ILLUMINATING CLIENTS:
Scholastic
The Jim Henson Company
Sesame Street Workshop
Spiffy Pictures
Sourcebooks
Quirk Books
Fred Rogers Productions
Insight Editions
Macmillan
Clarion Books
Imprint
Golden Books
Hachette Book Group
Grosset & Dunlap
Penguin Random House
Workman Publishing
Little Bee Books
Albert Whitman & Co.
Capstone Publishing
Cantata
Rhyolite Press
Igloo Books
Two Lions
Oxford University Press
Discovery House Publishing
Barbour Publishing
Highlights magazine
High Five magazine
Brain Play magazine
Storytime magazine
Goldie Blox
Spiffy Pictures
Soap Box Films
Gallery 1988
Gallery Nucleus
Bottleneck Gallery
Surface Gallery

CREATIVE CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:
New York Times Best Seller:
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The poetry of Mister Rogers (Quirk Books, 2019) debuted at #2, and remained on the list for 32 weeks
GOODREADS 2019 Best Picture Book:
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The poetry of Mister Rogers (Quirk Books, 2019)
GOLD Parent’s Choice: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The poetry of Mister Rogers (Quirk Books, 2019)
New York Times Best Seller:
Just Try It! by Phil & Lily Rosenthal (Simon & Schuster, 2024)
2011 Commuincation Arts Illustration annual winning entry (advertising)
2012 Communication Arts Illustration annual winning entry (self-promotion)
2014 Communication Arts Illustration annual winning entry (self-promotion)
5 Gold Addy Awards for design
5 Silver Addy Awards for design
1 Gold Addy Awards for illustration
3 Silver Addy Awards for illustration
1 Gold Illumination Book Award

I appreciate that you want to explore a bit more about me and my creative journey. I suppose it all began back in '79, in the tiny mountain town of Buena Vista, Colorado. Ever since I can remember, I have been drawn to drawing. I found an endless sea of inspiration in storybooks, comics, cartoons, toys, every Scholastic How To Draw book I could get my hands on, all those classic ‘80s movies and the wild adventures of my brothers. A treasured childhood gift, was my grandfather’s drawing desk where I spent countless hours dreaming and creating. It had this wonderful extending arm lamp that truly illuminated my world of imagination! Most kids at that age would trade sports cards with each other. I would trade my drawings of sports heroes for sports cards. It was then I thought, "Maybe someday I could actually make a career of this"!

Thankfully, I had a supportive family and incredibly talented art teachers that cheered me on in this pursuit. I attended Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design, and graduated in 2000 with a BFA in Illustration. I left with a head full of dreams, a hefty school loan and a wedding ring. Words can't express the gratitude I have for my wife/best friend who has forever blessed every step of this journey. Her love and encouragement has been the greatest source of inspiration in my life. I moved from Denver to Colorado Springs and worked as Senior Designer and Illustrator at a large organization in their Creative Services department. I spent 10 richly inspiring years in that role leading a talented team and creating hundreds of unique projects that honed my skills as a designer and illustrator. During that time, my wife and I also started a little family. I began doing freelance design and illustration for a handful of clients, so my wife could be home with our kiddos. Little did I know, that decision would impact my work in unimaginable ways. The creative opportunities I had as a freelancer led to achieving my life-long dream of owning my own creative studio.

In 2010, I launched Luke Flowers Creative, and have been sailing a vast sea of creativity ever since. Luke Flowers Creative was founded with the goal of bringing "illumination of imagination" to every area of my work. This idea was inspired by the meaning of my name (Luke, means Light) and I strive to embrace that each day in the creative cave. I hope that my work and life story will be a source of illumination to many. It has been richly rewarding to work with countless clients and teams to provide them with innovative design solutions and custom illustrations for their companies, stores, products and publications for over 15 years now!

In 2013, I shifted my focus to pursue my childhood dream of writing and illustrating children’s books. I’ve been on that journey for over a dozen years now, and I achieved that dream not once, but 85 times!! I’m forever grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with truly inspiring publishers (see sidebar) and creative teams in making books that illuminate the imagination! A major milestone of this journey was illustrating TWO New York Times Bestselling books, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The poetry of Mister Rogers and Just Try It! By Phil & Lily Rosenthal. Other notable titles include: the award-winning Unicorn Day by Diana Murray (which led to a 5-book series spin-off), That Monster on the Block by Sue Ganz-Schmitt and Disney's The Muppet Christmas Carol storybook. I reached my BIGGEST dream of being an author AND illustrator with my Moby Shinobi and Moby Shinobi & Toby Too book series for Scholastic. The Moby Shinobi book series has sold over two million copies since book #1 was published in 2016. Another treasured opportunity was celebrating my lifelong creative hero Jim Henson’s wildly imaginative fantasy film Labyrinth with my alphabetical adaption Jim Henson's Labyrinth A B C Storybook. It was an even bigger honor to celebrate Jim’s artistry and life story by writing and illustrating the Jim Henson Little Golden Books biography in 2026! I’m thrilled to continue this amazing children’s book journey with several new titles in the works that will release in 2027 and 2028.

When I’m not illustrating or writing in my creative cave, I enjoy outdoor adventures with my family, picking on a banjo, strumming on a guitar, writing songs, creating skits with my plethora of puppet pals, playing basketball with my kids, awkwardly trying to play pickleball with friends, exploring art galleries and celebrating the unique creativity that I seek out each day. All of these passions continue to fuel the illumination of imagination.