illustration

Get out your fancy pens and draw an elaborate box around November 4-13. That’s Illustration Week, an event bonanza featuring exhibitions, talks, panel discussions, and parties that will draw out a crowd of people who don’t blink when faced with questions such as “Prismacolors or Copics?” The fun begins next Friday, November 4, as Parsons the New School for Design plays hosts to the third annual Pictoplasma Conference, which invites designers, illustrators, fimmakers and producers, artists, and character connoisseurs to discourse freely about the world of character-driven art and design. The two-day event features lectures by global superstars such as Siggi Eggertsson, Wooster Collective, Jon Burgerman (whose work is pictured above), and French-Swiss Technicolor enfants terribles Ben & Julia. The Society of Illustrators follows up that character-building bunch with a presentation on the history of illustration by Murray Tinkelman, an Illustrators Sketch Night featuring the musical stylings of the Half-Tones (illustrators Barry Blitt, Joe Ciardiello, and Michael Sloan, joined by guest guitarist Kenny Wessel), and an evening with children’s book icons and illustrators including Ted and Betsy Lewin and Jerry Pinkney. Check out the full schedule of events here.

Has veteran artist Bruce McCall swiped, unintentionally or otherwise, the idea for his latest New Yorker cover? The October 3rd issue of the magazine features McCall’s illustration of Times Square, with a portion of the sidewalk cordoned off for tourists and another two sections dedicated as a “No Tourist” zone. Per usual for the magazine, it’s a clever, fun image. However, it’s also remarkably close to artist Jeff Greenspan‘s 2010 collaboration with Improv Everywhere. Entitled “The Tourist Lane,” Greenspan spray painted sections of New York sidewalks, labeling one side “Tourists” and the other, “New Yorkers.” On one hand, McCall certainly could have come up with the idea himself, explaining on the New Yorker‘s site how he came up with the concept after getting out of a cab in Times Square and being overwhelmed by the out-of-towners. On the other hand, Greenspan’s stunt garnered international press, with copycats painting variations in cities across the world, and the Improv Everywhere video receiving more than a million hits. So we suppose it isn’t inconceivable that McCall could have been aware of it and had it land somewhere in his subconscious. We’ll leave it up to you to decide. Whatever the case: interesting.

When was the last time you can remember that Wacom‘s site was so overloaded with traffic that it was difficult to get it to load? We don’t visit the pen tablet for designers’ site often enough to be able to give that a definite answer, but we’re guessing it’s not all that frequent. However, such was the case yesterday (for us anyway) as word spread quickly about the company’s new product, the Inkling, an ink pen-based device that records your drawings as you sketch them out, again in ink, on a physical piece of paper. Even if you aren’t a regular sketcher, or have always used a tablet just fine, or are from the exact opposite direction and get by just fine with a mouse and don’t plan on ever changing your ways, even you will find this cool. And if sites like Gizmodo, which said about the Inkling that it “may become [their] favorite gadget of all time” are any judge, every designer is either going to be buying one or putting it on their wish list immediately when it’s released in the middle of next month. Here’s the promo video:

From left, a mixed-media collage painting by Fred Otnes and the cover of Jerry Pinkney’s The Lion and The Mouse, a wordless adaptation of one of Aesop’s fables.

The Society of Illustrators has elected five artists to its illustrious Hall of Fame: Fred Otnes, Jerry Pinkney, Kenneth Paul Block, Alan E. Cober, and Robert Heindel (the latter three will be honored posthumously). Past presidents of the Society selected the artists based on their body of work and the impact it has made on the field of illustration. This year’s Hall of Fame inductees will be honored at a dinner and ceremony on June 24. Pinkney, 71, is fresh from his 2010 Caldecott Medal win for The Lion and the Mouse, one of the more than 100 children’s books he has illustrated since 1964. “My most favorite is always the work in progress on the drawing board, because my strongest feelings about a particular book are tied to the experience of creating it,” notes the illustrator on his website. “I love the act of making marks on paper, and seeing those marks develop into a picture. My intent and hope is to lead the viewer into a world that only exists because of that picture.”

When the Cat in the Hat came back, he brought an alphabet’s worth of Little Cats and more rhyming mischief. Now his creator, the late Theodor Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss), is making a return of his own, with more scheming felines, panicked goldfish, and something called a “Zinniga-Zanniga” in tow. Seven rarely-seen Seuss tales are collected in The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories, which will be published this September by Random House. The stories originally appeared in Redbook magazine in 1950 and 1951 but never made it to book form. They were tracked down by Seuss expert Charles D. Cohen, whose list of credentials—collector, scholar, dentist—is straight out of of one of the master’s fantastic tales and who has written an introduction to the book. The title story involves a sly cat, a sucker of a duck, and a bad decision, while “Gustav the Goldfish” is an early, rhymed version of A Fish Out of Water, a book by Helen Palmer, Geisel’s wife. Readers will also encounter the twin twosome of “Tadd and Todd,” a band of hungry creatures who follow a boy home in hopes of “Steak for Supper,” and “The Strange Shirt Spot,” the source for the bathtub-ring scene in, you guessed it, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.

Maurice Sendak turns 83 this June, but don’t expect him to go gently into the monster-filled night. He’s got a few wild rumpuses left in him. The Caldecott-winning author of classic children’s books such as Where the Wild Things Are has reached an agreement with HarperCollins to publish the first book illustrated and written by Sendak since Outside Over There in 1981, according to the deal database maintained by Publishers Marketplace. The new picture book, which began its life as an animated segment for Sesame Street that aired in the early 1970s, is Bumble-Ardy. It tells the tale of Bumble, a mischievous pig who has reached the age of nine without ever having had a birthday party. He takes matters into his own hands (well, cloven hooves) and invites all of his friends to a masquerade party that quickly gets out of hand. According to the description on Amazon’s pre-order page, Sendak “once again explores the exuberance of young children and the unshakable love between parent (in this case, an aunt) and child.” Or in this case, talking piglet. “As a child, I felt that books were holy objects to be caressed, rapturously sniffed, and devotedly provided for,” said Sendak in accepting the Hans Christian Andersen Award (for excellence in illustration of children’s books) in Bologna, Italy in 1970. “I gave my life to them. I still do. I continue to do what I did as a child: dream of books, make books, and collect books.” Bumble-Ardy will be published by HarperCollins in September.

At a time of year when bethrothed couples from Albuquerque to Zurich are imploring you to “Save the Date!” for their summer nuptials, cartoonist and illustrator Adrian Tomine offers a peek into his own path to the altar in Scenes from an Impending Marriage (Drawn and Quarterly). The little blue book chronicles the adventures of Tomine and his bride-to-be, Sarah, as they navigate the wedding planning process, from guest list politics and venue selection to dance lessons and “an even-handed acknowlegement of both families’ cultural heritages” (taiko drummers versus bagpipe players, both of which are ultimately nixed by Tomine “in the name of cultural sensitivity and harmony”). A charming series of comic vignettes depicts the increasingly anxious couple meeting with one D.J. Buttercream (“please, just call me Bryan”) and sparring about wedding favors, until Sarah hits upon the idea of an illustrated book of short comics about the trials and tribulations of wedding preparations (how meta!). Our favorite scene takes place in the department store where the couple has chosen to register for wedding gifts. “It looks like everyone’s casually aiming a gun at wicker tissue box holders or whatever!” says Tomine’s cartoon doppelganger at the sight of affianced twosomes armed with bar-code scanners. “It’s emblematic of our whole culture: ‘I want lots of stuff and I want to shoot a gun!’”

New York’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) turns ten this year, and it’s celebrating with a blow-out bash and a major exhibition. Illustrator and comic artist Peter Kuper has designed the poster (pictured) for this year’s MoCCA Festival, a two-day comics confab set for April 9-10 at the Lexington Avenue Armory. Among the guests expected are Jules Feiffer, Chip Kidd, Bill Plympton, Adrian Tomine, Julia Wertz, and Al Jaffee, to whom Kuper will present the 2011 Klein Award. Named for MoCCA’s founder, Lawrence Klein, the award acknowledges significant contributions to the field of comics and cartooning.

Meanwhile, today marks the opening of “Will Eisner’s New York: From The Spirit to the Modern Graphic Novel,” an exhibition showcasing work of the Bronx-born comics and graphic novel master that was inspired by, and which spotlighted, his hometown. Curators Denis Kitchen and Danny Fingeroth have rounded up everything from artwork created for Eisner’s noir crimefighter comic, The Sprit, and classic graphic novels to original paintings and art by creators (such as Feiffer and Art Spiegelman) who were influenced by him. Stop by MoCCA on Sunday, which would have been Eisner’s 94th birthday, to catch a 7 p.m. screening of the 2007 documetary Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist.

As we reported back in 2007, when Smart Design helped redesign New York’s taxi branding, that period also mark the launch of the city’s Taxi of Tomorrow project, which was on the hunt for a more efficient, safer and comfortable cab. Just over a year ago, the project unveiled its three finalists, developed by Karsan, Nissan and Ford. Writer and new GOOD editor Allison Arieff doesn’t have terribly high hopes that whoever wins the commission to build these thousands of redesigned cars for hire, and filed this great report for the NY Times entitled “All Tomorrow’s Taxis,” discussing the competition but also what really needs to be fixed with these ubiquitous people movers. Alongside her piece, she and the paper asked designer/illustrator Steven M. Johnson to come up with and sketch out his own ideas. They run the gamut from absurd (like the Taxi Hotel and the “Pay What You Can Afford” model) to those slightly more practical, like giving cabs wrap-around bumpers outside the entire car. Like Arieff, we’re not expecting a total, heart-warming transformation in the city’s fleet, no matter which of the three gets picked, but it’s nice to dream, isn’t it?

Will 2011 be the year you write that novel? Illustrate the would-be children’s book that has been rattling around your brain? Conquer the stack of unread periodicals teetering on your nightstand? Monetize your obsession into a screenplay and/or line of collectible dolls? Get inspired to tackle creative projects with the annual inspiration issue of Poets & Writers magazine, which has just hit newsstands. Following in the footsteps of last year’s cover designer, Chip Kidd (no pressure!), is up and comer Jim Tierney, a junior designer at Penguin. When presented with the broad theme of inspiration, he looked to the stars—and then aligned them. “The stars and astronomy has inspired people forever,” said Tierney in an interview with the magazine’s Kevin Larimer. “At the beginning people had no idea what was going on and they made up fabulous stories and Greek myths and all of this originated in nothing but people drawing lines to connect stars.” There’s also a more personal inspiration behind the colorful cover. “It reminds me of being at home, because I grew up on a farm where you can just look out at the stars for hours over the cornfields and whatnot,” Tierney said. “So that really resonated with me.”