Lee Ballard - Daniel's Ride

I found this book at the library, and thought I'd share some images from it. It's interesting because his work online is verry much in the Kent Williams / Frank Frazetta / Ashley Wood realm, and he has apparently worked for lucas arts and the like. Interesting to see how that translates into a kids book about cars.

Kind of really nice color and painting. I think the digital lettering works sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't. Once again, I'm unsure what medium he paints in, if it's acrylic or oil or what have you... u_u

his OHP:

http://www.nillo.com/

A Study in Sherlock Holmes - (Various)

There are some really interesting examples of illustrations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. The first person to illustrate the character/stories was the artist Sidney Padget. I've heard various stories, such as at first Conan Doyle expected a different (less pretty) archetype for the character, and then decided that the Padget interpretation was fine. They also apparently mistook Sidney Padget for his brother, who was actually more famous at the time.

After Padget's illustrations, not many different stylistic archetypes have changed about the character, and you can definitely see his illustrations in the aesthetics many film adaptations of the stories. It's hard to say how much is due to the direction of the author's descriptions vs. the artist's interpretations though.

the first print illustrations of the story (I couln't find the artist information in the book I was looking at)

below are two Sidney Padget illustrations (along with some actors, etc.)

I found Wyndham Robinson's illustrations very interesting. He was mainly a cartoonist. 

these are all from "A Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook". 

you can find more of sidney padget's illustrations here: http://www.arthes.com/holmes/

and a whole bunch more: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Illustrations_from_books_of_Sherlock_Holmes

and more about wyndham robinson here: http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/arts/drawings/Cartoonography/SatiricalArt/case2/case2.htm

Heinz Janisch

Heinz Janisch

Heinz Janisch was born in Austria in 1960 and studied German literature in Vienna. He has published numerous books, including many children's titles, which have been translated into more than twelve languages. He was nominated for the 2009 Lindgren Memorial Award and has been nominated for the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Award. in 2008 he received the Austrian Picture Book Award. He lives in Vienna.

Maurice Sendak

-A Hole is to Dig-

-Sarah's Room-

Maurice Sendak

There are two out of my all time favorites in Sendak's children's book illustrations that always give me fresh ideas and they are A Hole is to Dig and Sarah's Room. Both children's book illustration carry this very light and cheerful quality in his illustrations that has a great balance of style and concept. Although the illustrations aren't as highly detailed and "full" (as they look like gesture sketches) the quality of his illustrations goes well with the story.

Hayao Miyazaki

Howl's Moving Castle

Sprited Away

My Neighbor Totoro

Hayao Miyazaki

Although Miyazaki is known as a well known animator and film director, I just wanted to point out his excellence in artistic technique and skills as an illustrator. If anybody were to watch one of his many animation films, they would agree that each cut serves as a "high-quality" illustration, taking note of his use of color, character design, and concept/narrative of each piece. One of my favorite films of Miyazaki's is Kiki's Delivery Service (unfortunately not shown here due to lack of high quality image format) because of his pure use of character and style in technique but also mainly because I'm interested in food illustration that that is why it caught my attention (the setting is in a bakery). His animation films are always a joy to watch and never gets "old" every time I watch his films I learn something new as an artist and illustrator. 

Peter Sis

Peter Sis

As everybody should know, these are a couple children's book illustrations by Peter Sis. The reason why I wanted to share his illustrations particularly is because his use of style and application of visual components gave me a huge influence into the style of illustration that I am working on today. What I appreciate the most about his works are his method of mass space compared to the attention of detail; as you can see in the second illustration from The Conference of the Birds Peter creates this great mass of color and shape of the birds in his composition while taking careful note of each individual bird. Peter's great attention to meticulous detail creates a sense of depth and interest to the viewer from a far point of view as well as a close up view. 

** I don't know how many artists that I posted, but I just wanted to share a few more! :)

Taiyo Matsumoto

This is another of my favorite artists, a japanese illustrator/comickeer. He's most famous for writing and illustrating Tekkon Kinkreet  (Black & White), a comic about two rebellious street kids, which was eventually turned into a movie.

I'm still not sure if comic artists count, but I think his design and other senses are still really important to look at, even for non-comic narrative illustration. Everything from his covers, characters, storytelling, colors and line & drawings sense is really great. I'm sorry my scans are so bad!!

here's scans of his other book, no. 5:

Peter Mendelsund, Osamu Tezuka and Vertical Publishing

This is a bit of an "out of the box" topic, but I wanted to share two of my favorite artists/designers, Peter Mendelsund, a graphic designer known for his book covers (If you've heard of Vertical inc., he took the place of Chipp Kidd as essentially their in-house designers), and Osamu Tezuka, a comic/cartooning master from japan (Astro Boy, Black Jack, etc).

Vertical is a NYC based publishing firm who have been publishing various "alternative" and "old school" manga in the past several years. Pairing classic 60's-70's manga like Osamu Tezuka's work with such radical modern design sense as Chipp Kidd and Peter Mendelsund leads to some really amazing must-have books.

On hand, I have two of Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack comics to share, and then I've included some LQ images from the internet of some other work.

Osamu Tezuka is known for a lot of things ("the father of manga"), but he has a unique storytelling sensibility, character and narrative design, as well as a keen awareness of (sorry, unrelated to books) panel layout in his stories that make them very exciting, even after all these years.


Peter Mendelsund does a _lot_ of book covers, along with his Osamu Tezuka work, he's also done some other impressive work like the Steig Larsson "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" covers.  You can check out his work and his blog at ( http://bookcoverarchive.com/Peter_Mendelsund and http://jacketmechanical.blogspot.com/ )


Vertical is a really interesting publisher in terms of their design sense and also "what they like to publish" too, although it's really mainly english translations of japanese work. All their books are very "desirable" objects for me, not only because of content, but because their covers look gorgeous, on a shelf on in a hand. Here's a link to their website: http://www.vertical-inc.com/

Mary Beth Owens' A Carribou Alphabet

Mary Beth Owens is an author as well as an illustrator. In the library I found an interesting book of hers all about carribou.

She works traditionally, I'm assuming watercolor but I couldn't find out for sure. What I love about these is the delicate paint and patterning around the letters, and also the light narrative. She does a great job of illustrating an alphabet while still making things both legible, having a narrative, and engaging at the same time. Her paintings are very beautiful. She doesn't focus on alphabet drawings, but does more traditionally narrative work as well.

You can find more info about her books here: http://www.jacketflap.com/mary-beth-owens/106475

Crazy Cats with Martin Leman

I'm a big fan of cats. Bigger than expected because I got weirdly drawn to all the strange drawings of cats in this book (and a few others which I haven't got the chance to scan yet)

These cats are from Martin Leman's book "Twelve Cats for Christmas". He's a british painter and illustrator, primarily of cats. He really likes painting cats.

I found the paintings of cats in his book very funny and playful. They have a very strong folk art feel. I choose to hi-light this illustrator primarily because I find his cat paintings really interesting. He isn't specific with his paint media in his online presence, although he has is an "Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society".

You can find more pictures of cats (and a few other works) on his website: http://www.martinleman.co.uk/




ps: if I get the chance, I will scan some more of the cat books I found! Because I love cats!!!!!!!