Christopher Silas Neal is an illustrator and designer from New York. Under the collective title “Dumb Love” he also creates comics about the silly side of life. It’s Adrian Tomine, but with a designer touch.
R. Kikuo Johnson illustrated an article in the New York Times on the last days of George W. Bush’s presidency. Accurate stuff.
(illustration © The New York Times Company, 2008)
Leave it to Vacature, Belgium’s biggest free job ads paper, to come up with some exquisite illustrative work. This artwork (by Jan vander Veken, above, and Lode Devroe, below) ran in the magazine in the month of August, alongside articles on music while you work and incentives by banks for new recruits.
(artwork © Jan vander Veken and Lode Devroe, respectively)
Flemish illustrator Ief Claessen has published new illustrations from various projects on his blog. These include artworks like the one above, totally different children’s books illustrations and amazing sketchworks (after the click), all of which aren’t even remotely comparable to the editorial illustrations he’s mostly associated with.
I’m currently leafing through all the magazines that we seem to have amassed over the past few months, to see whether there’s anything worth keeping before they go in the bin, and I found this beautiful little illustration by Flemish artist Pieter Van Eenooghe. It was published in Humo a while ago, to go with an article on what famous people read during their holidays.
A few years ago, this type of assignment would doubtlessly have been given to Ever Meulen, but for some reason, Van Eenooghe was given a break here. I like the way he refers to Ever’s style of choice, but not resorts to emulating or copying. It’s good stuff.
And since this picture involves a guy reading, this one goes to my mom.
(illustration © Pieter Van Eenooghe)
In the second half of the Nineteenth Century, Vanity Fair was one of the most popular magazines in Great-Britain. It provided its readers with an overview of current affairs, but also with features that have since become standard for general magazines : columns, travel stories, serials and games.
From 1869 onwards, founder Thomas Gibson Bowles included a caricature of a prominent figure in the magazine, which became very popular. Artists like Carlo Pellegrini, Leslie Ward and Max Beerbohm created portraits that became continuously more cartoony, capturing the physical presence and personality of each subject.
The late Cecil Y. Lang, Professor of English at the University of Virginia from 1967 to 1991, was an avid collector of these caricatures. In 2002 Lang donated his collection of 900 portraits to the University Library, which now has made this collection available online as part of its Digitization Services Collections.
(via Metafilter)
Garen Ewing’s A-Z comic characters is almost halfway now, and it’s been one of the best comics-themed serials on the web in a long time.
As a Eurocomics nut, I was very pleased that Gaston Lagaffe and Captain Haddock made the grade, and I’m quite qurious as to who will be the Q or the X (and please, Garen, leave the X-men out of this)…
Almost a year ago I posted a War Bonds Poster that featured Al Capp’s Li’l Abner. Apparently this struck a chord, because I received quite a few comments and questions as a result of that post.
One of the Ephemerist’s readers sent in a scan of a similar poster, this time also featuring Capp’s celebrated character, the Shmoo. It is for sale, so if anybody’s interested, let me know and I’ll relay your message.
We visited Antwerp over the weekend. It had been a while, and it was nice to see a new mural gracing the walls of the Boerentoren. This is getting to be a tradition in Belgium, and Antwerp can’t afford to be left behind here.
The mural is executed by Jan vander Veken (who earlier also did a mural in Turnhout), and illustrates the great diversity that at multicultural city like Antwerp has to offer.
If only more dull grey slabs of concrete would be decorated like this, what joy this city (or any city, for that matter) would be.
Anyway, just to prove that Vander Veken is also a keen caligraphist, here’s a close-up of his signature.
Over on The Daily Cartoonist, Alan Gardner gives a preview of the second issue of Stay Tooned! magazine, which should hit the stands in about a month. It will feature Mike Peters, Chad Carpenter, Tom Bancroft, Ben Towle, Bill Day, Mason Mastroianni and Joe Staton. Staton also did the cover, shown above. Can you name all characters he used, because I sure as hell can’t.
The Ephemerist will be at the Angoulème Festival from Wednesday January 28 until Saturday January 31. If you want to meet up, let me know.
