MetaFilter posts tagged with illustrations

Book of the Month

Kattullus — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:28:17 -0800

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.

Good Night and Tough Luck

nooneyouknow — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:55:24 -0800

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.

The BLT Kama Sutra at Kitchen Scraps

hurdy gurdy girl — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:33:15 -0800

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]. The BLT Kama Sutra is the brainchild of Pierre Lamielle, author of Kitchen Scraps, a food blog featuring the recipes and drawings that didn't make it into his upcoming cookbook. In addition to amusingly illustrated recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, you can check out the Mystery Blue Box Salad recipes (where Lamielle uses vegetables from whatever random selection happens to come in his organic produce delivery that week).

Have some art.

CunningLinguist — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:30:38 -0800

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.

iPhone Sketches

netbros — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:19:46 -0800

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]

Ghostscouts Live Here

netbros — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:55:03 -0800

Ghostshrimp is the illustrated home of Dan James.

A Weekly Illustration Challenge

netbros — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 07:14:42 -0800

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]

The Saddest Bear of All

Effigy2000 — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:11:25 -0800

The Saddest Bear of All. A children's book about a young girl's friendship with a morose bear. [via mefi projects]

Dubya, Drawn and Quartered.

gman — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:06:24 -0800

George Bush's failings and follies inspired some of Vanity Fair’s illustrators' best work.

NorthWest Passage

hortense — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 20:19:13 -0800

Ice:A Victorian Romance , is an exhibition of fifty-five rare books and journals, with lovely illustrations. Online exhibition of rare books and journals commemorating the British "infatuation with the Arctic," which began in 1818 "with the Admiralty trying to find an outlet for naval officers and seamen who had been idled by the end of the Napoleonic wars." from the growing collection found at the Linda Hall Library.

Boy in the Water

netbros — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:45:49 -0800

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. Miran Kim was born in New Jersey and lived with her family in South Korea from age eight to eighteen. She studied at the Academy Art College of San Francisco and the School of Visual Arts in New York. There she created a series of paintings titled Fear of the Unknown, which captured exactly the elements that she is famous for in her covers for the 'X-Files' comics. Miran was officially approved by the X-Files creator Chris Carter who stated "I love Miran Kim's X-Files cover art!" Miran Kim also did the artwork for graphic novel The Fallen (1999), written by David Aaron Clark.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzttz

Astro Zombie — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:54:32 -0800

30 Ways to Die of Electrocution. A Flickr set reprinted from 1931 a German book called Electrocution in 132 Pictures. Via.

2666 reasons to find your library card.

zoomorphic — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:34:49 -0800

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.

Thus did the sons of the Heike vanish forever from the face of the earth.

ersatz — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 08:29:47 -0800

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? You can read two chapters of Helen Craig McCullough's translation or read a Michael Watson translation of the nô (Noh) play Kogô (illustration), inspired by the tale. (.doc file, link doesn't point directly to it.) The story was performed by biwa hôshi, "lute monks", and its most popular version was compiled by the blind* monk Kakuichi in 1371. The events recounted occur during the Genpei War (short version). The Genpei War took place in the 12th century between the Taira and Minamoto clans and was the end of the Heian era depicted in the famous Japanese text, The Tale of Genji. Heike means "House of Taira" and Genji "Minamoto clan". John Wallace (first link) isn't one for web design, but seems to have a penchant for collecting. *cf. Homer, Milton, Joyce, Borges.

Monday Illustrators

netbros — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:14:01 -0800

A handful of young illustrators. Yann Le Bec / Adam Dedman / André Metzger / Илья Казаков / Sophie Blackall

Contemporary Art

netbros — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:25:27 -0800

Hilda Magazine ― prose, poetry, illustrations, photography, video, and music from a wide assortment contemporary artists. [contains some nude art images] The magazine also includes links to some individual artist's personal sites. Following are presentations that I found particularly compelling or interesting: Niklas Goldbach Wheat Würtzburger Constantin Hartenstein Levi van Veluw Heidi Mortenson Sigurdur Gudjónsson Janaina Tschäpe Brenda Hillman Mary Mattingly Mikko Rantanen Lenka Clayton Jörg Piringer Robert Hodgin If you only look at one thing on Hilda, be sure to check out Magnetosphere, one of many of Robert Hodgin's experiments with the programming language Processing. Hodgin, van Veluw, and Mattingly have been previously featured on the blue.

visual connections

nickyskye — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 15:48:24 -0800

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. Portraits of women l Islamic world l monkeys l females and cats l mostly British l Mary l twinning l night. The archive of the blog with a rich selection of images.

collections of images

nickyskye — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:05:58 -0800

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. The Memory of the Netherlands is a project of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands, that is responsible for digitising important sources of the Netherlands' cultural heritage. The website offers easy access to more than twenty digital collections from an equal number of heritage institutions. Sometimes it's fun putting a word like "kameel" (camel) into the children's illustrated books section search box or even a number. Results for kameel for 2. Previously.

Richard Wilkinson's illustrations

nthdegx — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:27:14 -0800

Richard Wilkinson's illustrations - modern, melancholy pictures with a subdued palette but vivid identity.

beautiful old illustrations

nickyskye — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 07:27:04 -0800

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. To find a free ecard from the illustrations, one can click on the caption for that illustration. For example on the Dulac page, if one scrolls down the page to the caption, "Firebird" and clicks on that, it can be sent as an ecard. A good fairy ecard page.

Historic Celestial Atlas Illustrations

spock — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:32:06 -0800

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. Note: Some of the links above have been posted previously.

popculture advertising ephemera

madamjujujive — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:25:46 -0800

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.

Ernst Haeckel's illustrations

nickyskye — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 11:21:22 -0800

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 wonderful images, including hummingbirds, antelopes, shells and sea creatures. The Marine Biological Laboratory: Ernst Haeckel. Evolution's controversial artist by Amanda Schaffer, an excellent slide-show essay. Wikipedia's entry on Ernst Haeckel: The Nazi party used not only Haeckel's quotations, but also Haeckel's broader philosophy of "Monism," which they used as justification for racism, nationalism and social Darwinism. On this page with a substantial collection of illustrations, scroll down to figure J, where he placed Americans. Haeckel promoted Charles Darwin's work in Germany and developed the controversial "recapitulation theory" claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarizes its species' entire evolutionary development, or phylogeny: "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" A little about how his naturalist vision impacted art and design around the turn of the century, such as in Art Nouveau. strange foe's excellent previously

Wain's World: How the Artist Went Insane When the Cat Got His Brain

jonp72 — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 12:37:04 -0800

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.

Digital Collection of the Etchings of Wenceslas Hollar

Rumple — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 09:44:33 -0800

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.