Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

The Gay Philosopher is a blog dedicated to the artwork of Henry Major. This monumental post features scans of his lively caricature work from a limited edition book published in 1938.

Until February 5th, with all sales of his new book Sketch Infectus caricaturist Joe Bluhm (watching him capture his victims live is like watching a wizard at work) is giving away sketches cut from the very pages of the sketchbooks featured in the book itself. Well, ain’t that a swell deal!

Previously:
Joe Bluhm’s caricature podcast
Joe Bluhm

While the rest of the world is dizzy with Hope and Change (and believe me, we’re happy for you us), we here in Canada are stuck with the status quo and a conservative government determined to slash and burn the arts.

It was in this spirit last week that the government led by Stephen Harper quietly canceled long-standing plans for a National Portrait Gallery.

So Art Threat, the political art blog, taken matters into their own hands:

Since Stephen Harper canceled the National Portrait Gallery, we decided to create our own in his honour. We’re inviting artists to submit their portrait of Canada’s Prime Minister for inclusion in the Stephen Harper Portrait Gallery, and their chance to win (minor) fame and riches!

The prize is (CA)$1000. Find out more here.

This weekend I’m looking forward to a Symposium to be held at Parsons, The New School of Design in New York. On the topic of “illustrative responses to world events… both visceral and intimate”, it will explore “the current state of political and social visual commentary“. The impressive speakers include Steven Heller, Rutu Modan, Peter Kuper, Steve Brodner, Luba Lukova, and Anton Kannemeyer.

Symposium: Saturday, November 15, 2008, 1:00-5:30 P.M.
The New School, Tishman Auditorium
Johnson/Kaplan Hall, 66 WEST 12TH STREET
Free and open to the public!

I wish I could make out the illustrator’s name for the image above – best I can do is “Gary ____”. It’s printed tiny alongside it as it appears in blog entry for the Symposium.

UPDATE: Dave Tabler and mortadel tell me the artist is Guy Billout.

There  is also an exhibition of illustrated covers for Der Spiegel magazine at 2 West 13th street, 8th floor, from November 14th to November 30th, with a reception happening on November 14th, at 6pm.

(Disclaimer: I’ll be teaching at Parsons next year).

Matt Hawkins of Custom Paper Toys is sharing his support for Barack Obama in his own creative way. He’s designed and built a paper toy version of the Illinois Senator and has set up a new blog specifically for it: Build-O-Bama. On the blog, Matt says:

You can build your own! Just download the template here and print, cut, fold and glue all the way to the White House!
Send me your pic of Build-O-Bama, name and where your from (custompapertoys – at – gmail – dot- com) and I’ll post ‘em here.
Feel free to leave me a comment.
Thanks for stopping by.
Paper to the people,

Matt Hawkins

Join in on all the cut & foldin’ fun!

Previously on Drawn!: Custom Paper Toys
Dig this: Obama at the helm of a White House robot!

Feeling left out of the political process? Not quite sure how to field-dress a moose? Plenty of hope but far too little cash left in your 401k? Sure, McCain and Obama both feel your pain, but now you can play along with them!

Illustrator Bob Staake invites you to play LINGO during the presidential debates with these game cards you can download from his site.

Caricaturist David Levine, whose work has appeared in New York Review of Books,Time Magazine, Esquire, and The New Yorker, will visit the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto along with fellow cartoonist Brian Gable. The event is free and takes place at 6:30 pm September 25 in Toronto. Gable has just written an essay about Levine for the Literary Review of Canada.

Levine’s other artwork is worth a gander too. Some of it reminds me of Bernie Fuchs.

I stumbled upon Toronto artist Seo Kim’s blog, and I was immediately impressed with her caricatures, and her life drawings, which have a cartoony feel to them that never downplays Kim’s attention to anatomy and form.

The latest New Yorker cover, by pop-culture visual commentator Barry Blitt, is stirring up considerable controversy. Apparently Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters don’t agree that satire helps their cause – see the story at the International Herald Tribune. That’s a pretty tricky line for a Democrat to take. Where would we be without cartoonists and caricaturists – the court jesters of our times – to speak the taboos that cover up hidden agendas and to question, hence improve and refine, cultural values?

At least two illustrators are defending The New Yorker’s willingness to keep imagemaking relevant and thought-provoking. The indefatigable DB Dowd (previously) – who brought this dust-up to my attention – has an excellent essay about it, while Person-of-the-Day caricaturist Steve Brodner has a call-to-action on his Drawger blog.

Now if only The New Yorker would stop being wimps and post about this on their new Cartoon Lounge blog, and put in message threads!! THAT would make their new blog something to bookmark, a place to regularly discuss freedom-of-sight. Instead, they are conducting all the juicy discussion over on The  Huffington Post.

A new edition of the previously-blogged book Football Heroes has been released. This version, Football Heroes See Red! is even bigger, at 280 full colour pages and over 800 illustrations of footballers past and present.

Beach writes:

As before, the project is entirely artist funded – the editor, Swiss illustrator Jerzovskaja has paid for everything out of his own pocket (getting on for US$100,000). Everyone else has given their time for free. 38 illustrators are involved this time round, including past Drawn mentions Serge Seidlitz, Eyeport (Lee Hasler), Melamed, Nishant Choksi, Ian Marsden and many many more top notch contributors.

You can view the entire thing online, though it was a little slow-loading for me. Either way, it’s quite a gorgeous collection of portraiture/caricature, and probably worth a purchase for the illustrative sportsfan.

Thanks, Beach!

With a simple ballpoint pen, Larry Roibal doodles quick, yet consummate portraits of faces from current events — all on the pages of the newspaper itself.

(Thanks, Leif!)

Jordon Domont’s colourful caricatures are created with coloured drawing ink on sheets of translucent mylar. Jordan says, “I try to control this unpredictable medium to some extent, while also letting it do what it wants to do. This layering process has been producing some pretty exciting results and I’ve begun using it for some of my editorial assignments.”