Category Archives: Illustration

Illustrations by Bridget McKenna

by Cimaxion

Illustrator Bridget McKenna sent me these pictures and I thought they were nice. So here they are for you to admire. She could work on quite a nice children’s book I think.

She has a web site called Funkolicious Creations with a bunch of totally awesome stuff on it.

Her mixed media art is incredible. Yike! A talent! It’s been a while since I delved into the children’s art where this site began its life long ago. It’s really nice to do it again. I love this woman’s pictures!

See more of her illustrations after the jump.

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Film: Sweetheart

by Cimaxion

Here’s a music video made entirely out of illustrations, photos, and text from second-hand books! I never watch music videos all the way through. But I watched this one and admired its clever associations of images to lyrics. It’s all spelled out for you in the most charming and humorous way.  Good song too!  Ben Reed made this for a band called The Wave Pictures.

Gojin Ishihara’s Freak Art for Kids

by Editor

Pink Tentacle has an amazing collection of freakishly bizarre Japanese children’s book illustrations by Gojin Ishihara from the 1970s.  His marvelously comforting work features various humans being eaten, strangled, decapitated, tortured and generally threatened by every sort of demonic beast possible to imagine.

Well worth your time.

Visit the macabre collection of sweet children’s pictures.

Alice In Wonderland For iPad

by Editor

I’ve got lots of grumps against Apple’s iPad, like the lack of support for Flash, one of the greatest web technologies in existence. But this Alice in Wonderland eBook looks fantastic. I’d love to make all the pictures move around and I think kids will too. This must be right because when I was a kid I fervently wished for every illustration to wake up and start moving.

New Illustrated Alice in Wonderland

by Editor

Artist Camille Rose Garcia has illustrated a new version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I’d read her book instead of seeing the Tim Burton film. He’s really just the most obnoxiously untalented movie-maker.  He is mistakenly called a ‘dark’ director.  He is not.  Actually, he is as moronically cheerful and sunshiny as Walt Disney. And Johnny Depp’s entire talent and technique as a performer resides within his wrists. It’s bravura wrist-acting.  So skip the lumbering slog of a film and read the excellent book with the beautiful illustrations by Garcia.

Her pictures make me want to read the book again.  Here’s a L.A. Times Jacket Copy article about the artist.

An Awesome Book

by Editor

dallas_clayton_an_awesome_world_Dallas Clayton is an author who has written and illustrated An Awesome Book.  It’s about making sure your dreams are enormous.  Petty little dreams are so out.  Big huge ones with rockets on their backs are ultra-in.

I like the looks of this book and I really like big dreams whenever they come around.  I like the way the author draws too.

You can purchase Mr. Clayton’s book here.

But you can also read the whole entire thing for free right here.

I think you should read it online and then buy one or two to give away.

75 Ways to Draw More: Advice for People Who Don’t Draw

by Editor

Michael Nobbs has posted a little booklet on Flickr that has a list of 75 ways to draw more.  Interesting concept.  But of course it should go without saying that if you need to read a list of 75 ways to find more time to draw, you probably should be doing something else anyway.

I think the main information to take away from an illustrated list like this is from the illustrations that show you how to print the list out.  What they show you is that you can just look at an object and start drawing lines on a piece of paper.  Something will emerge.  It might be messy.  It might be neat.  That will be your drawing.  I call this little piece of advice ‘1 way to draw less.’

Don Quixote Illustration by Gustave Doré

by Editor | 2 Comments

Here’s an illustration from Miguel de Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote. It was done by Gustave Doré. It shows Don Quixote reading a book of chivalry in his library.  I love the way Doré shows all the madness of Quixote’s imagination surrounding him in his chair as if his imagination and the book were coming to life.  It’s a reminder that the sanest guy in the entire novel is really the Don himself… even though he does go off tilting at windmills as if they were giant monsters.

Click the image to enlarge.