Just a quick shout out for fans of our friend Chris Ware. His artwork is going to be featured on the cover of the next fresh issue of THE NEW YORKER Magazine. This is Chris Ware’s special “Mother’s Day” cover that will hit newsstands on May 13th, 2013. So, please be sure to keep an eye out for it!

Also, Please be sure to read Chris Ware’s Article about this Cover by clicking RIGHT HERE!

We just discovered a really great website recently called the MONKEY ART AWARDS and it’s main focus is celebrating achievement in the entertainment advertising arts and sciences, whew! Another way to put it, it’s a very clever, funny & informative site where they cover ideas relating to Art Direction & Graphic Design.

Here’s an example. Check out these totally hilarious “Vintage Pulp Paperback Book Covers” that anyone in this field can relate too, funny stuff! To enjoy more of their wacky crazy antics please CLICK HERE!

Yes, the title of this post is kind of confusing but looking at the photos here should explain everything! A Company called STANDARD DESIGNS has released a series of Art Prints where they have made “Book Cover Spines” that are parodies of actual Record Albums originally done by two bands, Joy Division & New Order. Well, they have done other bands too, but who cares!

Just to clarify, the second photo, is not one of the print images but a very close-up detail shot of the 1st photo.

We thought these parodies were wacky, clever, & fun. So, if you do too then please be sure to visit their site for more information & eye candy!

Hey, just CLICK HERE!

Pantheon Books, a division of Random House who’s main focus are Graphic Novels, is having a “Fan Art” Competition starting right NOW and it will only last about one week. It’s called “PANTHEON PANELS”. Here’s the deal:

Submit a one-page comic representing the home you grew up in, but drawn in the style of Chris Ware's “Building Stories”.

Deadline is Friday, March 1st. Winners will be announced/posted on Friday, March 8th.

Please submit your original artwork in a standard image format-jpg, pdf, tif, etc. Images should be RGB, 72-300 dpi, and no larger than 1.5 megs.

Please submit your material to pantheonpanels@randomhouse.com
Good Luck!

Here’s a quick post to share the amazing photography of an Artist named THOMAS ALLEN. What he does is he takes old pulp novels & found vintage books and he cuts them up to create these wonderful 3D “re-constructions”. Think of it like a form of recycling or re-purposing. He gives these old books a new life in a very fun & clever way.

Anyways, just check out the photos here, you’ll see what I mean. His ART is so cool and it’s always fun to look at. To see more of Allen’s artwork please be sure to visit his website, just CLICK HERE! One last thing, if you visit, prepare to start drooling.

In support of “Heroes & Villains: The Comic Book Art of Alex Ross” now on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, the museum has recently released this video with a tremendous interview and biography of Alex Ross at his own studio.

This Alex Ross Art Exhibition is on view at Norman Rockwell Museum from November 5th, 2012 through February 24th, 2013. Video produced by Jeremy Clowe for Norman Rockwell Museum. Exhibition organized by The Andy Warhol Museum, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

At just three years of age, Ross was drawing TV commercials from memory. By the age of 13 he was scripting and drawing original comic books. Ten years later, Ross was hired by Marvel Comics to illustrate Marvel’s central characters in the comic book event, “Marvels” (1994). His impact on the comic book industry became so powerful that his hugely successful comic book series, “Kingdom Come” (1996), marks the close of the “Dark Age” of comic books, in which pessimism, violence, and gritty stories ruled, into the birth of the “Modern Age” of optimism and strong superheroes. Ross would go on to win the Comic Buyer’s Guide Award for Favorite Painter so many times the award was retired.

Here’s a quick post to share some of the process that goes into making a DC Comics Graphic Novel. As an example we’re using BATMAN: DEATH BY DESIGN, which was written by Chip Kidd and beautifully drawn by UK Comic Book Artist Dave Taylor. This example mainly focuses on the Joker!

OK, the graphics are being shown in order and they should explain their self pretty good. Here, we get to see how the scripted page starts out as a simple layout and then it grows into a final page.

The first page shows the script sketched out by Chip Kidd and it’s also sort of mapped out with basic dialogue. By the way, this was done on Quark! Then, we get to see Dave Taylor’s blue-line ( non-photograph able ) artwork. This gets approved and then he does his light pencil work in black. Then the next image shows a lot of the deep blacks that are added on top & the art is cleaned up a little bit. OK, this is now scanned into a computer and some digital coloring is added. The last photo is the finished work sort of as it appeared in the book. Pretty cool, huh?!

We’re all familiar with the famous British World War II Propaganda Poster, “KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON”. It’s become something of a major icon in graphic art history. I know, I know, the millions of parodies that have popped-up lately make me sick to my stomach too but it’s still a great piece of art. Well, here’s a very clever video telling it’s origin story and it’s extremely interesting to hear about. Plus, this poster was “re-discovered” at a famous UK Bookstore named BARTER BOOKS and that, in itself, is worth watching the video for. It’s a fun building & looks like a place where you could get lost into books forever. It used to be an old train station & it’s completely beautiful.

Here’s quick post to share some pretty eye candy! Shown here is a nice collection of Chris Ware’s artwork that has appeared on the covers to a few issues of THE NEW YORKER Magazine, enjoy.

This week please be sure to pick-up the recent issue of The New Yorker Magazine ( Jan 7, 2013 ). For two reasons: 1. It’s an insanely great publication, and 2. Our Friend, the Artist, Chris Ware did the cover art and his artwork, as always, is totally amazing! The “message” of the cover was inspired by the recent Newtown Shooting Tragedy. Plus, it also responds to a previous cover that he did that had a “Back To School” theme and now, the recent event changed his feeling on that. OK, am I making sense here? Sorry, actually Chris Ware wrote a very excellent article explaining everything and how he came about the idea for the new cover and it’s over at the New Yorker website ( link down below).

You can read Chris Ware’s article by visiting this link, THE NEW YORKER.

Oh yeah, here’s an image of his previous cover we mentioned: