Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

I enjoyed this look at the editorial making of a New Yorker cover starring the magazine’s art editor Françoise Mouly, and artists Dan Clowes, Zohar Lazar, and Mark Ulriksen.

I’m looking forward to the new Gorilaz album, Plastic Beach. More than the music, I’m looking forward to the animation and visuals that Jamie Hewlett will bestow on us. This trailer for the album certainly whets the appetite.

I’ve been enjoying reading Sailor Twain, or the Mermaid in the Hudson, the graphic novel that First Second editor Mark Siegel has been serializing online.

(via BoingBoing)

Jessica Fortner creates photo-illustrations that involve sculpting key elements of the images, and combining the results with digital post-production.

Joel Kimmel recently proposed to his girlfriend using a short story with twenty-two illustrations bound in an old book, with the ring hidden in hollowed-out pages.

See also: Guy Shield’s marriage proposal by illustration.

There’s a love affair between French and Japanese illustrators – and the best of it comes out in artists like Bengal, Moebius, and this fellow, Nemiri.

I’ve blogged his stuff before – but check his site now for a slew of mind-blowing updates. Most of it, NSFW.

Like to give your charity efforts some political oomph as well as just money? This is a poster you can download at various resolutions from the Eastside Arts Alliance in Oakland, California. They are also hosting a free “Cultural Celebration and Educational Event about Haiti” this afternoon, Feb 3, at 4:30 PST. You can also buy nice silk screen versions of the poster from Dignidad Rebelde, and all proceeds go towards relief efforts. Thanks to Robert Trujillo for passing this on to me.

Life on Snaiad is a speculative zoology art project that aims to catalogue the lifeforms of a fictional planet similar to Earth. Don’t miss the making-of.

See also: Inhabitants of the Morae River

In these videos, Gabe Swarr shows how he creates his webcomic Big Pants Mouse using, first, Photoshop for his roughs, and then Flash for his final artwork. Note how Gabe pulls parts of his characters, pre-drawn, from a library of stock parts, but also mentions how he does this only when appropriate, and still draws poses from scratch when stock pieces don’t exist.

(via Cartoon Brew)

Brendan Wenzel has been posting some wonderful animal illustrations over at his blog.

Dig deeper, and you’ll find more fun watercolours, like these heads: