Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

Browsing this wonderful Movie Title Stills Collection is like traversing a typographical timeline of graphic design. As a bonus, the site is beautifully designed as well.

Hello, it’s Patricia, and I’ve decided to come out from under my rock and actually make a post!

Confession: I hate cell phones. Don’t own one, and I plan on going to my grave never having purchased one. But – I do think it’s cool that one can create fabulous images with this contraption. Lately I’ve really been enjoying the iPhone art of a very talented Canadian artist, Matthew Watkins, who makes his home in Italy. I find his fantastical drawings intriguing and enchanting. The image above is a collage of some of my faves. I especially enjoy the drawings where he also adds a little story to go along with his image. Bellissimo!

Ok, back under my rock.

Beautiful choices of colour from Dutch illustrator Maaike Verwijs. See more of her work on DeviantART as KissMyShades, and also on Flickr.

(via Meathaus)

(via Via Frank)

Rhode Montijo’s upcoming project/book Skeletown is inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead, and it’s just the kind of mix of cute and creepy that I love. Rhode has posted a collection of development and concept pieces at Skeletown.com.

While I think it would be infinitely better without the canned soundtrack and just some well-chosen sound effects, I still enjoyed Blip, a short film created by Ben Harper and Sean Mullen in their 3rd year at the Irish School of Animation.

I got a real kick of out of this series of illustrations on Christoph Niemann’s site that describe how his illustrator’s mind works.

Say what you will about Coldplay, but this stop-motion/pixilation chalk video for Strawberry Swing by creative powerhouse Shynola is just plain cool.

The Hallowed Seam: PR3 – the new beautifully-bound James Jean sketchbook – drops tomorrow (July 29).

I’ve seen an advance PDF of the book and it’s gorgeous. More of the same flowing ballpoint pen sketches that we saw in the previous two volumes but this book has a lot more paints, colour and model-sketches as in the images below.

Update: Note from the publisher: The shipping date on Amazon was incorrect, “the book actually won’t be out until Sept/Oct 2009. It should be getting placed on the ship right about now.”

Also of interest:
Preview of Kindling: 12 Removable Prints by James Jean

If you use watercolours or gouache, and Matt over at the Comic Tools blog offers up a handy tip. He shows how using a sponge, some watercolour paper, and a plastic container, you can build a cheap do-it-yourself stay-wet palette.

Baptiste Sola’s short film L’échange (The Exchange) showcases not just the power of minimalism, but how much storytelling can be done through sound.

I recently snagged Christian Northeast’s new book: Prayer Requested. It’s a delightful hodgepodge of drawings, collage, and hand lettering that illustrate random prayers he found on the Internet. It’s touching, funny, odd, and completely inspiring. You can see more of Christian’s work, and download some sample pages from the book, on his website.

If you’ve ever wanted to design your own font, Pierre and Damien of plmd.me show you how. Step one: get a car.

Just received this hugely inspiring book in the mail – Naïve: Modernism and Folklore in Contemporary Graphic Design.

The book is a big beautiful survey of the resurgence of naïve art – a great reference book for the library. The book includes work by designers and illustrators like Matte Stephens, Heads of State, and Tad Carpenter.

Inspired by twentieth century American legends such as Saul Bass, modernist graphic artist Charley Harper and textile designer Alexander Girard, a troop of young graphic designers are rediscovering silkscreen printing, classical typography, hand-lettering, woodcutting and folk art and integrating them into their work.

T-shirt design by Peach Beach

Check out more snapshots of the book after the jump.

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