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

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!

Junko Mizuno's Characters

Hi, I decided to showcase some of the illustrator Junko Mizuno's works. Her work centers around fine art illustration prints as well as her own graphic novel and picture-centric book works (including some picture books), such as Cinderella, Hell Babies, Pure Trance and Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu.

Her technique and characters are very interesting, combining the nostalgic sensibilities of extremely girly 70's manga/comics and girl/"pink" toy design (Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony) with a very dark story telling and character development. Though her drawings may look straight out of a 70s or 80s hasbro toy commercial, the stories she tells tend towards being very graphic & somewhat dark, but satirical as well. Light hearted Sex, death (murder), zombies, cannibalism, torture etc.

I think one of her strongest aspects is her character design. Her story telling is very good also- and she does both write and illustrate her works. She works in a variety of media, I know at least acrylic and digital.

You can find out more about her work here: http://www.mizuno-junko.com/



Some of her works have also become toys!

PS:

Here is a high-res scan of the comic book Pure Trance's cover and one of the inside spreads! :)