Captain Beefheart 2

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Just finished the first Captain Beefheart-Page. I think this style (with grey and black structures) works well and it's practical for me, too... But I'm not satisfied with the usual lettering-fonts. Perhaps a kind of handwriting would be right?

Greetings, Dieter

Captain Beefheart

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Hello again, here comes the first inked page of a new graphic-novel-project (I announced some informations) dedicated to the eccentric and sometimes enigmatic person of Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart.
Van Vliet was the singer and harmonica player (occasionally playing an untrained noisy saxophone) of his accompanying band „The Magic Band“. His compositions are characterized by their odd mixtures of shifting time signatures, often based on archaic blues-structures, and their surreal lyrics („a squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast‘n bulbous. Got me?“). The Captain himself is noted for his dictatorial approach to his musicians. Despite the lack of commercial success, his influence on musicians of the early punk movement and new wave, has been described as „incalculable“.

More Information about „The Adventures of Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band“ (working-title) and the cooperation with Carl-Ludwig Reichert (writer) in the next days.

„Hobo chang ba“
Dieter

Sarah Magazine

This magazine is started by the belgian ephameron to collect funds, to help her friend Sarah pay a 'cochlear implant'. The zine has illustrations of around a hundred international artists, under which Craig Atkinson, Tom Gauld, Robert Rebotti, and myself,
and you can get it here...

Boris

Blue Christmas

Every year I make a small drawn Christmas card using my favourite pencils, the marvelous Faber Polychromos, on coloured paper. This December I‘ve worked with an image of two „bluesy“ mexican musicians (a variation of a drawing from my b+w artist-book „30 days“). I really like the melancholic mood of these figures.

Merry Christmas to all of you, especially to friends in Ukraina and Israel, too!

Dieter

winter

Even if I would very much like to hear from you before the change of years,
I want to wish you at this point a mery non-violent family x-mas and a succesful and (for the case that you drink and smoke like I do) healthy new year.

Hugs IB

Belletristik 07

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The newest issue of Berlin-based magazine Belletristik - Zeitschrift für Literatur und Illustration tried something new: Various artists gave drawings and comics and authors wrote new stories or poems regarding to these illustrations. You can find a new comic-shortstory there (four pages), with words by Dominic Angeloch, titled „Peripeteia“.

Dieter

Ape World

Hi there!

Just somewhat finished a painting of a planned series - "Violent Apes". It is my largest painting so far, 45 cm by 70 cm. Maybe I will get back to it in a couple of weeks to add some final details and change the background a little...

Have a great day,
Peter

Pandora

Hello there dear post aerienners, hello Boris,
I come up with some black an white work. So not that much for the heart like yours, Boris...
These are two drawings I did for the Pandora 4 Magazine which will be out in the beginning next year. The story by Lewis Padgett is a kind of Sci-Fi thing, which was first published 1943 about a drunken scientist and his narcistic robot (very short version). These fine line drawings aren`t the best to show digitally, but well I hope it works. Greets IB

Similar (illustration friday)

These drawings are an experiment, initially coming from the desire for a more soulful technique. Black and white drawings can be strong but they're maybe more rational, it's rather the colour that speaks to the heart. 

So, similar linework, new technique.

I'm very curious about your opinion...

The first is a view of St.Excupéry's Southern Mail,

and this a new version of the Budapest drawing.

this shows the thermal bath of the famous Gellert Hotel,

a luxury hotel on Danube's banks. (hm, doesn't look

THAT luxurious on the sketch...)

(unfortunaty, this blogger changes the colour very much,

takes the yellow out of the images. Somebody knows how

to deal with this?)

Boris

mare

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The tradition of early reportage-drawing in Germany ended in 1938 when the Nazis took control over the sector of public image policy. In the USA, for example, this tradition enjoyed a longer life - magazines such as Life and National Geographic published illustrations from artists like Robert Weaver up through the 1970s.

Until now it‘s very unusual to use drawings for illustrated reports... so I was very interested, as mare - The Magazine of the Seas asked me if I‘d like to illustrate a longer non-fiction article about the Pacific Island of Guam (the island of snakes!).

Now you can find these illustrations in the current mare-Magazine, No. 71.

Greetings, Dieter

Kassel is the new Russia

Here´s my submission for the "Russians"
exhibition our friends at Rotopol hosted.
I think the black frame suits it very well!

Click here to see all the other stunning
entries, there is some very fine stuff
hanging on their walls.

Frederik Jurk

t shirt contest

click it, its a link

Please vote for my shirts at lafraise.de.
You have to do a login first, and I know that sucks, but still:
It won't harm you and it makes me happy, so....

have a nice day out in the snow.

Cleo

A Day At The Museum

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Last Thursday I offered my students drawing-studies at the Ethnological Museum, Berlin-Dahlem (as first part of the courses in „character-design“). So we took sketchbooks and pencils and spent a whole day at this highly recommended museum. The students should collect (only by drawing!) different figures, characterized by unusual proportions, the using of pattern, ornaments and abstract forms.

In the afternoon I had a little bit time for my own and I did some small sketches at the South-Sea-Collection.

Dieter

More Rock‘n Roll

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This weekend I‘ve made the first sketches of a new graphic-novel - a drawn biopic about one of the most important rock-musicians ever. More informations in the next weeks...

On the panel above you can see a young (later) rockstar between other members of his family (he isn‘t the main character but in our play he‘s very important, too).

Can anyone identify this moody young fellow, any ideas?

Dieter

Opinion (Illustration Friday)

Boris Servais

New Sculpture

Hi there,

just finished a new scuplture - hope it is creepy enough!

Cheers,
Peter

Posting about posters / Pretend (Illustration Friday)

Click to enlarge

Get your diploma and be
king for a day. Or queen, obviously.

----

I somehow aquired the reputation of being a
very quick working student at my illustration
class, so it happens quite a lot that my
professor Bernd Mölck-Tassel asks
me if I want to put together a poster or
a quick illustration for certain projects, and
I ALWAYS say "Yes".

That all of a sudden lead to a thunderstorm
of deadlines (as I recently posted), and now I´m
almost at the finish line of this falls most
hectic time. So here are two posters I´ve been
working on in the last four days. The one
above is for our diploma party and the other
one is for the "Poems for kids" exhibition.

Compression makes this one look
ugly. So please click to enlarge!

Sometimes people attribute my style with
words like "easygoing" or "spontaneous", but
you can´t imagine the amount of Photoshop
trickery I used on the second poster. I also
tend to get a certain feeling of panic when the
days last remaining hours tick away as I
sit on my desk and have a complete creative
blackout. It also doesn´t help that I
want to produce work that I can be proud of,
so sometimes my high goals can block
me quite a bit.

But I have to say, the last few months
(making the book, the book fair and the
tight schedule after that) have been very
exciting, and I guess I learned how to
deal with tight deadlines a lot better now.

Hope you enjoy my new stuff ;)

-Frederik Jurk

I Don't Need No One

click and I will fall

I just discovered Paint.

I just love Paint.
I don't need no friends, when I have Paint.

I am a happy person.

Love you all.

Cléo

This Day Has Too Many Tentacles

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My first post ever made, ladies and gentlemen!

I made this illustration for a friend of mine
and it is somewhat like a letter I never finished to write.
Instead of writing him this letter, I decided to draw him a message.
It shows my friend not being able to speak 'cause his mouth
mutated into an octopuss.
Sometimes you just don't know what to say.

(No te olvidarse, amigo)

I hope you have a day without too many tentacles.

Cléo

Half A Thunderstorm

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This is the a new illustration for our
classes "Poems for kids" project.
The poem (which translating to English would lead to all
kinds of trouble) is about the vowels going on
a vacation, leaving the "Thndrstrm"
very weak and awkwardly silent.

"Das O und alle drei E
Gingen auf Urlaubsreise.
Da knurrte das Dnnrwttr
Nur noch merkwürdig leise."
Josef Guggenmos

And while it LOOKS like it would make a lot of noise,
the soundwords translate into stuff like "Yawn",
"Peep", "Bubble", "Fart" and similar feeble sounds.

I´m very much into b/w pieces right now, it saves me A LOT of time,
but I also really start to appreciate the punchy contrast it has.
At first I though that b/w doesn´t fit well with illustration for
children, but it´s not like they need sugary sweet stuff in their
faces all the time, and besides, it´s not like
this motive is bleak in any way ;)

Belle Vedere

Belle Vedere is a poetic lovestory
in which words stay silent.

You can purchase the book
by contacting the author
via the image links to the right.

Adrian Wylezol

Budapest

Some pictures from my recent trip to Hungary - 

with different views of the Fisherman's Bastion and the parliament.

The great city of Budapest has a certain warmth that you 

may have experienced, if you've already been there.

Traveling hungary time and again since my childhood, 

it has a quite familiar feeling to me.

Boris

Russen

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This is a submission I did
for an exhibition at ROTOPOL ,
a small but dedicated shop/publisher/collective in
Kassel, Germany. The subject is "Russians", and
I went for this quite androgynous looking character.
I planned on coloring it, too, but then I thought that
it was stronger just in b/w. I can´t wait to see how it looks like
printed and hanging in their rooms!

Obama or McCain?

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Famous science-fiction-writer Isaac Asimov gave no answer to this question, as he wrote his short story „Franchise“ in 1955:
In the future of the year 2008 (!) the United States has converted to an „electronic democracy“ where the computer Multivac selects a single person to answer a number of questions. Multivac will then use the answers and other data to determine what the results of an election would be, avoiding the need for an actual election to be held. The story centers around Norman Muller, the man chosen as „Voter of the Year“ in 2008...

The german daily newspaper TAZ published this story yesterday (on election-day). I‘ve made two images for them (on Sunday... hard work). Showing some vintage computer-details like those old-fashioned computertapes - look like oversized MCs.

Dieter

Frankfurt Book Fair Impressions

Take a look at these lovely pictures Max Ruf did
of our booth. Click on each one to enlarge.

That´s me to the right. I like to talk a lot!

Frederik Jurk

The Fly

The fly, a small animal, that faithfully joins us since the prehistory,
has accelerated many writers and scientists. The fly implicates
the whole bandwidth of human behaviour and sensation:
horror, erotic, disgust, tenderness and power.
It is fascinating to collect all those images and to
discover her in any story, words and life.

On the bookfair'08 in Frankfurt I also presented a filing-cabinet,
"THE FLY" including illustrating cards and words,
visualized thoughts of writers and entomologists,
celebrating the wonder of life and lies about flies.

contact: claudia@c-pom.de

Claudia Pomowski

Nice interview

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The newest issue of Quer Magazine (Design-Magazine of the Fachhochschule Trier) shows an interesting, double-paged interview about my illustration-work for magazines and my working-techniques (how to get ideas, working with collage-elements, etc.). Questions by Rebecca Conrad.

Dieter Jüdt

A couple-a sketches

Being really busy with some graphic-design works, I recently started drawing without any reference material. Sounds odd maybe, but after years of life-drawing, I find that really liberating. I just start and see, where the pen takes me. Here are some results, mostly sketches I did in 10 - 30 minutes, in-between jobs...

Have a great day,
Peter

Winged Monkey, now actually with wings

click to enlarge it to its full widescreen glory

So I finished my Jitter "Biester im Film" submission
I talked about earlier. Both characters are taken from
The Wizard Of Oz, Tin Woodman to the right.
We had to use this cinemascope widescreen format
in reference to the movie theme of the contest.
I initially wanted to use a lot more color, but
decided against it since I didn´t want to drown
the pencil texture, and so I kept it in this
very open style.

And now that I look at it again, Tin Woodman
gets beaten up quite badly...

Encyclopedia of Strange Things

My new book is right out: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Strange Things. Produced in Italy by a specialized printer for small-size books, it collects odd discoveries and inventions around nostalgic aviation, astronautics, time trips or science fiction warfare.

Distributed in the States by Last Gasp, it's also available on my website.

Boris Servais

Offenders Handbook

Claudia is currently working on the "offenders handbook".
These impressions and expressions will be
collected in an encyclopedic fashion and will
grow and evolve in the immediate future.
The single pages are crafted very differently,
but the common ground is the aspiration
of uniqueness.

Claudia Fries

Winged Monkey (not winged yet)

I´m currently working on a submission for the
"Biester im Film" (Monsters in movies) contest from the
new illustration magazine Jitter, right after that
I´m going to work on a piece for the "Russen" (Russians)
exhibition our friends at Rotopol Press are showing
from 14 nov till 28 jan, and right after THAT I´m finishing
two illustrations for our "Lyrik für Kinder" (poems for kids)
exhibition at the Catholic Academy that we´re working
on at our current illustration class with Bernd Mölck-Tassel
and Dieter Böge (who just released their wonderful new book
"Was tun?!" ("What to do?") that deals with different jobs
and professions, here´s a little preview)), and after
THAT we´re preparing book projects and print dummies
for the then upcoming Bologna Childrens art fair
AND I´m going to submit three more "Lyrik für Kinder"
pieces for the contest that runs at the same time.

Now that´s a lot of text and a lot of links and lots and
lots to keep my hands busy. My lazy days are
officially over, it seems ;)

Frederik Jurk

New Graphic Novel

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Currently I‘m working on a new graphic-novel (images above) in the tradition of early comic-strips. This book, working-title „Dogville-Berlin“, could be seen as a diary, which describes some different and strange aspects of life in capital-city Berlin. Together with my favourite author, Verena Postweiler, we 've been working on this project more than three years. It wasn‘t funny for us to find a publishing house in (comic-developing-country) Germany. The common comic-publishers expect adventures with big guns, sex & crime and very simple texts. I presume they were a little bit confused about our work...

Now our book will be available in spring 2009!

Dieter Jüdt