Secret Still

James Jean is one of the most prolific artists ever, if you look at the drawings, sketches, paintings, illustrations, comics covers, etc., and he’s also super nice and very calm. Lucky for us, the plethora of work that he produces also means that he has to update his website fairly often to stay current. Just such a thing has happened, and you should take some time out of your busy schedule of masturbating and eating nachos to go check out the slew of new work he’s dropped on the unsuspecting internets. His sketchbooks alone should keep you occupied until sometime around dawn.

James Jean

A little illustrator-y goodness for you this morning, in the form of Iain Macarthur. Combining photorealistic drawings with doodles and squiggles, Iain manages to make two styles of illustration into a seamlessly connected new one. What I like even more, is that he gives depth and dimension to the doodle portions of his illustrations, not a difficult extra step, but something I don’t see often that gives the drawing so much more. Take note, doodlers, if you shade some shit, you can make things more interesting to look at. You’ll still be miles away from Macarthur’s glory, but you’ll be one step closer to your own.

Iain Macarthur

For the most part, and speaking only for myself here, dreams are strange, but not overly so. Generally I dream about the kinds of things I see or encounter, or could encounter in the world. My dreams aren’t peopled with fantastic and terrible monsters or surrealist images of the world come apart. I don’t think the same can be said for Paris-based artist Sebastien Faraut, aka NIARk1. His jagged, colorful, kinetic style makes me think that his dreams take place in a dimension otherwise undiscovered by dreamers like me, where monsters consume the world in day-glo hues like a Barbarella acid trip through the South American jungle. Maybe it’s because his painting style reminds me of Jeff Soto, but Faraut has inspired me to pick up a brush for the first time in a long time, which is the only compliment ever worth giving. Now I just need to come up with the dreams to back up my paintbrush. Let’s hope some late night Thai food does the trick.

NIARk1

Like a French version of Mike Giant without the tattoo influence, Monsieur Qui love ladies, lines, bikes and type. And like Giant, loves them enough to draw them a hundred times in different ways and never lose interest. That shit is the Pope’s dope.

Monsieur Qui found via Colagene

Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the world’s foremost authority on warm colors and cranking out new typefaces like a coked up Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Mr. Alex Varanese. Varanese’s work embodies San Francisco’s strange combination of cutting edge industry and old-as-dirt architecture, shuffled up with Autumn’s palette, and hammered from each side into multidimensional masterworks. And if sentence structure like that doesn’t show you just how talented he is, well, anyone who wants a time machine that badly can’t be all evil.

Alex Varanese

How have you not been on my radar before, Graham Robinson? With your birches, boats, and beards, it seems like we should’ve been acquainted a while ago. Well, it’s nice to meet you now. You keep that good shit coming, and I’ll make sure you’ll always have free beer when you’re in San Francisco. That’s what friends are for.

Graham Robinson

I don’t really know what came over me a couple of years ago, maybe my rational mind got a lot stronger, or maybe I started to think more simply, or maybe aliens put a microchip in my brain, but whatever happened I started to be more drawn to geometric works. Something about those simple shapes makes my brain feel like there are electric pop-rocks dancing in it. So, of course I was smitten with Matthew Lyons’ work from the get go. What’s not to love? He’s got geometric shapes, a vintage color palette, and retro-futuristic subject matter. If that ain’t a hat-trick to perfection, I don’t know what is.

Matthew Lyons found via Drawn!

The things that I don’t know about Baltimore could and does fill many books. Today I learned one new thing about Baltimore, and that is that it’s the place where Jeremy Enecio lives and works. Not a huge fact, maybe, but significant in that Enecio’s work has a controlled madness that makes my mind salivate a little bit. Even better is his tendency to use several different painting mediums as well as digital, which is both impressive and envy-inspiring. So cross one more thing out of the books of shit I don’t know about Baltimore, also, Baltimore was founded in 1729. Thank you, Wikipedia.

Jeremy Enecio

What with being a painter, designer, illustrator, pinstriper, and a few other little pies that she manages to have her fingers in, it’s amazing to me that Josie Morway has time to sleep. And who knows, maybe she doesn’t sleep, maybe she keeps both eyes wide open and focused in a state somewhere between meditation and cat-like alertness. Who can really say? But what I do know is that anyone who can dedicate enough time and effort to painting beautiful type combined with beautiful birds is a-ok with me. If I wasn’t afraid that she would break my hand with the force of her focus, I would high five that sleep-deprived magic woman.

Josie Morway

Let’s ease back into this before I head off for another long weekend. We’ll start off with Mateusz Kołek, an illustrator with the kind of understanding of color and line weight that only comes from days of staring at a blank space, stoned out of your mind, Molly Hatchett playing in the background, and a pencil in your hand like a cobra ready to strike. I’m not saying that’s the only way to go about it, but it’s the best way. I learned it from Da Vinci in a bar in Alabama one night in ‘65. I think Kołek knew it instinctively, like bears know to hibernate in the Winter. Jesus, what the hell am I talking about?

Mateusz Kołek