Needlework Book Covers

Book publisher Penguin is launching a series called “Penguin Threads”. Penguin hired artist Jilian Tamaki, who first sketched and then hand-sewed the art on the cover of  three classic novels: Emma, Black Beauty and The Secret Garden. The final covers are sculpt-embossed in order to reproduce the tactile feeling of the original needlework. Above, the beautiful cover for The Secret Garden. Below you can see the covers of the other two novels:

I personally really love needlework, especially free embroidery. I find it relaxing. If only it wasn’t so expensive to buy supplies (i.e. floss)…

Illustration: Guy Servais

During a visit to the Copenhagen zoo with my friend Ulla and her little daughter, I bought a children book that I cannot stop looking at. The illustrations are outstanding. The Danish title is Mikkel Ræv (original: “Le Renard”). Following the encounter between an artist and a fox, the book reflects on the relationship between humans and wild animals. Here you can see some images from the book, illustrated by Guy Servais:

Guy Servais illustrated other books, among them there is one called Rain. I’m definitely going to look for it as well, it looks beautiful (you can see an image below).

Art: Hannah Rollings

art by Hannah Rollings

A while ago, while browsing for books on Blurb, I found the work of illustrator Hannah Rollings. I just love everything she makes, and I ended up buying her book My Travel Journal.  It’s a mix of old photos, paintings and drawings…and it is designed as a travel journal for kids. Beautiful! Below you can see more of Hannah’s art from different projects. And here you can find her blog, and her etsy shop.

I love the idea of a beachcombing drawing workshop! (Art by Hannah Rollings)

This is the cover of her book My BUG journal (awesome!)

And below you can see artwork from the book My Travel Journal.

Graphic Art/Angie Levin

Angie Levin is a British printmaker I really like. When I was in Stockholm visiting my friend Ellen, I bought 4 little reproductions of her art work, and I have just found out she has published a book, too (take a look here, is wonderful). I like the color palettes in her artwork, and the way she portrays flowers and plants.

Angie Levin: Wild Garden II
Screenprint

Angie Levin: Salthouse Linocut

Angie Levin: Spey Seedheads
Linocut

Angie Levin: cover illustration for Natural Garden Style

If you like botanical art you must check out her website!

fashion + comics + Paris!

I really like Pénélope Bagieu’s comics! She’s a young French cartoonist, lives in Paris and has a lovely blog – a sort of online journal in the form of bande dessinée called “Ma vie est tout à fait fascinante”. Pénélope loves fashion, and that is reflected in her comic stripes…

illustration: Pénélope Bagieu

illustration: Pénélope Bagieu

There are other talented French cartoonists who love fashion! One of them is Margaux Motin, you can find her blog here.

the cover of Margaux Motin’s book

And there is Diglee, another wonderful illustrator – also from Paris. This is her blog. She even posted a tutorial on how she draws her comics!

illustration by Diglee

Illustration/Valerio Vidali

These are some images from an amazing young Italian illustrator. His name is Valerio Vidali.

The image below shows some phots of Vidali’s moleskine sketches. They were published on the Spanish magazine Educaciòn y Biblioteca, in 2007.

One of his illustrations is featured on the Emergency Calendar 2011, in the month of December:

By the way, it’s a great calendar, you should get one too! Emergency is an independent NGO, founded in Italy to provide free of charge health care to the war and poverty victims. All the money from the purchase of this calendar go to them. It costs 8,90 euros and it features really awesome Italian artists.

Valerio Vidali has a very nice blog, where you can find many of his illustrations and videos: here it is.

Mail Art/Harriet Russell

Now that it’s time to write Christmas cards, what about making your envelopes a little bit…creative? Or to be more specific, why not make your envelopes challenging for the postman? I just found this amazing project by British artist and illustrator Harriet Russell.

In 2008 she sent 130 envelopes to herself. These are few examples of how she concealed her address on them…

She designed crosswords, color blindness test, maps, rebus, cartoons, ciphers…

…and she received all the envelopes except for 10. Quite impressive!

She published a book on the project: Envelopes. Harriet Russell is a brilliant illustrator, check out her website here. My favourite is the book covers section.

few nice things – a list

illustration/Keri Smith

Read “create a thing a day month” here!

Watch the movie trailer here.

This is a great documentary, we just watched it during an anthropology class.

photo/Ker-Bloom Etsy shop

A well written 8 page zine. Just got a yearly subscription.

A really nice comedy. Link to the trailer here.

photo of the week

Oh Danish apples…I got a bag of apples at the Coop supermarket today, and when I opened it I realized there were stickers inside, and they were supposed to go on the apples! Here they are…

They are called Æbleartisterne (artist apples). It’s a project of Danish comic artist and film director Anders Morgenthaler and Coop. The idea is to promote good eating habits for kids.

illustration/Kazuo Iwamura

This is another one of my Parisian discoveries…I bought a small children book by Kazuo Iwamura, a Japanese illustrator. The book is delightful!

It’s called Le pique-nique de la famille Souris and well, it tells the story of a family of mice having a pic-nic!

I really like the botanical illustrations and the coloring.

Here some images from my book…

I like how the mice are preparing onigiri for their pic-nic! (or, I guess that’s what they are making)