illustration

Looking to convince some aesthetically astute youngsters to read the classics? Penguin can help. The publisher recruited one of our favorite graphic artists, Ruben Toledo, to create illustrations for the covers of a new trio of Penguin Classics, reports Galleycat senior editor Ron Hogan (via Nylon). In addition to Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (at left), Toledo brought his signature à la mode elegance to The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Part of the Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions line, the books will be published in late August, just in time to entice back-to-school shoppers.

Penguin has previously recruited the likes of Chris Ware, Seth, and Roz Chast to illustrate Deluxe Classics covers. One of our all-time favorites, despite (or perhaps because of) our vegetarian tendencies: Charles Burns's striking carcass cover for a 2006 edition of The Jungle, muckracker Upton Sinclair's slaughterhouse exposé.

For those who haven't had the pleasure of reading "Pearls Before Swine," we point you here. For those with link fatigue (or if you're "reading" this on your talking Kindle), we describe the popular comic strip as Itchy and Scratchy meets Garfield with a dollop of postmodern storytelling (see ya, fourth wall!). An inarticulate fraternity of crocodiles is also involved. Today Galleycat, our bookish brother blog, reports that "Pearls Before Swine" creator Stephan Pastis has begun talks with an unnamed studio to bring his syndicated strip to the silver screen in an animated feature.

Pastis, who we know from his blog has won at least one posture competition, also spoke with Galleycat about the work of assembling his eleventh comics collection, The Saturday Evening Pearls, out this month from Andrews McMeel. "It's a lot of work, because in addition to doing the covers, I write comments below many of the individual strips," he explained. "The comments involve what I may have liked/not liked about the strip, feedback I got from readers, mistakes, etc. The comments take a fair amount of time, but they seem to be readers' favorite part of the book." As for what's next in the world of comics in these days of dying newspapers, Pastis believes that "the future will involve getting animated in some capacity and distributed on the Internet."

And here you thought the only people celebrating a birthday today were Spike Lee and Henrik Ibsen. It's also the fortieth anniversary of Eric Carle's classic children's book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a vibrant, tactile, and poignant tale of a voracious young caterpillar's journey to butterflyhood. Since the book was first published in 1969, it has sold more than 12 million copies in 45 languages. Carle, who turns 80 this year, is still going strong (check out his blog), and Philomel has just published a new hardcover pop-up version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar ("a stunning, tour-de-force pop-up," says Amazon.com).

The famed caterpillar actually began his life as an ordinary worm. After some fortuitous experimentation with a hole puncher, Carle got to thinking about a bookworm and created A Week with Willi Worm, which ended with the title character growing into a morbildy obese worm. "I showed it to my editor, Ann Beneduce, and she didn't like the worm so much," explains Carle in a video on his website. "She said, 'How about a caterpillar?' And I said, 'Butterfly!'" And the rest is history.

What accounts for the enduring appeal of the red-faced caterpillar made from Carle's distinctive collages of hand-painted tissue paper? "Aside from the story, aside from the graphics, the touchable holes, and the learning that's camoflaged in there, I think it's a book of hope: you can grow up, fly into the world with your talents," he says. "I'm gratified that it has had such an impact." For further proof of the book's impact, pay a visit to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts or check out the Google homepage, which today welcomes spring with a Carle-designed Google Doodle.

(Illustration: Charlie Powell for The New York Times)

The New York Times Sunday Business Section knocked one out of the park again yesterday with an above-the-fold graphic that had them chuckling in the waning hours of the Armory Show. Following in the footsteps of Lacie Argyle/Jennifer Daniel's swell Si Newhouse photo-montage portrait, illustrator Charlie Powell depicts art dealer Larry Gagosian as a magician pulling one of Cy Twombly's glorious 2007 peony paintings and a flutter of cash out of his hat. The graphic accompanied David Segal's profile of the press-shy Gagosian, who Segal described as "dogged, unreadable, and enamored with risk."

Gagosian did not return Segal's callls for an interview, but Powell delivers. His Larry the Magnificent sports an enigmatic expression—we detect a certain Koonsian exuberance—while behind him floats a row of illustrated masterpieces familiar to any regular visitor to the Gagosian empire: Warhol's "Turquoise Marilyn" (purchased by hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen from collector Stefan Edlis in a 2007 private deal brokered by Gagosian), a 1963 spray enamel work by David Smith, and a painting from Twombly's 2005 Bacchus series, one of which is owned by Aby Rosen and until recently hung in the lobby of the Gramercy Park Hotel.

Signs point to yes. At least we like to think so, as do our friends at the Society for Publication Designers, who on Tuesday evening in New York City will host "Do It with Illustration: Under the Influence with Today's Most Arresting Illustrators," a panel discussion with some of the illustration world's brightest young stars: Peter Arkle, Juliette Borda, Christopher Silas Neal, Tim O'Brien, Katherine Streeter, and Jillian Tamaki (that's her illustration at left).

You know them, you love them, or at least you've seen their work everywhere from The New York Times Book Review (one of our favorite venues for intriguing images: how great was last week's 1961 Sam Falk cover photo?) to the design-savvy, impeccably groomed world of Bumble & Bumble. Come Tuesday, moderator Mark Heflin, director of American Illustration and American Photography, will pepper the panelists with questions about how they "tackle a broad range of topics and their perspectives (illustratively speaking) on politics, work, life, and love." Get there early for a pre-show screening of the American Illustration 25th Anniversary Timeline movie, in which 25 illustrators were each asked to illustrate one year in AI's 25-year publishing history. Another reason to be prompt? Three words: free signed posters.

Dr. Sketchy is not to be confused with Mr. Sketch, he of the rakishly angled beret and addictively scented markers. No, Dr. Sketchy is something else entirely: it's "what happens when cabaret meets art school." Now "the ultimate alternative life-drawing class" is joining forces with leading underground artists to launch Dr. Sketchy's ArtStar series. The fun kicks off this Saturday in New York City with guest artist Ron English (pictured at right), whose work you'll surely recall having seared into your brain throughout Morgan Spurlock's 2004 McDocumentary, Supersize Me. "Burlesque queen Amber Ray will be styled as Ron's bovine pinup Cathy Cowgirl and will pose in a set out of his paintings," artist and Dr. Sketchy's event host Molly Crabapple tells us. "Artists will listen to Ron's albums (he's a musician as well as an artist), and Ron himself will be coming down from Beacon [New York] to sign copies of his books and share a drink with us." As for how to win the "booze and prizes" up for grabs at every Dr. Sketchy's session, "Technical skill will get you a long way, but we fall for wit every time," she advises. For more information and to purchase tickets before they sell out, visit drsketchy.com.

Although now retired from his Daily Monster routine, our friend Stefan Bucher has taken pen to ink in front of a camera once more to record this special New Year's Message:

"Merry Mondrian Christmas" might have raised some legal hackles, and "Christmas, De Stijl Style" doesn't roll off most tongues, so Bob Staake went with "Minimalist Christmas" as the title of the holiday-hued pseudoMondrian that adorns the cover of The New Yorker's winter fiction issue, now on newsstands. This is the illustrator, designer, and author's fourth New Yorker cover in 2008, and it's been a good year. Time just named Staake's glowing "O"(bama) cover of The New Yorker's November 17 issue as the best magazine cover of 2008. Check out Staake's animated version of that cover here.

Frank Gehry's Superlight chair for Emeco is reimagined by Parsons student Garrett Pruter as "Disco Chair," designed to be covered in mirrored glass tiles and suspended from the ceiling.

Sure, Frank Gehry's designs look great, and some of them even have a good beat, but can you dance to them? Now you can, thanks to Garrett Pruter, an illustration student at Parsons the New School for Design who has reimagined Gehry's Superlight chair, the 6.5-pound aluminum wonder designed for Emeco, as a disco ball. Pruter's "Disco Chair" (pictured above, at right) is just one of the tweaked Superlights that resulted from a semester-long collaboration among Parsons, Emeco, and Design Within Reach. See them all tomorrow evening, when DWR hosts a reception for the project at its Chelsea studio in New York City. From 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., Parsons Illustration chair (get it? chair!) Steven Guarnaccia, Emeco's Dan Fogelson, and the student-creators will be on hand to discuss the designs, which also include a Superlight sprouting long locks of hair and Paul Kim's transformation of Gehry's Superlight into a comic book tale (click "continued..." to see it). The designs will be on view through Friday at DWR in Chelsea.

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The New York Observer has done a bang-up job of covering the long and winding (did we mention long?) road to the White House, and while we hope that the post-election world doesn't mean an end to stellar, sprawling features written by Jason Horowitz, it did bring a fresh look to the front page of the salmon-hued weekly. The Observer's November 10 issue replaces the Robert Grossman campaign comics that have dominated the lead graphic slot for months with the artist's Claymation-esque sculptures of the candidates: a beaming Obama (cover line: "O Beautiful") and a positively cherubic—if much smaller—John McCain. Images of the sculptures, backed by cloud-strewn fields of opposing colors, accompany the Observer staff's hour-by-hour coverage of Tuesday's "Barackfest in New York" and Horowitz's election night reporting from Grant Park.

Meanwhile, the Observer is offering limited-edition posters of recent campaign-themed cover art. A must for those who find themselves within the intersecting Venn diagram circles of Political Junkies and Star Trek fans, Drew Friedman's "Be Logical, Captain!" (pictured at left) depicts McCain as a bumbling Captain Kirk while, at his left hand, a Vulcanized Obama/Spock keeps his cool. Each of the 200 custom-printed posters (yours for $99.50 plus shipping and handling) is signed and numbered by Friedman.