I know Drawn! is visited by many illustration, animation, art, and design students, so here are some potentially interesting blogs catered just for you:
Nick Arcade has started a blog about attending the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California where he is a first term Illustration major. It’s already great to see such unbridled enthusiasm from a student!
The Graphic Student is run by Matt Aubie, and, like Drawn!, is a multi-contributor blog but with a roster made up of graphic design students, and with a subject to match.
You’ll find art, illustration, collage, design, fonts, and all sorts of visual goodies from Thomas Schostok if you can traverse the massive homepage that is his website.
For some last minute Christmas shopping, why not grab Striking Images, from Chronicle Books, featuring the lost art of the vintage matchbook cover throughout the years. It’s a great little book — small-ish in size, but thick in pages — which makes a perfect stocking stuffer for that special arteest in your family (re: you). Whether or not you smoke doesn’t matter — you’ll still dig the vintage graphics in this cool book, expertly edited and designed by Blab! founder and editor Monte Beauchamp.
My favorite section (besides “Girly Graphics”) was “Cocktails ‘n’ Clubs” where the various unknown artists tried their best in depicting all the fun and frivolity that went on at those clubs on such a tiny canvas and palatte. And that, my friends, is the brilliance behind the artwork and design you see in this book. If you desire the Amazon link, here it ’tis: LINK.
Rami Niemi combines a beautiful design sensibility and a skilled typographic hand to create some truly stunning illustrations. The hard part was choosing which image to show here.
Chris Butcher has posted an interesting analysis of the various incarnations of the covers to Jeff Smith’s Bone series, and how the different versions gradually evolved into something with a much stronger sense of design and audience appeal. I’m only showing two extremes here, so the difference is pretty evident, but see Chris’s whole post for the full evolution.
And speaking of Christmas shopping, after you’ve visited People Like Us, why not rush over to Fleet Street Scandal and pick up a few prints for the art lovers on your lists? As an added bonus, Chris and Kevin are offering customers a special gift- a free holiday mini print (see above) with each purchase! Or, even better, buy four prints and get both mini prints for free! Sure, you can give them as gifts, but I suggest you keep them for yourselves… after all this Christmas shopping, you deserve a treat.
That time of year has snuck up on us once again. The Christmas rush is in full swing and while the multitudes run around town, fighting each other for the last of this year’s “must have” gifts, why don’t you play it smart and visit the People Like Us Collective. People Like Us is a small t-shirt outfit from Sydney, Australia that pride themselves on using designs from a number of talented designers and illustrators to make top quality t-shirts. But what sets People Like Us apart from their competitors is their attention to packaging. From their website:
Every t-shirt comes in an awesome & reusable People Like Us Printed Library Bag which includes a lovely artists card with a biography and contact details of the artist, their comments about the design and what makes it so special, two postcards designed by other artists in our collective, a few stickers to stick on things, a toy (everyone loves toys), a super yummy satchel of People Like Us Candy and of course your brand spanking new t-shirt which will be hand numbered, hand signed (if the artists resides locally – see Piece of Mind, Abstraction & Face – and with the People Like Us seal of approval and care instructions printed on the inside back!
Quantities are limited, so be sure to snatch your favorite t-shirts (such as that fantastic hotdog design by illustrator Brandon Reese) up now.
This beautiful hand-stitched, silk-screened doll is the work of my good friend and Jupiter Project member Mia Hansen (and her blog is back up and running! YAY!). Where can you see more of Mia’s work? Perchance, you’d like to buy some? You’re in luck!
The Jupiter Project is having a small group show — just in time for early Holiday/Xmas/Kwanzaa shopping! — called Wall Candy which opens this Saturday (Nov 25) at the Jem Gallery in Vancouver. There will be paintings, dolls, buttons, greeting cards, and prints by six members of the group: Mark Atomos Pilon, Ryan Heshka, Lori Joy Smith, Rod Filbrandt, Hobo Divine, and of course Mia. The theme is small and affordable art.
Brighton-based illustrator Fiona Hewitt finds inspiration for her krazy kitschy illustrations from the years she spent living in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
