but a lot of fun, trying to create the illusion of depth and drama on a 2-D surface using primitive materials like canvas, pasty colors and brushes.” Karl is a self-taught artist, cartoonist, and graphic illustrator. "Chasing the Pack" is based on a black and white illustration he made for the New York Daily News in 1986. Prior to moving to East Lansing to work for MSU 12 years ago, Karl spent 25 years in visual journalism in New York City and Washington, D.C., where he was the Director of Information Graphics at Newsweek, The AP, UPI, and other news organizations. During this time, Karl visually explained major stories on topics such as war, politics, entertainment, sports, technology, and breaking news, including the attack on the World Trade Center, which occurred a short distance from his midtown office. Now, Karl is an instructor in MSU's School of Journalism in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. He is also the Director of Media Sandbox, where he oversees a creative curriculum as well as activities that mix students with different interests and abilities to collaborate on real-world experiences. Karl teaches a popular, 500-student class in creative thinking and problem-solving and last year received MSU's Quality in Undergraduate Teaching Award. He was also featured in the President’s Report and was seen in a TV commercial promoting the university (that guy teaching in the blue shirt!). Karl loves to share his knowledge and ideas. He has given three TEDx talks and has spoken twice at the South by Southwest (SXSW) interactive conference on the “Power of Visual Storytelling." Gude recently gave a talk on the history of digital political mapping at the "Political Analytics Conference" at Harvard University. Karl also consults as both a visual communicator and creative problem-solver. Karl is married to Dorsey Gude, who works in Development for Michigan State University, and has two grown sons, Cole and Erik.