Amen to Saint Lucas. Too funny. More at io9.

Via Je Voudrais Que

Wow, have you guys seen these yet? Cassette tape. Amazing

In this series I showcase a number of portraits of musicians made out of recycled cassette tape with original cassette. Also included are portraits made from old film and reels.

More at Flickr
Via drawn

I discovered the art of Julie West through designer toys. My daughter and I just started collecting blind-box Dunny’s and came across Julie’s Dunny in the new Olde English series. We haven’t gotten one yet (yet!), but I was poking around at the designers involved and found not just more toys by Julie, but paintings, gocco, giclee and screenprints, letterpress, t-shirts, paper toys, and more. Sheesh, how talented!

PS: We’re still looking for comments since we lost all of our post comments. If you like this post, please let me know.. Comment below, I’d love to hear from you. Thanks.

Check out the gallery (and shop!) over at www.juliewest.com

The SFG Blank Book Project is a traveling sketchbook which is scheduled to travel from its home base in Washington DC to 50 illustrators around the world. Once the book arrives at each destination, participating illustrators have 7 days to complete a sketch and send the book on to the next illustrator. The book will reach its final destination approximately mid-December, 2008.

It will travel for approximately one year, from January to December 2008. The theme for this inaugural book is, “Where I Live.” Project creators Jeff Andrews and Steph Doyle hope to launch a second book project at the begining of the new year

SketchTravel

This reminds me of a similar project called “Sketch Travel“. which also consisted of a sketchbook in a box with instructions for illustrators to send the book along a predetermined route. Quite a few of the forty scheduled artists and illustrators have contributed and the book is currently in New York City.

Look At Book

Another project with a traveling journal was “Look At Book” which completed in 2004. The project consisted of only four artists: two in Brooklyn, two in Belfast. Every Wednesday one participant would receive the book and would have until the following Monday to send it back out, giving each artist five days to complete a spread in response to the one that preceded it.

1,000 Journals

There is also the 1,000 Journals project: “One thousand journals are traveling from hand to hand throughout the world. Those who find them will add their stories and drawings, and then pass the journal along in an ongoing collaborative art form. This is an experiment, and you are part of it.” Many of the 1,000 have found their way - through scans and photographs - back to the 1,000 journals website. There is also a documentary, see the trailer on YouTube.

But anyway, back to the SFG Blank Book Project. I’m having a little trouble using the interactive map, however it seems that as of June 6, 2008 the book is in Tampa, Florida, 22 participants down, 28 to go! I hope there is a published book in their future.

Does anyone else know of similar projects? Drop me a line and I’ll post it here.

Visit SFG Blank Book Project

Two classic books, 1984 & Animal Farm.
Do you remember reading them? I don’t remember how old I was, young-ish I’m guessing, when I first discovered Orwell’s dystopian 1984. I still remember the chill I felt when we find out that the small hair Winston Smith had been carefully placing back into “The Book”, so as to know whether anyone had opened it, was also being carefully replaced by The Thought Police. Still creepy.

Orwell’s classics are constantly being reprinted. Here are two new covers from Penguin featuring sleeve art by Shepard Fairy, of Obey fame, and recently the cool Obama posters I wrote about last month.

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” This makes me want to read 1984 again, but I bet they’ll be just as depressing again today. Maybe I’ll listen to Rush’s “Red Barchetta” & “2112″ afterwards, to remind me the little guy sometimes gets away from Big Brother.

Visit the penguin blog
Via NotCot

HAND 1 Gradus W. Wouters { age 4 }
HAND 2 Job Wouters

Job and Gradus are both ambitious concerning letters. Spontanious jam sessions in our studio inspired us to make this film about the fun of drawing letters

Via shapeandcolor

We wrote about Shepard Fairey’s Obama posters last week. Here are a few more Obama Posters. If Hillary or McCain throw down some cool posters, I’ll post them too - we’re not endorsing anyone. It just seems like Obama is already winning the poster race.

The first one [above] is from the duo Date Farmers. They’re available via Upper Playground and the ‘Farmers’ are promising to use proceeds to distribute more posters throughout Texas. You can get your own signed & numbered print for $200.

This next one is from the artist who calls himself “The Mac“. Soon to be available from Upper Playground as well.

This one is from Flickr user vivache.

Here are two from Colorado graphic designer Chris Cox. You can download these - and others - as high-resolution PDF files right from Chris’s website.

Here are a bunch from Ray Noland, a Chicago freelance graphic artist who has launched an unpaid, unauthorized one-man street art campaign on behalf of Obama.

The next two are from artist and designer Thomas Brodahl.

Finally, one from designer Brad Kayal

OK - the Obama fans have thrown it down - what are we getting from the Clinton & McCain camps?

I’m a science fiction fan. There. I said it.

All of these images are from the 1950’s or earlier. A Retro Future from Russian and American illustrators.

Via Dark Roasted Blend

Hand drawn clock tells accurate time. Check out the site. Watch the seconds erase away.

Visit the hand-drawn clock

If you live in Providence, Rhode Island, you probably know who Shepard Fairey is. And if you don’t know the name, you’ve at least seen the Andree The Giant stickers around the city. Shepard is a RISD Graduate, contemporary artist, graphic designer and illustrator who is known worldwide for his “André the Giant Has a Posse” sticker campaign. Currently he operates Obey Giant, a successful design firm with a recognizable style. He designed the new Led Zeppelin album cover for Mothership.

We would see Shepard around town and just knew him as that Andree The Giant guy. My memorable run-in happened at Geoffs, a local sandwich shop. Shepard came in, very agitated, telling us “The mayor is really pissed. I have to go take down the Andre face” off Cianci’s billboard. Sure enough, right down the hill, was the largest Andre face we had seen yet, completely covering Cianci’s face. I found this online:

Fairey tackled his first large-scale operation in 1991, during the mayoral election in Providence. As part of a school assignment (!), Shepard plastered a four foot Andre face on then-candidate Vincent “Buddy” Cianci’s billboard advertisement. To Shepard’s surprise, this created quite a stir in the local media, as people apparently thought some industrious rebel was commenting on Cianci’s Mafia connections. That’s when Shepard realized that people’s innate curiosity could catapult OTG into something much bigger than a facetious inside joke. If a simple 15 minute installation could receive attention from the media and at the same time force a few people to reevaluate their opinions, then why not push the project to it’s most absurd boundaries?

The posters here are Shepards awesome Obama prints.

Happy Presidents Day.

Visit www.obeygiant.com
Obama poster gallery at Obey Giant
Another Obama poster gallery at Obey Giant

Annette Mangseth from Norway has an etsy shop with these wonderful hand-drawn illustrations. They’re drawn on old book leaves (obviously) which adds texture and interest - what’s printed on the page below? All of these are for sale, they’re one-of-a-kind. She also makes prints of her illustrations and they’re for sale as postcards. Also check out her hang-tags. Beautiful!

Visit Etsy
Visit Flickr

Artist Will Ashford finds meaning in the random arrangement of words vertically and arbitrarily across the pages of discarded books. I guess I call this kind of work “Altered Books”. I like the way Will extracts, like an alchemist, other meanings beyond the original authors words. Several pieces incorporate different editions of “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”. His illustrations are clean and simple and somehow he finds ways to recycle Emersons words to create something new and original.

Visit Wills Website

These are so hilarious!

As a parent, I can attest to the wild imagination of children. I was a kid once too, and I remember. David DeVries from South Orange New Jersey remembers too and transforms the drawings of children - with their wild imaginations for conjuring up monsters, superheros and creatures - into “adult” versions of their art. David’s drawings include ambient light, shading, depth-of-field, foreground and background elements and other art techniques to transform little kid drawings into, well, big kid drawings.

He’s written a book too, which you can buy from his website.

Via Children VS Artists
Visit The Monster Engine

Honestly, who would have thought there were still newspapers written by hand? Never mind set by hand, but actually written by hand? The beautiful script of the handcrafted The Musalman daily newspaper is created by a team of six who use calligraphy quills to hand write each page of the newspaper. It takes three hours using a pen, ink and ruler to transform a sheet of paper into news and art.

Wired online has a great photo essay of the process, which is going the way of typeset and letterpress printing.

Read more at wired.com
Via fadetheory

New York Center for Book Arts graduate and Parsons School Of Art teacher, Hungarian born Andrea Dezsö wears the hats of book artist, journaler and paper artist - a trifecta here at the Rag & Bone Blog! And she’s a teacher too - awesome. And her husband was in the Peace Corps - when will it stop?

Andrea’s work features traditional techniques such as embroidery and bookbinding, but thematically include edgy narratives influenced by her memories of growing up in Hungary as well as Transylvanian legends and folklore.

The New York Times interviewed Andrea in June with photos of her handmade books. Andreas work has been featured in McSweeneys with a dust jacket and poster for issue #23. Her illustrative style has roots in communist culture, while also bringing to life underworld and otherworldly creatures. She creates paper-tunnel theaters, little dioramas with flashing LED lights, like modern day Kabuki theater.

Her one-of-a kind handmade books showcase her intricate illustrations and water colors, some with pop-up scenes. Be sure to visit her gallery pages at the Parsons site for lots of inspiration.

View the gallery at parsons
Watch the opening at You Tube

I heard this story on NPR recently and had to share.
Dori Hadar, a Washington D.C. criminal investigator, local DJ and record collector, was digging through crates of records at a local flea market and stumbled into the weird and wonderful world of Mingering Mike. The internationally known musician was unknown to Dori, and just about everyone else in the record business, and here’s why:

Mingering Mike was a soul superstar of the 1960s and ’70s who released an astonishing 50 albums and at least as many singles in just 10 years. But every album was made of cardboard. Each package was intricately crafted, complete with gatefold interiors, extensive liner notes, and grooves drawn onto the “vinyl.” Some albums were even covered in shrinkwrap, as if purchased at actual record stores.

Amazing, isn’t it? Hadar found nearly 200 LPs and 45s by Mingering Mike, as well as other artists like Joseph War, the Big “D,” and Rambling Ralph, on labels such as Sex Records, Decision, and Ming/War. There were also soundtracks to imaginary films, a benefit album for sickle cell anemia, and a tribute to Bruce Lee.

They were all created from the imagination of Mingering Mike - but who exactly was Mike, and what were these records doing in a dollar crate at a Washington D.C. flea market?

Folk artists create alternative personalities, but here’s an artist working with the music business as his muse. You can read Dori Hadar’s book for more of the story - available at Amazon and everywhere.

Via Poppytalk
Buy from the Princeton Press

Devo’s very own Mark Mothersbough, who I was only familiar with through the fantastic Wes Anderson movies Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, is also a postcard and mail artist, creating unique post cards in limited editions which are available to view at Marks website www.mutatovisual.com.

During his downtime on early worldwide tours with DEVO, Mark Mothersbaugh began illustrating on postcards to send to his friends and family, which he still creates, and has been creating every day for over 30 years. It’s an obsessive habit/hobby which still yields anywhere from one to a couple dozen new postcard-sized images per day.

PostSecret meets Robert Crumb.

Visit mutatovisual.com

I wanted to post lots of art Journal images from Dawbis, but had to include collage, and other paper illustation pieces as well their so inspirational. Dawbis is:

…a self taught artist living in San Antonio with her Husband and kitty. She is an environmentalist who loves to draw, embroider, sew, and glue things together every now and again. She enjoys working with her hands to create tiny pieces of art ranging from collages to handmade greeting cards and gift tags. One day she hopes to illustrate a children’s book and to help save the planet.

Right on! Her tiny pieces of art are ones to covet. She even trades from time to time so visit her website often.

Visit Dawbis Online
View Flickr Photos

Spanish illustrator Raquel Aparicio only just recently began illustrating as a pro working for magazines, books and advertising. She has a dark and charming illustrative style, twisting together a realist view of the world with what dreams could be, a juvenile perspective with an adult style. Her illustrations were featured on Drawn! recently and her website features plenty of images from her journals.

Visit www.raquelissima.com
Via drawn.ca

Charles Kaufman has found a unique approach to the small format painting: He paints little characters and critters onto crushed cans, the kind you pass by on the street every day. The cans give his paintings an extra coolness, but even if these little guys were sitting on canvas, you’d still have to smile. Cans or not, they’re cutey, cute.

Visit toontoonz.com
Read crushedcanart.blogspot.com
Via drawn.ca