Say it Saint So....

This is Ria Brodell's "St. Anthony Finds G.I. Joe's Gun". It's hard to say what's not to like about this picture. Retro kitsch, sure... but,  nothing can undermine my love for saints and hagiography. As a boy who grew up in the 80s, I know how exciting it is to find one of those little plastic guns under the bed or in the bottom of a bucket of Legos.
Visit Ria's site: here.

Problem Solved!

A while back I came up with an awesome idea of break dancing birds!


And in my excitement, I printed a bunch of shirts and no one wanted one! This is pretty frustrating to me because as much fun as it is to make shirts, it's important to sell them so I can make more. Part of the problem, I think is that the world isn't quite ready for break dancing birds. So, behold my solution... words to soften the ground.

A Paper Elephant

A design company, the Curiosity Group has made a stop motion video using a pretty awesome paper elephant. It's called "From Flat to Flight" and you can find it here.
Honestly, the best part is that they have downloadable pdf for people inclined to make their one awesome flying elephant! Now that's interactive media!
While we're on the subject of paper art in motion, here's an cool New Zealand short animated film made for the NZ Book Council. It's produced by Colenso BBDO and animated by Andersen M Studio. Seriously, I am hugely impressed by this. It's mesmerizing and a statement of human patience!
Enjoy!

Metalhearts pump thoroughly...

I've had long love affair with robots and all of the mechanized creations of our doomed humanity. Over at A Journey Round My Skull they do a great job of collecting great pop and pulp art from around the world. Recently, they put up a great collection of Soviet era robot illustrations from children's books(you can see that post here).

There is a tenderness and optimism that reminds me of the 80s readers they handed me in grade school. Strong colours, soft lines.

In this vein of technophilia, here are some robot related montages I threw together way, way back for a different(defunct, gone) blog project.

And lastly, my personal favourite!

Fingerprint

I've been reading a lot of buzz about this book around the internet from other illustrators and designers.  Considering that many books available deal almost entirely with traditional hand methods, a book of case studies like this is pretty awesome. I'm excited about the idea of not handing ourselves wholly to digital art. 

It's probably the number one book I'd buy with my xmas money... when i get some. In the meantime, I'm gonna figure out how to make my local library order a copy.

Happy holidays everyone! And with the new year coming fast, remember:

M. Dick at Large

At some point I did an English degree. Moby Dick was one of those books I read, but not for class. I still love it. It's really one of those books everyone should read. I particularly enjoy the vignette about Ishmael tattooing the dimensions of the whale on his body. It sounds like probably the awesomest tattoo ever. Well, in that palimpsestic vein, Matt Kish has being doing one drawing for each page of Moby Dick. He's well on his way, but it's a big book so there's lots more to come. You can see how much he's done at his site.

Zak Smith did a similar thing with Gravity's Rainbow. So, as a book nerd, I'm pretty happy.

Get Stuffed this Holidays

I ran into the B.E. Stuffies crew manning a table at London's Covent Garden Market. If you need any sort of adorable hand stuffed beast or homunculus human they will be there Sunday Dec. 12 during the market's regular hours. You can also take a look at their Etsy store.

There is something awesome and unsettling about this guy. Seriously, perfect for that little someone who needs their imagination tweaked.