Boing Boing » illustration

HOWTO kill a tiger (1902)

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 23:03:42 +0000

The Public Domain Review has a nice gallery of plates from Lieutenant Colonel Frank Sheffield's 1902 book "How I killed the tiger; being an account of my encounter with a royal Bengal tiger, with an appendix containing some general information about India," which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like:

My main purpose in writing this little book, was to place in a permanent form a description of my wonderful preservation from death in a chance encounter with a Royal Bengal Tiger. My life had been adventurous up to that time. I had shot big game of various kinds. But this episode, so marvellous in itself, so important in its influence upon my after life and character, marks the close of my career as a hunter of big game.

Illustrative plates from How I Killed the Tiger (1902)

Record Eater: 1967 record player that ran in any orientation

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 02:46:31 +0000

Every single thing about this ad is great: the illustration, the typography, the industrial design of the gadget, the copy. What a beauty.

The Record Eater ‘45 rpm’ record player ad, 1967. (via BruceS)

It's a face! A skull! A mushroom! Psychedelic drawing lesson

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 14 May 2013 01:58:09 +0000

Katana Leigh sez, "I want to provide memorable ways to learn to draw that are interesting and visually entertaining. The proportions of a red spotted button mushroom are the same as a skull and these LSD colors provide maximum contrast so you can see the process and hopefully copy it. Not your boring art lessons but a new way to think about seeing."

How To Draw A Skull 2: when a mushroom is like a face (Thanks, Katana!)

Shell's racist pesticide ad, 1957

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:02:09 +0000

From 1957, a disturbing, patronizing, racist Shell ad for pesticides, selling the superiority of big agribusiness.

Weekend Event - White

Man with pince-nez & smart suit hurls trusses disdainfully

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 11 May 2013 18:38:53 +0000

They just don't make ads like this anymore. "Guy with pince-nez" is great visual shorthand for "Authority figure."

Contest Entry.. Away with trusses!

Hyperbole and a Half returns with another episode on depression

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:22:21 +0000

The amazing and wonderful Hyperbole and a Half is back, with the long-overdue continuation of the 2011 post on depression. This isn't an entirely upbeat post (as you might expect), but it is every bit as indispensable and smart and great as the previous entries. And it's an ultimately hopeful one, too.

And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something — it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.
It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two

Eschersketch: automated tessellated Escher-esque drawing toy

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:37:46 +0000

Levskaya's Eschersketch is a GitHub-hosted web-toy that produces Escher style tessellated drawings that are very good fun to make and elaborate upon.

Eschersketch (Thanks, Hugh!)

NeoLucida: kickstarting a new version of the Old Masters' favorite drawing gadget

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:13:55 +0000

Pablo Garcia and Golan Levin, two celebrated art profs and dead media specialists, have launched a fantastically successful kickstarter to recreate the Camera Lucida, a gadget much favored by the Old Masters. It uses an optical trick to superimpose the scene in front of you on a sheet of paper that you can trace in order to produce highly realistic drawings. They're producing a limited one-time run of them (a $35 pledge gets you one) (assuming, as with all Kickstarters, that this actually gets made -- caveat emptor!), and then the designs will be released as open source hardware for anyone to make.

The NeoLucida is designed to fit in a purse or bag, and the creators want to create a gallery of art made with it -- each one comes with a postage-paid card for you to send in one of your drawings

NeoLucida - A Portable Camera Lucida for the 21st Century (via Beyond the Beyond)

Here is the photo of the Devil probing a boy's head you were looking for

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:50:40 +0000

1847 was a banner year for phrenology textbook covers.

"The Devil Examining the Head of a Boy" Frontspiece to a Manual on Phrenology; 1847, The Wellcome Library

Mousetronaut: kids' picture book about mouse in space, written by a Shuttle pilot

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 May 2013 12:47:58 +0000

Moustetronaut is a lovely picture book by Mark Kelly, a former Space Shuttle pilot and husband of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. It tells the story of Meteor, an experimental NASA mouse who saves a shuttle mission by scurrying into a tight control-panel seam and retrieving a critical lost key. The story is very (very) loosely based on a true story -- there was a Meteor, but he never left his cage, but he did indeed display delight and aplomb in a microgravity environment. The whole rescue thing is a fiction, albeit an adorable one.

What really makes this book isn't its basis in "truth," but rather the amazing illustrations by CF Payne, who walks a very fine line between cute and grotesque, with just enough realism to capture the excitement of space and just enough caricature to make every spread instantly engaging. There's also a very admirable economy of words in the book itself (which neatly balances a multi-page afterword about the space program, with a good bibliography of kid-appropriate space websites and books for further reading). It's just the right blend of beautifully realized characters -- Meteor is particularly great -- and majestic illustrations of space and space vehicles.

Moustetronaut

A beautiful bacterium

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 06 May 2013 16:41:55 +0000

David Goodsell of the Scripps Research Institute made this lovely watercolor illustration of a cell of Mycoplasma mycoides. This bacterium is the cause of a deadly respiratory disease that affects cattle and other cud-chewing animals.

If you've ever read much about zoonoses — diseases that pass from animals to humans — then you know that the domestication of livestock played a huge role in introducing many diseases to people. Living in close proximity to the animals we ate provided ample opportunities for those animals' diseases to jump over to us. What's interesting about Mycoplasma mycoides is that it represents a disease of animals that seems to have its origins in domestication, as well.

In 2012, scientists found evidence that suggests domesticating livestock — a process that resulted in closer living conditions for the animals and in animals from one herd being moved to other herds they likely wouldn't have otherwise had contact with — helped Mycoplasma mycoides evolve and spread. Today, different species of Mycoplasma mycoides cause a range of diseases that can kill between 10 and 70 percent of the cows they infect.

Goodsell's illustration is an attempt to show all the different parts of the bacterial cell, in the shapes, sizes, locations, and concentrations that those parts take in the real world. If you go to his site, you can see a legend explaining what everything is.

New Canadian $5 celebrates the space programme

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 01 May 2013 19:00:04 +0000

I'm pretty fond of the design of the new Canadian plastic $5 note, which is much improved if you draw Spock ears, eyebrows and hairline on old Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

The new Canadian $5 bill has just destroyed every single other piece of currency in the world (IMO) (farm9.staticflickr.com)

Monsters and Legends: kids' reference book on the origin of monsters

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:55:59 +0000

Monsters and Legends is part of the fabulous debut lineup of titles from Flying Eye, a kids' imprint spun out of London's NoBrow (they're the publishers of recently reviewed books like Welcome to Your Awesome Robot and Akissi). The book, written by Davide Cali and illustrated by Garbiella Giandelli, is a fascinating reference work for kids 7 and up about the curious origins of the monsters of the popular imagination. The book recounts the odd history of stories of mermaids, chupacabras, cyclopses, dragons, the Loch Ness Monster, and other cryptozoology favorites. It's a great balance between fascination with monsters and lore and a skeptical inquiry into how widespread beliefs can be overturned by evidence and rational inquiry -- a real "magic of reality" book.

The illustrations in this book represent a range of engaging styles, and they bring it to life for even younger readers. My five year old and I spent several bedtimes on this, flipping through the pages, and stopping when a picture caught her eye. I had to interpret the text for her -- the language was often over her head -- but the stories absolutely grabbed her and it's become a family favorite.

As with other Flying Eye titles, this one is out in the UK right now and coming to the US on June 11 (here's a pre-order link). As a one-time monster kid who's doing his best to raise another one, this one gets my unreserved stamp of approval.

MONSTERS AND LEGENDS [Flying Eye]

Monsters and Legends [Amazon UK]

Superheroes designed by little girls

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:38:10 +0000

Alex Law's "little girls R better at designing heroes than you" is a great, occasionally updated Tumblr that features illustrations of superheroes based on the hero costumes little girls have made for themselves.

Kids are more impressionable than you, but kids can also be less restricted by cultural gender norms than you. Kids are more creative than you, and they're better at making superheroes than you.
This is a mini art project where I draw superheroes based on the costumes worn by little girls.

little girls R better at designing heroes than you (via MeFi)

Schwarzenegger v Predator tee (in the style of Edward Gorey)

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:27:47 +0000

Ape Lad sez, "I've got a shirt for sale on woot tonight. It depicts a former governor of California being stalked by a nine-foot-tall, fishnet clad, metal faced hunter with dreadlocks, in a style I hope comes somewhere near the cross hatched wonderfulness of Edward Gorey."

P is for Prey (Thanks, Ape Lad!)

Haunted Mansion/Batman mashup

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:08:26 +0000

Oh hell YES. DeviantArtist ArtistAbe has crossed Batman with the stretching portraits at the Disneyland Haunted Mansion. His substitutions are extremely well-thought-through and well-wrought. The fact that these are DC comics mixed into the Disney/Marvelverse gives it all a rogerrabbitesque mind-bend, too:

Harley Quinn and Killer Croc-
This was the last one I did because I was still unsure what I wanted to do with Harley Quinn's outfit. Sure I could have made it easier on myself just to put her in her standard costume, but I'd miss the opportunity to put her in a dress. I'm not that great at fashion, but this was one of the ideas I had for her outfit that I finally settled on. Pretty happy with how it turned out. :) I thought about giving her the umbrella for a split second, but then it's Harley! So I gave her a croquet mallet. Croc was the obvious choice to replace the crocodile.
Joker and Scarface-
The original portrait had his pants down, so who better to pull that off than the Joker! He's doing the drinking water while still having the puppet talk trick, just fyi. I didn't intend to have at least two Batman characters in each portrait, but it kind of happened that way. I've always liked the Scarface character so I jumped at the chance to draw him in this piece...

Haunted Arkham Asylum (via IO9)

More dazzling design/art from We Buy Your Kids

David Pescovitz — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:44:40 +0000

From the Instagram feed of hyper-talented Australian design/illustration duo We Buy Your Kids (aka Sonny Day and Biddy Maroney): the cover art for a 2008 split 7" vinyl by Cloud Control and Telekinesis! and poster for a 2012 Eleanor Friedberger concert. webuyyourkids on Instagram

Why PLAY pie-anna when you can VAMP?

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 02:37:51 +0000

As far back as the 1920s, smart musicians have known that your ability to hit the notes isn't nearly so important as your ability to vamp.

Vamping

Imaginary Glorp Gum becomes a reality! Sort of!

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 16:06:44 +0000

Zack sez, "Artist Brad McGinty (the "Xenomorph Anatomy" T-shirts) has a new website celebrating the fake history of Glorp Gum, best described as Bazooka Joe by way of Rat Fink. The site includes an elaborate narrative for Glorp Gum, tons of merchandise (including T-shirts, stickers and yes, actual gum) and this hilarious animated commercial that parodies the classic "Mr. Owl" spots for Tootsie Roll Pops"

GLORP GUM! The only gum that comes with a free T-Shirt! (Thanks, Zack!)

Mr Unpronounceable Adventures, spectacularly weird graphic novel in a Lovecraftian/Burroughsian vein

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:00:36 +0000

Mr Unpronounceable Adventures is a book of comics by ~~Australian~~ New Zealand surrealist artist Tim Molloy in a Lovecraftian vein. But that only scratches the surface here. Molloy is incredibly fucking weird, and not always in a funny-ha-ha way (though there's plenty of that). The story loops around and around, almost making sense, almost following a narrative, returning to themes, to iconic panels, full of menace and hectic hilarity. It's really good. It's really strange.

Here's what the publisher says about it:

Welcome to The City Of The Ever Open Eye. A dreamworld metropolis of surreal wonder and dark nightmare. Nestled between the scorched wastes of The Endless Plain and the rolling expanse of The Hundred Year Ocean stands The City, eternal and yet ever changing. Through its labyrinthine alleys and dusty plazas stumbles Mr Unpronounceable.
Seeker of secrets. Homeless necromancer. Madman.
Join our hero as he lurches, sweating and delirious, from one horrifically comedic nightmare to the next. Collected here for the first time are the complete adventures of Mr Unpronounceable, freshly squeezed from the feverish pen of psychedelic artist, Tim Molloy. So grab your Shrivelled Homunculus, ingest that alien hallucinogen, and delve into the feverish brain of Mr Unpronounceable.
The squirming secrets of the aching void await you!

There's a lot of Naked Lunch in here. There's a lot of puckered orifices. There's a lot of grotesque genitals and breasts. Reading it sometimes hurt my head. But in a good way.

Mr Unpronounceable Adventures [publisher's site, best for Australian buyers]

Mr Unpronounceable Adventures [Book Depository, cheaper shipping outside of Australia]

Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair this weekend

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:18:27 +0000

Hugh D'Andrade sez, "The Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair takes place this weekend in San Francisco! I'll will be one of the speakers -- I am giving a slideshow all about the series of posters I have created for the Anarchist Bookfair over the last 10 years, called 'Anarchist Bookfair Artist: How I Tried and Failed to Solve the Anarchist Image Problem' on Sunday at 1pm. Here's my Flickr set of these 10 posters, each available for high-res download on a CC Attribution-Noncommercial license! And if you like, my Etsy shop, where I have these for sale."

Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair

Geek A Week's Len Peralta Draws Your D & D and RPG Characters

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:43:20 +0000

Len sez, "A few years ago, you posted about my Monster By Mail project. Since then I've drawn a lot of things including Cory for my Geek A Week project. Now I am doing something similar to Monster By Mail with RPG and D&D characters. I'm drawing people's characters for their character sheets. They get an 8.5 x 11 drawing and a 72 dpi version for their character sheet and online use. As long as it is not a licensed character, I will draw it. You can see all the characters I've drawn so far here."

Geek A Week's Len Peralta Draws Your D & D and RPG Characters (Thanks, Len!)

Einstein's book-plate design

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 20:45:44 +0000

Here's the design for Albert Einstein's ex-libris bookplate, which he apparently pasted into all his personal books. This is lovely.

The Awesome Doodle That Lets You Know This Book Belonged to Einstein

Book of maps by storytellers and artists

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:21:08 +0000

A Map of the World: The World According to Illustrators and Storytellers is a beautiful art-book of spectacular illustrated maps:

From the publisher's site (where you'll find lots more images):

Drawing a map means understanding our world a bit better. For centuries, we have used the tools of cartography to represent both our immediate surroundings and the world at large—and to convey them to others. On the one hand, maps are used to illustrate areal relationships, including distances, dimensions, and topographies. On the other, maps can also serve as projection screens for a variety of display formats, such as illustration, data visualization, and visual storytelling. In our age of satellite navigation systems and Google Maps, personal interpretations of the world around us are becoming more relevant. Publications, the tourism industry, and other commercial parties are using these contemporary, personal maps to showcase specific regions, to characterize local scenes, to generate moods, and to tell stories beyond sheer navigation. A new generation of designers, illustrators, and mapmakers are currently discovering their passion for various forms of illustrative cartography. A Map of the World is a compelling collection of their work—from accurate and surprisingly detailed representations to personal, naïve, and modernistic interpretations. The featured projects from around the world range from maps and atlases inspired by classic forms to cartographic experiments and editorial illustrations.

A Map of the World: The World According to Illustrators and Storytellers (via Kottke)

Custom Zelda motorcycle helmet art

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:00:10 +0000

Ara did a beautiful job decorating redditor phrenetiKz's motorcycle helmet with a monochrome, line-art Zelda motif. There's a wallpaper of the whole thing, too.

Local redditor finished her Zelda artwork on my helmet...AKA my Zelmet

Edward Gorey's illustrations for War of the Worlds

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 14:13:39 +0000

Zack sez, "Brain Pickings has a selection of illustrations for Edward Gorey's little-seen take on H.G. Wells' classic tale of Martian invasion. It's every bit as creepy as you'd think."

At the end of his time at Doubleday, Gorey illustrated a special edition of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds for the celebrated Looking Glass Library series, published in 1960 under the New York Review of Books Classics imprint. One of Gorey’s inimitable pen-and-ink drawings adorns the beginning of each chapter.

Edward Gorey’s Vintage Illustrations for H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (Thanks, Zack!)

Soviet futuristic illustrations of the 1970s

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 20:11:41 +0000

On IO9, Vincze Miklos rounds up some of the finest sovkitsch futuristic imagery from three 1970s issues of the Soviet YA technology magazine Youth Technics (1, 2, 3) and other sources, presenting a gallery of streamlined jetpack socialism.

Some of the most famous images of Soviet futurism come out of the 1920s and 30s, when the Revolution was young and propaganda posters were like stark works of realist art. But the nation continued to produce works of incredible futurism throughout its reign — including during the trippy period before the Iron Curtain fell in the late twentieth century. Here are some visions of tomorrow, from the USSR in the 1970s.

The groovy socialist world of 1970s Soviet futurism

Space-age bachelor pad poster/papercraft set

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 04:02:58 +0000

Marshall sez, "This paper scene is a collaboration between illustrator Derek Yaniger and Marshall Alexander. The result is this poster-sized template that you can either hang on the wall or cut to pieces to create the paper scene. We hope to make this template available for purchase soon."

HI-FI GUY (Thanks, Marshall)

Supervillains: DC meets the real world

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 20:56:43 +0000

Here's a remix of the DC supervillains crossed with real-world bad guys, courtesy of Brazilian graphic designer/illustrator Butcher Billy.

Legion of supervillains | Chill Hour (Thanks, Marine!)

Spanish civil war posters

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:48:57 +0000

Retronaut has collected a huge gallery of posters from both sides of the Spanish Civil War that come from the Biblioteca Nacional de España site.

1936-1939: Posters from the Spanish Civil War