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/

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. 

Stephan Zavrel

I looked in the library for interesting children's book illustrators, this is work by Stepan Zavrel.

Stepan (1932-1999) is a Czech illustrator who escaped from communist czechloslovakia to live in Italy. Later he established one of the biggest centers for children's book illustration in a village around 60 km from Venice, where they have a huge festival every year! (info here: http://www.freewebs.com/evaulian/aboutme.htm  & http://www.radio.cz/en/section/books/the-magical-world-of-childrens-book-illustrator-stepan-zavrel )

His work is very lyrical and fantastic watercolors. I think his use of color (especially in the book "They Followed the Stars" ) in narrative, and his shape and design, are really powerful. 

(this last is a picture of the town where the big Children's book Festival is held)

here's a review for his book Drogman, which includes more pictures of some of his other work!

http://mashadutoit.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/drogman-by-stepan-zavrel/

Tove Jansson and Composition

Tove Jansson is the illustrator & writer of the Moomin series. I find her work very compelling! I think her composition is really one of the most interesting aspects (although her characters are really great too!)

There are many interesting websites on her work, and also the Moomin books (published by Drawn and Quarterly) are all at the MICA Library, so check 'em out!

Reves De Cabane

Gregoire Solotareff (European illustrator1)

"When one makes children’s books, one actually makes them first and foremost for oneself, for the child that one was and, wishfully, still is.” Grégoire Solotareff is a child of various cultures.  He was born in 1953 in Alexandria, Egypt, the son of the Lebanese doctor Henri El-Kayem, and the Russian emigrant and artist Olga Solotareff-Lecaye.  Political disturbances, revolutions and civil war forced the family from Egypt to Lebanon at the end of the 1950’s, and finally to France.  Children in Solotareff’s family did not attend school.  Instead, learning, storytelling and drawing took place at home.  His immense familiarity with sketch books and books stems from this time. Like his father, who was once the medical attendant to the Egyptian crowned prince, Solotareff studied medicine and worked as a doctor for five years. As time went by he began drawing again and he formed impression he was regaining contact with something long forgotten, something which goes by the name of ‘childhood’.  Today Solotareff is one of the most important European illustrators and authors.  More than 120 books have been created since the middle of the 1980’s, which have been translated, exhibited and staged around the world.  The spectrum of his work is huge: fit-for-the-bathtub plastic fold-out books for the littlest ones, innumerable picture books and stories, a novel for children and a few books that Olga Lecaye and his sister Nadja have illustrated.  In 2003, 'Loulou et autres loups' hit the French cinemas, a series of five animated short films based on Solotareff’s picture book 'Loulou' (1989) about a young wolf who chooses to become friends with, of all animals, a hare. Solotareff’s first animated feature film „U“ played at the Berlinale 2007 in the Children’s and Youth Film Section. It is a fairytale about a princess who grows up with a talking unicorn for a friend.

Solotareff has brought a new hue to children’s literature.  Insubordinate, fresh and with black humour, in a fairytale and secretive manner, but never harmless, he tells the story of friendship and love – always in his clear, reduced handwriting and in the primary colours red, yellow and blue.  Solotareff depicts animals that for him are “caricatures of humans” . His pictures give human attributes to dreamy hares, lonely wolves, Italian mice, career-tired gnomes, freezing crocodiles and frogs in love.  In his much applauded picture book 'Toi grand et moi petit' (1996; Engl: You Big and Me Small), which was awarded the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1997, an elephant in need of protection forms a friendship with the powerful lion king; the friendship becomes unhinged with time as the little elephant grows bigger than his royal friend.  Solotareff illuminates the ancient story of father and son, of power and powerlessness, with exciting and intense pictures.  The flatly applied, pure and bright colours with their black contours join the simplified, but never simple forms into a harmonious unit.  “In my pictures, as in my soul, I attempt to reconcile both sides – the striving for softness, for happiness, for intense and strong things on the one hand, and simultaneously the quest for things that awaken the sense for humour and wickedness.”

Grégoire Solotareff has been honoured with the most important awards in France and a number of international prizes, including the Prix de Montreuil (1992) and the Bologna Ragazzi Award (1993).  In 2004 he was a finalist in the Hans Christian Andersen Awards.  He lives and draws in Paris.

Lisa Nocentini

Lisa Nocentini was born in Florence, Italy,  in 1955.

She studied at the Istituto Statale d’Arte di Firenze where she obtained a Diploma in Applied Art and later she studied painting and ceramics at the Ecole des Beaux Arts of Aix-en Provence, France, and at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence.

During her training as a ceramicist she participated in workshops held by potters David Leach, John Colbeck, Sebastian Blackie, Ruth Ann Tudball, Takeshi Yasuda, Giovanni Cimatti, Walter Keeler, Ian Gregory.

winnie the pooh illustration by EH Shepard
i love how simple yet poet and child-like these illustrations are. they're so simple yet capture such a simple innocence of childhood.

Mary GranPre

She did the Harry Potter art for the US books. 

Charles Fuge

Charles Fuge is a writer and illustrator who does a lot of work about nature and animals.

David Christiana

These are some of the illustrations from "Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg", some Disney book about Tinkerbell.  It's a shame that such good paintings are in such a stupid (in my opinion) book, because they're a great combination of really delicate and soft washes with heavy watercolor crosshatching in some areas.