the last: May 2010

Monday, May 31, 2010

Monday Matticchio - Little Bird

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Sunday Safari - Interior invasions

Their habitats taken over by humans,

maybe it's time for wildlife to move in...

William Curtis Rolph, photo from Six Deyrolle Denizens

Marco Cazzato, Non pensare agli elefanti

Chris van Allsburg, illustration from Jumanji

Maria L. Kirk, illustration from The Cuckoo Clock, 1914

Rafal Olbinski, Suppression of appearances

Karen Knorr, Chateau Chambord, The Kings Reception

Banksy, Elephant in the Room

Domenico Gnoli, from Bestiario Moderno

thanks to Giornale Nuovo's archives

Mikel Uribetxeberria, two photos from Animalia

Chiho Makino

Sandy Skoglund, Revenge of the Goldfish, 1981

Shaun Tan, Tales From Outer Suburbia

Saturday, May 29, 2010

The Ladybirds Parade

Nicoletta Ceccoli, Angelica

Our insistent visions fly

where the human and the animal collide

Boris Bucan, The Firebird and Petruska, 1983

Gunther Kieser, Ballet Woche, 1984

Raquel Aparicio, illustration from Russian Fairy Tales

Lila de Nobili, French Vogue cover from Graphis 19, 1947

thanks to Sandiv999's fantastic vintage collection on flickr

Dorothea Tanning, costume design for Bayou, 1951

Marco Wagner

Kate Edith Gough, late 1870s photocollage

Sergei Solomko, thanks to Peacock's Garden

Emanuel Schongut, cover for Push Pin Graphic

Alberto Savinio, La fidele epouse, 1930-31

thanks to A Journey Round my Skull

Bogdan Zwir, Silence

Colette Calascione, Bird Girl

Mireia Pérez

Jan Lenica, The Visit movie poster, 1965

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Delicate worlds

Peter Parnall is an American artist who has written or illustrated over 80

children's books about animals and nature. I am not yet familiar with the volumes,

but I am quite fond of the covers' airy and delicate pen and ink cover illustrations

and wanted to share them. I discovered these beauties at www.pagebooks.net.

Here is a bit of bio as told by Parnall himself in an interview on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website:

"I went to Cornell in 1954 because I wanted to be a veterinarian, but I had a little too much fun.

Got pneumonia when I took my mid-terms in freshman year and flunked them all. After I left Cornell,

I went out West to train horses. Came my father’s birthday, so I drew him a picture of a horse.

He hung it on his wall and told me I should go back to school and be an artist. So I got in the car

and went down to the Pratt Institute with the picture of the horse. They’d already given the entrance exam

so I saw the dean of admissions and told him, “You might as well let me in because I’m coming here anyway next year.

Why waste a year of my time?” I went there for two years. Got a little bored, so I quit. The first job

I got was art director of a little magazine called Travel Magazine. Meanwhile, I had a freelance business

in advertising. Advertising was fun. Great fun. My clients included Mr. Potato Head, G.I. Joe, restaurants,

and all kinds of things. But later I got tired of convincing people they should buy stuff they don’t need."

This lovely cartoon about a dog's very serious inner conflict was directed by Danish animator Siri Melchior in 2002 for the British Channel 4 Television. If you like it too, I recommend watching or downloading a higher-res version here. Siri Melchior currently works as a director at the multimedia and animation studio Trunk, which she founded with two fellow Royal College of Art students. You can read more about her and the making of the film here.