Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

I really like the soft, simple illustrations of French artist Céline Artigau.

Trish Tatman creates some cute plush creations. She sells them, including this super fun deer, Zelda Fitzgerald, on her Etsy store.

Bernie Fuchs, arguably the most influential illustrator of the second half of the 20th Century, has passed away. If you are unfamiliar with his name or work, take some time to read and learn more about him in the following places:
Washington Post Obituary
Leif Peng’s recent series of posts on Today’s Inspiration.
Telluride Gallery of Fine Art

Did you ever meet Bernie Fuchs, or did he influence your work in a significant way? Please share your comments below.

Alex Eben Meyer is an illustrator working in New York. The above image is a recent Threadless submission that is a serious contender if I ever decide to get a tattoo. I like bears. I like ampersands. It’s the best of both!

The image below is the first illustration of Eben’s that I ever came across. At the time I was building the website for a film festival that included as one of its venues the Orpheum in Madison, WI, seen here through the window. I was just beginning to think about freelance illustration as a potential career, and I liked this illustration enough that I emailed Eben to ask a bit about the industry. I got a very friendly email back, and because of this generosity I’ve been pestering other illustrators ever since. Eben, you are my Pandora.

Josh Brill’s Flora Fauna: Birds Edition print collection, via his label Lumadessa, is a beautiful, modern take on field guide bird illustrations.

When it comes to wildlife illustrations with a heavy dash of geometry, especially birds, it’s difficult to avoid comparisons to Modernist superstar Charley Harper (just look to our recent post on Eleanor Grosch). But I think Josh’s work has enough of its own unique flavour here to set him apart from Harper’s legacy. His shapes are certainly more digital in nature, and these birds look almost typographic in their abstraction. I’m going to go load up my iPhone with his wallpapers now.

Edmonton illustrator Raymond Biesinger (previously) has crafted a new blog called The Daily Sentry which aims to illuminate his illustration work’s “economics, reasoning, context and process”.

And even though, in his first entry, he takes a stab at illustration link-blogs — certainly he means some other illustration link-blog? — who are we to ignore such a promising link to blog? Raymond’s work is undeniably thoughtful, restrained, and beautiful, and I look forward to reading about how his illustrations come to be.

Justin Parpan has been creating these spooktastic monster prints called the Customizing Monster Kit series. He’s just completed the tenth one, and my but don’t they all look swell lined up together!

Stunning work from this recent Sheridan grad. Can’t remember where I first saw her work, but I’m glad I found the stub of paper where I had scribbled her name.

EDIT: I neglected to link to her site: www.christinaung.com and her blog: christinaung.blogspot.com

Milt Kahl (Mowgli) from Victor Ens on Vimeo.

I love pencil tests. If you’re unfamiliar with what pencil tests are, think of early rough sketches you create for a particular job. Then multiply that by tens, hundreds, and set the drawings in motion. That’s a somewhat lame attempt to describe what pencil tests are, but for me, it’s like watching the intricate workings of an animator, a “peek behind the curtain”. Seeing the numbers and arc notes in the corners are like a drug to me. To witness the capturing of the soul of a character, early on, in the embryonic stage of development is intoxicating, especially if you’re watching the work of a master. So, if you dig pencil tests as much as I do, then you’re in for a real treat. Animator Jamaal Bradley has searched the internet far & wide for rough animated sequences from various movies and TV shows and has started to put them all under one roof (blog): Pencil Test Depot. As he says on the blog, “instead of going to various place to find them, I hope to add many tests here from some great animators…” From Glean Keane, Ollie Johnston, to Milt Kahl, the tests he’s posted so far are more of the Disney variety, but that’s fine by me. I’ll definitely be checking back to see what else he’s posted. If you have some uploaded on your site or blog, be sure to contact Jamaal.

I’m not sayin’ that Hollywood doesn’t know how to make good movie posters anymore (because they obviously still do), it’s just the the Ghanaians seem to have perfected the art. In the 80s, when VHS technology became affordable and bootlegs of lousy horror and action films were plentiful, the resourceful folks of Ghana would travel from town to village setting up “mobile cinemas” with nothing more than a TV, a VCR and these spectacular hand-painted posters.

“In order to promote these showings, artists were hired to paint large posters of the films (usually on used canvas flour sacks). The artists were given the artistic freedom to paint the posters as they desired – often adding elements that weren’t in the actual films, or without even having seen the movies. When the posters were finished they were rolled up and taken on the road (note the heavy damages). The “mobile cinema” began to decline in the mid-nineties due to greater availability of television and video; as a result the painted film posters were substituted for less interesting/artistic posters produced on photocopied paper.”

If a trip to Ghana is not in your itinerary, then please wander over to Ephemera Assemblyman or the Affiche Poster Museum to gaze upon more of their glorious godawful goodness. And if you’d like to actually display one of these works of cinematic art in your own home or hovel, then why not stock up over at Ghana Movie Posters? Christmas is just around the corner and you know how much grandma loves her Tiger Cage 2!

Michael Cho has posted a great description of his process in designing the cover for Don Delillo’s White Noise as part of Penguin Classics series of redesigns by prominent cartoonists and graphic novelists.

Visit Penguin art director Paul Buckley’s Flickr set to see the covers for every book in the series, including Dan Clowes’s Frankenstein and Chris Ware’s Candide.

I’m a big fan of the stylized action of Samurai Jack, one of the best designed shows on TV. And now I’m a fan of animator Chel White of Bent Image Lab, who created this cutout animation promo for Cartoon Network.