Maria Sibylla Merian

When I was making the kalidescope-butterfly image I was looking at a book of illustrations by Maria Sibylla Merian, who was a botanical artist working in the 1700's. I've posted the front cover of the book along with another illustration of hers which I found here. xxxx

Yulia Brodskaya

I saw the above Christmas image in the Guardian, which led me to find out who the artist was: Yulia Brodskaya. I found the other great paper illustrations from her website. Lovely and festive for the first post of the year. xxxx

Back from a long blogging break!

Almost a month off line - that's a record. Moving house, renovations, phone line problems etc etc. Here's a couple of pics for an upcoming exhibition about collective animal nouns. I chose ' a kaleidescope of butterflies' and my friend Anna did 'a tower of giraffes'. You can see a larger view of the butterflies here.
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Amanda Upton's webiste

My lovely friend Amanda Upton just launched her website. She did the gorgeous illustrations above. xxxx

Nice pics from old books

This afternoon a friend of mine emailed me a picture (the one with the black background) from Goethe’s Theory of Colours with the email header 'Nice pic from old book'. I liked it, so did a bit of a google search and found a scholarly website called colorsystem.com that explains the history and science of colour order. Rather than read all the scientific stuff I decided to look at the illustrations, of which there's many. So many in fact that I forgot to list where all the pictures came from. If you want to find out you could go through the site yourself. I found them while I was looking through the historical articles listed on the left hand menu. Here's the link. xxxx

Hand made book

My lovely friend Amanda gave me this handmade book by 'Living & Learning'. It's full of cute illustrations, diagrams, patterns and pictures of embroidery. Love it! xxxx

Le Grand Crew

Le Grand Crew left the above teaser on Bezembinder Illustrated Links. So I went to their website and found heaps of exciting stuff. Below are some artworks by two of my favourite of the crew members, Anne Marie van den Berg and Sabrina Deisler . They have a guest section too which is worth checking out. Images from Bezembinder Illustrated Links and the Le Grand Crew websites. xxxx

Amanda Upton

I've been meaning for ages to post this amazing toy our friend Amanda made for us out of an old table-cloth. I just did a quick web search to get a link for her agent, and found that Cool Hunting has done a post about her informing us that Dutch magazine, Archive, has listed her amongst the world's best 200 illustrators. The naughty girl didn't tell me about this - I had to find out for myself! Below is a painting of hers and here's a link to more of her work. xxxx

Hunter S Thompson

Strange time of year. While everyone else is on holidays, those of us who work at newspapers still have to go to work. Even though I only work one day a week at the moment - it still doesn't feel much like a break cause Johnny is at work (he works for the opposition newspaper). Anyway, we watched a DVD last night - a doco about Hunter S Thompson, which led me to post this cool illustration Johnny did of him a while back. xxxx

Type Tuesday, 20th November

Jody Barton is a designer from the UK who does some cool hand-drawn graphics. He's got a great website that shows his work including type, illustration, and pages from his notebook (below). You can read more about him at Digital Thread. Click to see more detail. All images from his website. xxxx

Innocent Girl

My lovely friend Marisa went to Melbourne on the weekend and brought me back a present! A card and badge by Andrea Innocent, otherwise known as Innocent Girl. She does gorgeous illustration work, inspired by Japanese culture, after a three year stint living there. She has a strong web presence, with an Etsy store - where you can get great merchandise (I just purchased a pink felt purse), and she's a fellow blogger. Read her blog posts here, an check out her lovely illustration here. All images are from her webisite. xxxx

Type Tuesday, 18th September

All of the above type examples are from the 'alphabets' section of the Supermundane website. Supermundane does really cool illustrations, graphics and art projects. There was a recent exhibition called Magic Happens at the Fleapit Gallery in London, showing Supermundane and Marcus Walters. Below is an illustration from the Supermundane website, and two collaged images by Marcus Walters from the Magic Happens show. xxxx PS: Thanks to Urban Outfiters, again, for the link to Supermundane.

Filiokus Magazine

I just found out about Filiokus magazine from Urban Outfitters blog. Rather than having a website, the magazine has a Myspace page. I was so impressed by all the bright colours and crazy images on their page, and the pages of friends of theirs, that I just logged on and joined Myspace too. Only problem is that I don't have any friends there yet. Have to get cracking! The images above are from the Filiokus Myspace page, and the images below are by Lisa Jonasson and sourced from her website. She's one of the guest editors. xxxx

Shaun O'Dell

Because I'm a bit obsessed with birds at the moment (specifically canaries), I scanned these drawings I love by Shaun O'Dell. I just had a look at some other work of his and found out he does great abstract works too. The above images were scanned from the book 'Harvest - Future Farmers 1995 - 2002'. You can see more Future Farmers work, (of who Shaun O'Dell is a friend) on their website. The below image is also by Shaun O'Dell and you can see more of his work on his gallery website here.

Folk art animal illustration competition

I just did this drawing for a competition run by Monster Children magazine and judged by Beci Orpin, of whom I'm a huge fan. Anyway, the breif was: 'send your best folk art animal illustration to the magazine'. So I pulled out a recent drawing I did of a Swedish Dala horse, and made a Dala mountain goat as well. The background is an artwork I did for a show last year.

Surprise package!

Christmas came early for me yesterday when I walked in the door. I had done some business stationery for my cousin and her husband, and didn't want to charge them cause they're the type of people who sneakily pay the bill in restaurants before you've finished your meal. Anyway, this package arrived in the post full of amazing design stuff. In it was a wall decal of the Eames cross-patch design, a book on Julie Verhoeven, who I'd never heard of but now love - and some amazing toys that can be shared by Lukas and I. Above is a scan from the Julie Verhoeven book and below are some piccies of contents of this fantastic package. Thanks Viva! xxxx

Sanna Annukka

I just did some surfing of other blogs this morning and found (over at Emma's Design blog) that the Finnish / English illustrator Sanna Annukka has recently opened an online shop. It's worth having a look at her website, and if you want to read more, there's an interview about
her here.
xxxx

Keiichi Tanaami

Keiichi Tanaami began his career as part of the under ground scene of Japan in the 1960’s. He experimented with painting, illustration and short films, however after graduating from Musashino Art University he became best known for his large, graphic poster work. His use of 60's psychedelia mixed with Asian imagery such as pine trees, goldfish, and clouds has created a style that's rendered him a cultural icon in Japan.

He is still working today as a professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design in the information design department. He’s also exhibiting internationally alongside artists such as Andy Warhol and Tony Ousler - and he continues to cross mediums, working between fashion, design and contemporary art.

The above image is from an interview with him that can be found at the online Shift Magazine; the middle images were scanned from one of my favourite publications Idea Magazine; and the below image is scanned from a catalogue of his work called Amigo's, (I can't list the correct publishing details because it's all in Japanese!) but it can be purchased from the cool shop Via Alley in Darlinghurst, Sydney.