I have had Dry Eyes since last week due to insufficient sleep and long hours of being on the net. So I cannot stay long in front of the monitor right now but here are one of my favorite picture books.
The Haunted House by Kazuno Kohara.
I love her cute little girl and especially the use of orange and black and the touch of white! Cool! This book won an award too but I can’t remember which one.
I did this sketch in pencil long time ago and had been thinking how I would color it. I tried coloring in Photoshop but it didn’t work for me so I went back to Illustrator, the program I feel most comfortable with.
It turns out quite good although I feel that there should be something I could add to make it more attractive…
I’m still thinking about it…
I myself love drawing shoes, doodled ones though not strikingly beautiful like these. You can surely tell that anyone who did this drawing must love her job very much considering long hours of doing all the crosshatching (and I feel my hand hurts every time I imagine her hard work 
)
I bet most of those who love browsing nice illustrations on web must have known Andrea Joseph. For those who don’t, go visit her flickr and don’t miss everyday matters and sepia. Wonderful works!
I think everyone would be always amazed every time we see such artwork.
Paper cutting is not difficult but it is not that easy either. I bet those who are
not really into it would give it up after cutting half a page. This kind of job
requires a lot of concentration. It is a tedious job that those with quick temper wouldn’t do it. So I guess Rob Ryan would be a very very cool person. His book of papercutting illustration tells it.
I have seen a lot of his work both in prints and web but I never knew whose works they belonged to. Now with this book in my hands I know his name and I know one more thing-He is also a writer. This book might not be this charming if he didn’t cut(write) words in this illustrations. It’s like the book has the feelings and makes readers linger more on each page.
Although it’s done in different medium, this book reminds me of Jimmy Liao’s book with lonely words on colorful illustrations.
In all, this book is a treasure and I really appreciate the artist’s hard work.
Visit his his site and you will see more beautiful works.
This Candlewick’s Treasures edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost has rested quite peacefully on my bookshelf for years. I can’t remember where I bought this book but I surely know why I bought it. Its beautiful illustration by Inga Moore. The book was made to be more like a gift book rather than a fiction book. Nice pocket size with beautiful hard cover.
As for the story, I have to confess that I got mixed up the name of Canterville with Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer from the 14th century and I wondered why the language was quite modern, how stupid of me! Anyway, it took me years to actually read it. The story is funny and quite cute.
The old ghost of Canterville Chase had been haunting the place for many years. He had done a successful job until an American Family moved in. That’s when the ghost got haunted himself by the simplicity of the American family who never got spooked no matter how unnerving the ghost tried to do.
I especially love Inga Moore’s illustrations. They are so beautiful and it keeps me reading it through the end. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to read and stop to look into details of the pictures and appreciate both the author and the illustrator.
In all, I really enjoy the story and glad to have such a beautiful book on my shelf.
I’m quite sure that among things that we learned to draw as a kid, besides house, flowers or the sun etc, tree might be one of the easiest thing to draw. People can recognize it no matter how lousy your drawing is. It’s a natural connection. However, I think that tree is the most difficult subject as well. A tree has many branches, many layers and so much in detail. Each leaf even has different line patterns.
I guess that is the charm of drawing a tree.
Bruno Munari teaches us how to draw a tree with his simplest but poetic words along with beautiful illustrations in this book. I can imagine his spending long hours outside in different places, different time observing trees in different forms before he wrote the book. It must have been a precious time for him.
I really like this book. Its beautiful drawings in simple layout really inspire me to draw some more trees…outside.
Here are samples of inside pages.
I got quite excited to see the latest book of Nicholas series, Nicholas in Trouble be out on the shelf.
I took no time to grab it and even more thrilled when I got into Nicholas’s homepage. Nice layout and a lot of fun stuff inside. If you are a fan of Nicholas’s cute illustrations, you have to click to every page, especially the Fun and Game section where you can play cowboy and golf just like you were Nicholas’s friends!
Very cool site! Also, don’t forget to join his club and wait for cute stuffs. I doubt if they will send the things cross country (it seems unbelievable) but I take a chance anyway.
They also have their own blog for news update. I remember last time I looked it’s in French. So glad that they blog in English now.
P.S. Last week I was very depressed and tried to find some good books to cheer me up but came up with nothing. Now I know which book (and web site) I would look for if such blue days visit me again 
Are you addicted to blogs? I have to say that I am not. I mean I can be away from Google Reader for days and don’t get my hands itchy or anything (although I sometimes get a bit of guilty feeling for letting items in Google Reader get to 1000+) However, there are some kind of blogs that keep me back when I need inspirations. The keyword is illustration.
You can find nice illustrations in tons of blogs (mostly in Blogger.com, I notice) I can just jump from link to link all day. Today I came across a very nice illustration via Drawn! It is a children book called Forever Young, written by Bob Dylan and illustrated by Paul Rogers. The story based on Bob Dylan’s own song and the publisher made a nice move to create the book promo in a clip format. Listening to the song while watching beautiful illustrations just makes both the song and the book more meaningful.
I also visit the illustrator’s blog. You can read behind the scne of the book there.
Now let’s watch the clip!
Another classics redesigned. These ones are from
although I’m not sure if it’s real scratchboard or digital-making.
These four are my favorite but I think the Oz one look a little bit cruel!
