Book of the Month is a feature that the University of Glasgow Library has been running for over a decade now. The format is simple, a single book is selected from their collections, written up and accompanied by pictures, maps and photographs scanned from the books. With over a 100 books to select from, it's hard to know where to start, but anywhere is good because they're all lovely. Still, here are a few, Charles Darwin's The Expression of the emotions in man and animals, a beautiful 15th century illuminated copy of Livy's Roman history, Treatises on Engines and Weapons, Valentines and Dabbities, The Birds of Australia, Facts and Observations on the Sanitary State of Glasgow, Ibn Jazla's The arrangement of bodies for treatment and finally, The Curious Case of Mary Toft, MetaFilter superstar.
posted by Kattullus on Nov 18, 2009 - 6 comments

Good Night and Tough Luck "Getting a good night’s sleep is actually a lot more complicated than one would think." An amusing look at the problems involved in getting a good night's sleep.
posted by nooneyouknow on Oct 22, 2009 - 62 comments

You say you like bacon, sure, but do you love it? Do you love love it? The BLT Kama Sutra [mildly NSFW, possibly] is an illustrated response to the Michael Ruhlman BLT from Scratch Summertime Challenge [previously on MetaFilter]. [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl on Sep 27, 2009 - 11 comments

An ever-growing treasure trove of magazine cover and advertising art from the Golden Age of American illustration. Check out wonderful covers from Theatre Magazine, Adventure Magazine, the Argosy, Photoplay, and Black Mask. Here's a scary cover from Laughter magazine, a strange and beautiful Life cover from 1887, and a copy of The Liberator that I dearly wish I could flip through. See also collections of great old ads for soap, cigarettes and books, among others. The intro page is here.
posted by CunningLinguist on Sep 9, 2009 - 9 comments

Jorge Colombo is among the artists using the Brushes application on the iPhone as a digital palette and canvas to create iSketches. He has worked as an illustrator, as a photographer, and as a graphic designer. He also creates digital QT videos, initially restricting himself to one-minute movies, and lately moving into longer projects.[prev. some nsfw]
posted by netbros on Apr 3, 2009 - 11 comments

Ghostshrimp is the illustrated home of Dan James.
posted by netbros on Apr 2, 2009 - 8 comments

Illustration Friday is a weekly illustration challenge. A topic is posted every Friday and then participants have all week to come up with their own interpretation. Check out the illustrator interviews. Here you'll find motivations, processes and styles, with links to the fine contemporary artists. From MeFi's own annathea. [via mefi projects]
posted by netbros on Mar 14, 2009 - 4 comments

The Saddest Bear of All. A children's book about a young girl's friendship with a morose bear. [via mefi projects]
posted by Effigy2000 on Mar 4, 2009 - 64 comments

George Bush's failings and follies inspired some of Vanity Fair’s illustrators' best work.
posted by gman on Jan 9, 2009 - 19 comments

Ice:A Victorian Romance , is an exhibition of fifty-five rare books and journals, with lovely illustrations. [more inside]
posted by hortense on Dec 21, 2008 - 8 comments

Boy in the Water ― The website of artist Miran Kim. Her art is characterized by an eerie, gruesome quality, which she achieves without the use of computer effects. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Dec 17, 2008 - 12 comments

30 Ways to Die of Electrocution. A Flickr set reprinted from 1931 a German book called Electrocution in 132 Pictures. Via.
posted by Astro Zombie on Dec 12, 2008 - 46 comments

With the advent of December comes the annual ranking of the book industry's over-saturated market. Along with the garden variety Best Books of 2008 lists, niche critics weigh in on the best cookbooks (baking and regular), most trustworthy business publications, best children's book illustrations, safest bets for literary holiday gifts, and, of course, the prettiest book covers.
posted by zoomorphic on Dec 1, 2008 - 17 comments

The Tale of the Heike (Heike Monogatari) is a medieval Japanese account of the rise and fall of the Taira clan and has inspired many other works of art. Click on the chapters and scroll down to see Heike illustrations (or start here), see more art or figures inspired by the Heike. Would you rather read? [more inside]
posted by ersatz on Nov 16, 2008 - 10 comments

A handful of young illustrators. Yann Le Bec / Adam Dedman / André Metzger / Илья Казаков / Sophie Blackall
posted by netbros on Nov 3, 2008 - 4 comments

Hilda Magazine ― prose, poetry, illustrations, photography, video, and music from a wide assortment contemporary artists. [contains some nude art images] [more inside]
posted by netbros on Oct 29, 2008 - 3 comments

Pattern Recognition, mostly serene paintings, illustrations and photographs from a variety of sources, grouped according to similar motifs: Interiors in paintings and more l moon l napes l light and shadow l moments of quiet intimacy, daydreams, dreams l very early Vogue and Vanity Fair covers 1, 2 and 3 l portraits of children and more l children's book illustrations l flora. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Oct 19, 2008 - 9 comments

Beautiful, vintage children's books from the Netherlands. If you click on the cover you can get close-ups of the entire book, page by page. 655 picture books from 1810 to 1950. Some examples: The Willows l Bellaroontje l Flower Children l The Circus l The Sparrow and the Starling. There are 67 extraordinary collections in The Memory of the Netherlands. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Sep 27, 2008 - 22 comments

Richard Wilkinson's illustrations - modern, melancholy pictures with a subdued palette but vivid identity.
posted by nthdegx on Aug 18, 2008 - 6 comments

Packed full of galleries of beautiful illustrations by Maxfield Parrish, Aubrey Beardsley, William Morris, Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham and others with prints one can buy of any illustration, Artsy Craftsy includes a sumptuous collection of Victorian Fairies illustrations. The site also has the illustrated Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, illustrations of cats in fairy tales, Magic Cats, and a selection of beautiful free ecards as well. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Dec 19, 2007 - 17 comments

In 1627, Schiller's Coelum Stellatum Christianum attempted to replace the mythical constellation figures with Christian figures. More from the Linda Hall Library Digital Services Unit. Art, illustration, and astronomy aficionados will appreciate the beauty of historic celestial atlas illustrations: Bayer's Uranometria 1603 (also the 1661 Edition), Flamsteed - Fortin Atlas Celeste - 1776 (text intro), Celestial Atlas by Alexander Jamieson. HubbleSource is cleaning up scans from one historic atlas and making them available in web and hi-res versions for use in non-commercial applications. (See also: David Rumsey Map Collection, and the exhibition Out of this World (index & T.O.C.), more Images, Artwork and Historical Objects at the US Naval Observatory. [more inside]
posted by spock on Dec 13, 2007 - 16 comments

From about 1875 to the 1940s, cigarette cards spurred tobacco sales. Sets offer a glimpse into the popculture of the times, spanning newsmakers, cinema celebrities, and sports stars; cute illustrated subjects, like "frisky" and children with rosy cheeks; handy info like air raid precautions, first aid, and amusing tricks; and neat stuff like famous escapes, exotic races, and figures of speech. Browse more fun sets of vintage images.
posted by madamjujujive on Dec 11, 2007 - 21 comments

Microorganisms as eye candy: A gallery of illustrations from the marvelous Artforms in Nature, Kunstformen der Natur 1899-1904 by Ernst Haeckel, an eminent, prolific and very controversial German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist, who named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms and coined many terms in biology, including phylum, phylogeny and ecology. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Nov 8, 2007 - 19 comments

Louis Wain became one of the most famous British illustrators of the late Victorian and Edwardian era after trying to cheer up his wife Emily by drawing portraits of their pet cat, Peter. In addition to publishing a popular children's book about kittens, he was a founder of the U.K's National Cat Club who was instrumental in promoting the Cat Fancy movement, which encouraged Britons of all classes to view cats as lovable pets instead of household pests. Unfortunately, after Wain's wife Emily died of breast cancer, Wain gradually went mad due to psychosis and late onset schizophrenia, ending up in London's notorious Bethlehem Hospital (the etymological origin for the word bedlam). While at Bedlam, Wain continued to draw, but his cat portraits transformed into pure geometric abstraction and psychedelic fractals, but some see harbingers of madness in cryptically titled works, such as Early Indian Irish and The Fire of the Mind Agitates the Atmosphere. For more insight on Wain, check out this 1896 interview and this short film dramatizing the progression of Wain's schizophrenia through his art.
posted by jonp72 on Aug 12, 2007 - 25 comments

Born in Bohemia, Wenceslas (Vaclav) Hollar (wikipedia; illustrated chronology of his life; essay on Hollar) was one of the leading etchers and illustrators of the middle 17th Century, working primarily in England and Belgium. The University of Toronto has placed almost his entire works online, including more than 4,000 images and some complete illustrated books. Some favorites: the man himself; simple, powerful Illustrations of Genesis; The Pack of Knaves; Elephants and Flowers; Shells; Fitting out a Hull; and Muffs (sfw). Most images are zoomable, and you can create marked lists and compare images side by side.
posted by Rumple on Jun 17, 2007 - 8 comments

Fritz Kahn was a German writer & illustrator in the 1920s who specialized in illustrating the physical processes of human bodies as though they were machine powered. Perhaps it's easier to show than describe.
posted by jonson on Jun 13, 2007 - 18 comments

Frenzied Fauna -- Michel Gange's illustrated animal kingdom. (via)
posted by fallenposters on May 8, 2007 - 11 comments

An illustrated edition of the Ise Monogatari (Wikipedia, review of translation). Yeah, yeah, it's in Japanese, but just keep hitting the forward button (the leftmost of the two on the right, red/brown rather than blue/green) and you'll find lots of pretty pictures. I can't improve on the descriptions by Matt of No-sword, where I found it, so I'll just quote him: "Behold our hero maxin' and relaxin' at his writing-desk, looking like he just got hired as a middle manager at his dad's lighter-flint concern! Thrill to the famous scene where he is visited by the Pineapple of Golden Week Past! Laugh as he is mistaken for a member of Aerosmith! Wonder why everyone is just sitting around smiling contentedly when the building is obviously on fire!"
posted by languagehat on Feb 27, 2007 - 23 comments

The children's book illustrators archive. Czeschka - Die Nibelungen; Nielsen - Hansel and Gretel; Goble - Japanese Fairy Tales; Dulac - Arabian Nights; Pavlishin - Folktales of the Amur; Finlay - The Ship of Ishtar; Detmold - The Arabian Nights; Crane - Flora Feast; Kirin - Croatian Tales of Long Ago; Clarke - Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination; Collard - British Fairy Tales, and; more Rackham in the gallery then you can shake a pen at.
posted by OmieWise on Dec 13, 2006 - 14 comments

Medical Illustrations.
posted by econous on Aug 12, 2006 - 15 comments

Arthur Rackham Illustrations.
posted by sciurus on Aug 8, 2006 - 16 comments

Son of Rambo (not to be confused with Rambo IV: Holy War/End of Peace) is a Hammer and Tongs film about two kids in the 80s making a home video sequel to First Blood. No teaser or trailer available as of post time, but there is a showcase of illustrations by hand-picked and contributing artists that claim to cover the era, themes and content of the film.
posted by boost ventilator on Jun 20, 2006 - 6 comments

The Memory of The Netherlands is an extensive digital collection of illustrations, photographs, texts, film and audio fragments from a large variety of Dutch cultural institutions. There are about 50 collections (in english).
posted by peacay on Feb 19, 2006 - 7 comments

Electronic Biologia Centrali-Americana is a collaboration between the Smithsonian, Missouri Botanical and Kew Gardens, the British Natural History Museum and various other institutions which has enabled the digitizing of 58 volumes of natural history about central America produced between 1880 and 1920. It includes descriptions of more than 50,000 species with images of more than 18,000 birds, more birds, snakes, turtles, centipedes, spiders, more spiders, plants, mollusks, more plants, butterflies, orthoptera insects, more butterflies and their family's (moth-like) families, mammals and even some historic maps of the region. There is a parallel project attempting to provide access to much more scientific data and specimens between these institutions. Note: 'next' button at top +/- bottom of these large thumb pages; large high resolution jpegs work (in most cases) but zoom and .pdfiles are not yet enabled. I've only just scratched the surface.
posted by peacay on Sep 26, 2005 - 9 comments

"A natural history of birds. Most of which have not been figur'd or describ'd, and others very little known from obscure or too brief descriptions without figures, or from figures very ill design'd." [1743] and "Birds of North America" [1903] Samples (the last 15 from each link): [1743]: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. [1903]: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. [MI]
posted by peacay on Sep 10, 2005 - 23 comments

The Fantastic in Art and Fiction. The Cornell Institute for Digital Collections presents an online image-bank that "provides a visual resource for the study of the Fantastic or of the supernatural in fiction and in art" from the danse macabre to medical oddities to creatures straight out of Hell (and Heaven). The university's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections has put together a captivating little collection of the marvelous, the mysterious and the magical. You can search through all the images at once or search by book title. (Some images may be slightly NSFW.)
posted by LeeJay on Jul 29, 2005 - 15 comments

Traditional Russian fairytales with beautiful illustrations depicting scenes from the stories.
posted by gregb1007 on Feb 23, 2005 - 9 comments

Jeffrey Rowland, creator of Wigu, author of I Was a Teenage Billionaire Psychopath, and owner of a brilliant illustrated blog, has unveiled his newest project - the TV Network Channel.
posted by Simon! on Jan 17, 2005 - 10 comments

4,563 cartoons by Welsh cartoonist Leslie Illingworth

"The Illingworth cartoon collection at the National Library, which contains 4,563 images, explores a wide variety of topics through the eyes of one of Britain's best known cartoonists of the twentieth century."
posted by bob sarabia on Nov 22, 2004 - 3 comments

Thackeray's 'Chronicle of the Drum' , illustrated.
posted by plep on Nov 16, 2004 - 3 comments

Destructed.Info - A PDF magazine with some excellent illustrations. Three issues on the site so far.
posted by dobbs on Oct 15, 2004 - 3 comments

"I follow a dog chasing some invisible bird." Four Stories: Some of the most breathtaking woodcuts I've seen a good while illustrating four sparse but moving stories. After a decade of metafiction and Raygun typography, this letterpressed book of mythic narrative is refreshing, and inspiring.
posted by eustacescrubb on Sep 11, 2004 - 6 comments

Smithsonian Catalog of Botanical Illustrations Feel the need for a touch of spring? The Smithsonian offers five hundred images (created by eleven artists) from its vast collection of botanical illustrations. Check out the images in the Curtis Botanical Magazine (1787-1807). For more wide-ranging overviews, try the Scientific Illustrators (1600-present); the Missouri Botanical Garden Library (digitized copies of 46 rare books); this special exhibition at the University of Delaware (general survey); and Haley & Steele (women artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). Julene Sodt provides an extensive bibliography.
posted by thomas j wise on Mar 8, 2004 - 2 comments

A Flash-heavy "Illustrated Complete Summary of Gravity's Rainbow". Includes an Episode Guide and a gallery of related art. See also the Wikipedia entry if you want some background, including a link to an online concordance.
posted by trondant on Dec 14, 2003 - 15 comments

Seth Scriver's Animations (Flash Required)
posted by boost ventilator on Dec 5, 2003 - 5 comments

Exotic Entomology. 'Provided for your delight are a small number of the world's butterflies and moths, taken from Dru Drury's three-volume monograph entitled Illustrations of Exotic Entomology.'
Related :- Schreber's Fabulous Beasts. 'In 1774 Johann Christian Dan Schreber authored a multivolume set of books entitled Die Saugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur mit Beschreibungen. Focusing on mammals of the world, these books were lavishly illustrated with 755 hand-colored plates ... '
posted by plep on Jul 5, 2003 - 8 comments

Illuminated manuscripts are truly a joy to behold. And there are a remarkable number of them available on the web for your viewing pleasure. The most famous illuminated MS is the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. For galleries with multiple images, try the resources at DScriptorium, Web Gallery of Art, and the Leaves of Gold exhibition. Elyse Boucher's page is a work-in-progress detailing the history and methods of illuminating books, with both images and secondary sources; see also Sue Wood's Art and Books page.
posted by thomas j wise on Apr 30, 2003 - 10 comments

Palmer Cox created the famous Brownie characters in 1883, and a successful series of children's books detailing their adventures. These are the characters that George Eastman chose for promoting the Brownie line of Kodak cameras.
posted by hama7 on Apr 29, 2003 - 3 comments

"This vellum-bound curiosity is one of the rarest and most mysterious etching suites of the late Renaissance." Braccelli's fantastic drawings are excellent examples of early (early, early) surrealism. For higher quality images, try this link instead.
posted by Pinwheel on Mar 17, 2003 - 14 comments

Aiee!!    Pelorosaurus by god knows who, Corythosaurus illustrated by Zdenek Burian, Ornitholestes by Charles Knight--Dinosaur Illustrations has led me to two wonderful sites: Early Image and Paper Dinosaurs, 1824-1969 - An Exhibition of Original Publications From the Collections of the Linda Hall Library, as well as many other little treasures.
posted by y2karl on Nov 22, 2002 - 3 comments