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Alex Chechik only recently graduated from art school and he’s already doing work this sophisticated. Gorgeous!
He currently works in Toronto as a freelance illustrator and designer for animation and says his influences include Nicolas Marlet, Tadahiro Uesugi, and vintage children’s books.
As well, Alex tells me, “Music is a huge influence for me. It’s greatly inspiring, and helps you put more emotion into a piece. I love putting on a video of a great live performance and painting along to it – that’s where the jazz illustrations come from.
Jazz is incredibly influential, but I do enjoy a fair amount of rock, electronic stuff and definitely some good hip-hop as well.”
For proof, Alex laid down some phat beats on his terrific demo reel that really sets the tone!
Alex says, “Since July of this year I’ve been trying to get into the freelance thing, while slowly applying for work. Making contacts and marketing yourself is definitely the biggest challenge in the freelance route; it’s a skill I still have to learn much about. But I enjoy the studio environment and collaborative work, so I’d love to get a full-time gig in visual development or design for animation. That’s a goal and I’m just beginning to seek out that type of work more aggressively.”
To which I have to say, “Hello animation industry? Why haven’t you snapped this guy up?!”
Alberto Mielgo is a Spanish illustrator living in London. He is a masterful painter who has an astonishing ability to create a kind of reductive literal realism that appears almost photographic. Here’s a small section…
… of a much larger illustration Mielgo created for an advertising client. On his blog he explains how he did six comprehensive roughs before this version of the image was settled on… and then, after execution, the project died!
Mielgo hints at his work on many major film and video game productions… but unfortunately, because of corporate secrecy, he is often unable to share much of that work with us. He had to take down an example of his contribution to Beatles Rockband, but was allowed to show a sketch from a Dorian Grey film project.
Alberto has also done some comics projects. This is a page from a story he drew for Image’s Popgun #3.
Illustration, concept art, comics… *whew!* … and somehow Mielgo finds the time to do fine art gallery painting as well!
Each time a new image by Robin Yangge appears in the thumbnail previews for my Flickr contacts I know I will be transported to – not Max’s island where the Wild Things are – but perhaps some other, nearby island… one populated by Cyclopean trees, anthropomorphic animals and beautiful cherubic girl-women with huge almond shaped eyes.
Only two more sleeps ’til Hallowe’en, kiddies! If you youngsters need a little help drawing monsters, then Monsterman ‘Scary’ Harry Borgman can help.
Way back in 1974 Harry drew a little booklet called “How to Draw Monsters”. By then, Harry had been drawing cars, people, landscapes and just about anything else you can think of for more than three decades. Harry began his commercial art career in Detroit in 1946.
Harry’s varied career has given him a wealth of esoteric experiences. For instance, though he was never one of “Mad’s maddest artists” he was one of Sick’s sickest artists. The cartoon creeps below are a great example of his ’sick skills’.
Harry is now 81 and still going strong. In fact, he’s just celebrated the first anniversary of his blog. Drop by Harry Borgman’s Art Blog and you’ll see for yourself that this amazing illustrator can teach you how to draw monsters… and a whole lot more!
* I’ll be featuring a dozen scans from “How to Draw Monsters” on my own blog on Saturday October 31st, but you can preview them all ( and tons of other amazing Harry Borgman art) in my Harry Borgman Flickr set.
If the denizens of Richard Scarry’s Busy Town had children, and those children grew up and moved to Tokyo and dropped E at a Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re concert and woke up the next morning pregnant and decided to keep the babies, and those babies grew up and had a huge fight with their parents and jumped on a freighter bound for Colombia and ended up in a squat in Bogota, they might look something like the hilarious, angry, stressed-out, manic critters that populate the imaginary world of Laura Osorno.
Also they are very cute.
Also, sometimes they are zombies. But still very cute.
Laura Osorno was born in Bogota, Colombia. She has been illustrating since her last years of school. She studied graphic design in Bogota and has been based there ever since.
I absolutely love Laura’s character designs. She marries a raw, uncultured punk sensibility to a sophisticated understanding of design and execution to create delightfully ugly creatures you just can’t resist. They’re like little strung out hoboes you stumbled over while walking past the methadone clinic – but the cutest little darling hoboes! You just want to take ‘em home and tuck them into your bed and cuddle them!
With Hallowe’en just around the corner, Laura Osorno draws her coolest, cutest, creepiest creations on the window of a Bogota restaurant.
One of the most impressive illustrators working in film production today is Rodolfo Damaggio.
Damaggio worked as a comic book artist for DC in the 1990’s before moving on to do concept art and storyboards for such summer blockbusters as MI3, Lemony Snicket’s SoUE, Hidalgo, Indiana Jones 4, and Fantastic Four “Rise of the Silver Surfer”, among many others. Pouring through Damaggio’s website will leave you feeling a little overwhelmed by his stunning sense of cinematic perspective – not to mention his rock-solid drawing and painting skills. This guy is good.
One of my favourite books this year has to be The Nightlife of Trees. The book is a series of silkscreened illustrations (some nice photos here) of lushly patterned plants and animals accompanied by short mythical poetry and prose.
The illustrations are by three artists from the Gond tribe of India. Limited to a print-run of 1000, each page is effectively a beautiful limited-edition silkscreen print.
Here’s a video that shows the book-making process. The subtitles are a bit small, but the images are self-explanatory.
1 Comments on Handmade Books: The Nightlife of Trees, last added: 11/19/2008
Poster Boy remixes ads in the NY subway, often with hilarious results. Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan says:
Art: is it what he does? Culture jamming: a term too annoying to use any more, though everyone knows what it means. Sell out: is he bound to, eventually? Questions: he asks them.
Shorpy is “a blog about old photos and what life a hundred years ago was like: How people looked and what they did for a living, back when not having a job usually meant not eating.” What a great collection of vintage photographs. Lots of inspiration to be found here.
Hey I know..let’s move the contents of the Library of Congress photographs to someone’s personal blog, don’t give credit and then sell copies of the pictures!! But it’s got a community now and it did credit the LoC somewhere in its history so it’s obviously progressed to be a legitimate and upstanding model for web behaviour.
See also: Library of Congress on flickr
Here’s a selection in the tradition of the naughty “French” postcard from this rich resource of antique postcards. The site includes DOZENS of categories, basically any theme you can think of from aeroplanes to Alphonse Mucha to “fantaisie”. That latter one seems kind of miscellaneous - kids’ stuff, pin-ups, oddball ones. The site is in French but that won’t stop anyone from just looking, right? But if you do read French, or translate it, there are some essays there too.
4 Comments on Antique Postcards, last added: 5/21/2008
This month, the amazing illustrator, Jillian Tamaki releases Skim, her first full-length graphic novel.
The story (written by Jillian’s cousin, Mariko) follows an angst-ridden teenager through a particularly turbulent semester of highschool; in a year marked by suicide of a classmate and a romance with an English teacher.
I asked Jillian what she listens to while she’s working in the studio. I’ve already become hooked on some of her great audio suggestions. Here’s what she said (*I added the boldface to help you scan the essay):
I have a confession.
I listen to public radio. Lots and lots of public radio. Enough radio to hear the programming loop once or even twice in a day. Sam bought me a satellite radio for Christmas two years ago and it only fueled my addiction: I’ve gone through two radios in two years. How do you WEAR OUT a radio?! Virtually all my work is created to a soundtrack of streamed National Public Radio (NPR) and The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) programming. For this list I will highlight some of my favourite shows available on podcasts. All are available via iTunes.
This American Life
This American Life is pretty much everyone’s favourite public radio show and is a good place to start for the uninitiated. Each week’s show has a theme and contains several stories related to that theme in some way. Most stories involve some sort of acute observation on modern minutiae that makes you feel good and/or thought-provoked. This show is pure comfort food and the gold standard for comics-making (especially if you consider Chris Ware was, for a long time, provided the graphics for their printed and online material).
I’m also a public radio and podcast junkie. Since I listen to a lot of the same stuff as what you mentioned, I would recommend that you check out ITconversations.com. Not just geeky IT stuff but a lot of interesting Science, Tech, History, BioTech and Cultural stuff as well. Well worth checking out and the closest thing to a Neural Knowledge Implant that we have yet.
reyortega said, on 3/24/2008 9:13:00 AM
on the other hand - listening to excessive amounts of 50cent will make your really, really dumb.
I like Skim, bonus points for taking place in my home town Scarborough!
El Negro Magnifico said, on 3/24/2008 11:15:00 AM
This American Life is a weekly ritual. I’m not sure how long it’s been since they started podcasting the episodes (almost 2 years, I guess?), but I’ve been hooked ever since.
This book looks amazing.
BitterAnimator said, on 3/24/2008 2:33:00 PM
I love the look of this. I’m a big fan of the form and used to be really into comics back when I read The Sandman but, man, superhero comics just had braincells fleeing out my ears at a ferocious rate and they seemed hideously derivative and insulting. And, aside from a few rarities, it seemed most were superhero comics.
But this looks really interesting and real and I’ll totally check it out. Anyone have any other recommendations for more real world graphic novels?
Where I am, the radio is absolutely hideous and radio ads make me want to stick pencils in my ears. I must get into these podcast things all the kids are into. Using public radio for inspiration is an excellent idea.
MissMarnie said, on 3/24/2008 5:06:00 PM
I exercise to NPR. I find it so much more engaging than music. It really keeps me going.
And wow, those illustrations are magnificent.
Matt said, on 3/25/2008 2:24:00 PM
There should be Skim tshirts that say, “Julie Peters needs a lobotomy.”
raggedyem said, on 3/25/2008 8:26:00 PM
lately, the TED talks and the animation podcast have been keeping me company. These sound like excellent additions, though.
Gattung said, on 3/28/2008 1:28:00 PM
Just got my copy and what a wonderful treat, beautiful artwork and wonderful staging and layout. I would love to see Jillian tackle some work of fiction like an ‘Odd Thomas’ novel or something.
Lee Woodgate said, on 4/2/2008 5:13:00 AM
Haha..Know what you are saying about IOT…Melvin is great
Anyone know how i can get my mitts on a copy of this in England?
These are amazing, and I love the artists website as well, you should all have a look, it’s beautiful.
It has deffintely inspired me to try some 3D things.
illustrationISM said, on 3/22/2008 5:45:00 PM
amen amy - i’ll second that!
i also remember melting crayons between wax paper
(crayon shavings) to make quick stained glass!
BUT THESE TAKE THE PRIZE!
Yes, these blew me away. Amazing! I actually still color with crayons, ME, a thirty-something year old adult. Anyone else? Will you join me in the Adult-Crayon-Users-Anonymous (ACUA, of course)?
That is a great vid!
(Of cour$e - hormel
paid for it - but a
great ¢reative group
had fun!) the ‘flip-toast’
movie is a cla$$ic.
i sent the link to a
friend in ¢anada
that was in a band
called ‘toast’.
I love this semi-animated short film about a man who is tormented by a concrete golem-like creature. The integration of urban design from Montreal and Vancouver is seamless and elegant.
Hugely inspiring; Directed by Trevor Cawood and produced by Robin Hays.
Excellent. Everything you said about this is true, Matt.
Sound Design in the rates high marks.
Ciarán said, on 12/29/2007 7:06:00 AM
Amazing film. The camera-matching is perfect and the integration all round is just brilliant. I love the guy being followed by an airport baggage conveyor belt.
We don’t get to drool over gadgets much over here on Drawn. We’re easy - we can usually work ourselves into a froth over pencils and paper. But every now and then, someone puts out some hardware that we can’t ignore.
This month, Wacom is releasing a “sketchbook” version of the critically-acclaimed Cintiq drawing tablet. Cintiqs are tablets with built-in LCD screens so you can draw directly on the image. This new 12WX model is only 26cm x 16cm and a full 8 kilograms lighter than its big-sister, the 21UX. In short, the new Cintiq is a lot more portable.
Here’s the catch: the Cintiq 12WX is only available in Europe for now. I notice it’s available on the Amazon.co.uk site, but apparently won’t ship before Christmas. If there are any reader reviews, please post in the comments! And a note to Wacom: We’d be happy to test-drive these things for you whenever you like :)
Here’s a YouTube demo for the little beauty, so you can see it in action (crummy and lo-rez but exciting nonetheless):
Christmas (and wishful thinking) is just around the corner…
Polylerus said, on 11/28/2007 3:21:00 PM
I got to get me one
Johnny said, on 11/28/2007 8:14:00 PM
What gets me is when it turns into a normal tablet when accessing a secondary display… genius.
rayl said, on 11/29/2007 9:32:00 AM
Ok… we just had a Wacom sales rep come by our studio and demo the new Cintiq12WX so I wrote up a some thoughts on it …simply put, it’s amazing. All of us were drooling over it within seconds of seeing it. It’s about the size of a 9×12 wacom tablet in width and thickness and is extremely light and seemed to stay cool. The screen is bright and crisp. That said, the screen itself is a bit small, which is also part of it’s appeal in some ways. The rep had it running on a Mac with all of his fonts cranked down to like 6pt to make more real estate on the screen which was fine and readable. The side buttons are something I rarely use but will likey use now. The sliders are now pen stylus sensitive and can be tapped like a button to increase/decrease or scroll up/down or whatever buttons you want to program into them. Also you’ll notice the edges of the Cintiq are sloped downwards with the sliders on the outer edge to prevent accidental zooming/scrolling etc with your arms.
In size, it’s basically like working inside of a margined 8.5×11 surface. Some of the cool stuff about it is that it finally is practical to spin it around to draw tough angles thanks to its size and weight plus the little perfectly centered low profile nylon nub on the back that allow one to spin it on an axis. The stand on the back only has 2 positions standing or folded, but the standing position seemed fine if you need that. One could get a little creative and figure out how to angle it to diff positions if need be. The really cool thing is that it’s now practical to put the thing in your lap and work with it.
The ugly part of this is all the cabling. There’s a 4×4x1inch box that all your cables, including a monitor cable, have to be routed through. I guess there’s really no other solution to this unless they adopt the HDMI standard somewhere down the road. (not likely)
But the news that caught me by surprise was the price: According to tour rep here in the PNW, it’s going to be available mid December in the US for $995.00! We had all calculated $1700+ based on the Euro conversion rate but I guess they’re getting aggressive with it’s pricing in the US to get it out to as many students and professionals with portable studios as possible. I have a feeling you’re going to see a lot of these in cafe’s soon, I may be one of them:)
rayl said, on 11/29/2007 9:37:00 AM
…ok after watching their little ad it looks like they’ll have multiple positions for the stand. We must have had an early version with only up or down position. Anyway I think you’re going to love it.
vincent giard said, on 11/29/2007 9:51:00 AM
$995.00 US?!
rayl said, on 11/29/2007 10:37:00 AM
# vincent giard says:
November 29th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
$995.00 US?!
That’s what the rep said…
Michael M Tripp said, on 11/29/2007 10:11:00 PM
The whole thing isn’t 26cm x 16cm, that’s just the size of the screen. Wacom’s site says the real dimensions are 405mm x 270mm and 17mm thick, or for US losers like myself, about 16″ x 10.6″ and two thirds of an inch thick.
That price is about what I thought it would be when I first saw this. A lot of things are more expensive in the UK so you can’t just estimate the US price by converting the price to dollars (which would come out to ~$1700). I mean, the regular Cintiq 21UX is selling for £2190 which is ~$4500, waaaay more than the $2500 it actually sells for here.
I estimated what it would cost by using percentages though. This new Cintiq 12WX is £830 which is about 38% of the cost of a Cintiq 21UX is ~£2200 in the UK. In the US, the Cintiq 21UX sells for $2500, but the price of the 12WX will still be about 38% of that which comes out to $950 — pretty close to the $995 that Rayl was quoted.
Tyson Smith said, on 11/30/2007 9:53:00 AM
This is great news. I was just about to pull the trigger on the 21UX. I’ll be checking out Wacom’s site every day.
I’m no believer in psychics, but I do like looking at Tarot cards. Their history goes back several hundred years, and there are thousands of beautifully illustrated decks out there. Solandia, in Australia, has a great site called Aeclectic Tarot full of them, with search engine, browsing, and reviews. This is a nifty site for artistic inspiration.
Now don’t go thinking all Tarot card styles fall into the fantasy category! There are funny pop culture ones, swanky vector ones, art brut ones, and wacko ones. I just posted the vintage samples above by David Palladini (they came out in the 1970s) because I’m personally fond of his neo-art nouveau designs.
1 Comments on Aeclectic Tarot, last added: 9/20/2007
Check out this great resource for identifying Life magazine’s illustrators’ signatures! These are the John Henrys of some of the finest illustrators of the Golden Age. It’s worth looking at because back then every artist was exceptionally well trained at hand lettering - and many took pride in designing beautiful signatures and monograms. This is for all you typography geeks - talk about a killer source for getting font ideas from, especially if your interest is vintage commercial letterforms. Art Deco, anyone?? Or Expressionism? Or just really weird handwriting?
As well, they have included a page of Unknowns - I know there are some illo historians out there - can you help them out by identifying some?
Warning: abysmally slow loading pages. (Or maybe it’s just me.)
4 Comments on How cool is YOUR signature?, last added: 9/17/2007
As an art teacher once told me: no one will remember your name if they can’t read your signature.
davetabler said, on 9/12/2007 7:33:00 AM
“These are the John Henrys of some of the finest illustrators of the Golden Age.”
You mean John Hancock, the Declaration of Independence signer with the swirling flourish.
jaleen said, on 9/13/2007 8:54:00 AM
No, where I grew up, not in America, we actually say “John Henry”.
adambackstrom said, on 9/17/2007 9:45:00 AM
A lot of people say John Henry, but the origin of the term comes from the mistaken use of John Henry vs. John Hancock. There was a time when more people in middle America probably knew about John Henry than John Hancock. But if you think about it, the use of the name John Henry in describing a signature does not make sense. The use of the term John Hancock is both well known and well documented.
We have a few cool life drawing groups around town here in Montreal, but nothing quite like Dr Sketchy’s Speakeasy - “Anti-art school sketching insanity. Must be seen to be believed,” - where all the models are in burlesque (no nudity; safe for work, I think).
It looks like they have a few groups around the States (NY, Kansas, Indianapolis), so you may have a Dr Sketchy around the corner from you.
A few months ago, I attended one mini-session in Baltimore, hosted by Molly Crabapple, and had a lot of fun. I’m trying to get them to come to my school and do a session, just to shake things up and give us a break from the usual life drawing programs.
Rob Schamberger said, on 9/7/2007 4:49:00 AM
Laurenn McCubbin is doing an amazing job with the Kansas City chapter! I’ve been to all of them so far, and I definitely don’t plan on missing any in the future! It’s definitely become the ‘it’ thing here in town.
I watch that every once in a while. Such craftsmanship.
mariaradun said, on 8/16/2007 5:05:00 PM
I hope it never ever dies. You cannot replace such quality and beauty in the detail with any modern technology I have come across.
I once visited a letterpress operating museum in Melbourne and will never forget the experience! The owner has been doing it for something like 60 years and spoke with so much passion for his craft, it made a huge impression on all of us.
Michael J Patrick said, on 8/16/2007 5:59:00 PM
I worked on their website a few years ago(I’m sure they’ve changed it by now). They printed my wife’s business cards an some other business related documents. Very nice work.
Dorothy Sloan Rare Books is preparing to auction a set of Davy Crockett’s Almanacks from the mid 1800’s. They’ve posted some great photos of the covers featuring charming woodcuts of Mr. Crockett and his exploits.
Seen here “Col. Crockett’s Method of Wading the Mississippi.” I need to try that sometime.
(via Neatorama)
1 Comments on Davy Crockett’s Almanacks, last added: 8/7/2007
Are you a Freelancer? Or are you thinking of crossing over to our fabulous world? Yes, it’s all sleeping in till noon, martinis in the morning, and Golden Girls reruns in the afternoons, and the money just keeps flowing in! What a life!
We have developed this hourly rate calculator to give you a guide based on your costs, number of billable hours and desired profit. It is a simple tool for you to play with.
Remember your hourly rate should always take into account factors like market demand, industry standards, skill level and experience - things that unfortunately we can’t put into a calculator!
Use these calculations as a guide and then modify to suit your circumstance and conditions.
lready
6 Comments on Freelance Switch, last added: 7/18/2007
Ha, that’s funny! I do a strip in the same vein, but it’s in portuguese, so I guess the jokes would be lost on most. Ah well. At least I’m not the only one out there!
shamp00kie said, on 7/18/2007 1:52:00 AM
Neat! I remember N.C. Winter from his old comic “Voice of Doom” he did for the University of Arizona newspaper several years ago. Easily the best strip to have been in that paper. Good to see he’s still making comics.
Matt said, on 7/18/2007 7:51:00 AM
Very funny. Great post.
Jed Alexander said, on 7/18/2007 8:35:00 AM
This site is amazing! A great resource! And despite my aversion to typeset comic strip lettering, I do relate particularly to the top two cartoons. It’s amazing how much work people want for as little as they can pay for it, and I hate having to guess what people want from their inarticulate, but very demanding demands. Worse still is when, after you take something to a finish, it turns out the client has left out some key piece of information that requires you to scrap the whole thing and start fresh, and of course, you have to eat the time.
One of my favourite books this year has to be 
Check out this great resource for identifying Life magazine’s 
Dorothy Sloan Rare Books is preparing to auction a set of 
lready
Can someone grab my jaw from the floor…?
I keep seeing Alex’s work pop up on various sites, yet it never ceases to amaze me.