"Rosie's Walk" by Pat Hutchins (Random House Children's Books, Red Fox Edition, London 2001) - Part 2

A classic book, published in Britain originally in 1968 by The Bodley Head Children's Books. It was the author's first book which led to dozens of others and a very distinguished career as a writer and an illustrator. Here's a link to a comprehensive biography on Pat Hutchins (born 1942 in Yorkshire) and a catalogue of her other books: http://www.yourlibrary.ws/childrens_webpage/e-author62000.htm

It's so great to watch the fox going from one disaster to another while Rosie walks unflappable along the farmyard. If only it was like that in the adult world, the bad guys always getting caught and punished before causing any mischief - the bankers for example...

"Rosie's Walk" by Pat Hutchins (Random House Children's Books, Red Fox Edition, London 2001) - Part 1

"The Avengers Annual 1975" - Marvel Comics International 1975

I've always been fascinated by the compositions, the colours and the angles these artists came up with in order to create drama and suspense - even though I never actually read them! I've picked just a few frames out of the many hundreds in this book to illustrate how stunning and powerful they are. The creators were: Don Heck (drawings), Frank Giacoia & Mike Esposito (inking), G. Wein (colours), Roy Thomas (blue-pencil) and S. Laferman (lettering). Great stuff.

"Tmothy Dalton", portrait by Ian Pollock

I've been saving this page from one of the Sunday supplements (I can't remember which) for over 20 years. I was - and still am - a huge fan of Ian Pollock who produced this and so many other great portraits. The face is, of course, Timothy Dalton as he looked in the eighties - being the star in two James Bond movies, The Living Daylights(1987) and Licence To Kill(1989). I featured some of Ian Pollock's superb illustrations on previous posts and I'm hoping to find and buy some more books with his illustrations.
http://picturesfromanoldbook.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/king-lear-w-shakespeare-illustrated-by.html

"The Tale Of Cross-Eyed Lefty Of Tula And The Steel Flea"(part 3) by Nikolai Leskov, illustrated by Nikolai Kuzmin

I am very grateful to fellow blogger http://xixvek.wordpress.com/ who provided me with the full name of the artist who illustrated this book - Nikolai Kuzmin (1890-1987). He also pointed out this link on the artist http://www.worldcat.org/wcidentities/lccn-n82-141501 which suggests that there where 8 different editions of this book published in Russian and English between 1960 and 1967 (my book being one of those, I guess).

"The Tale Of Cross-Eyed Lefty Of Tula And The Steel Flea" by Nikolai Leskov - Part 2

The printing quality of this book is stunning -  the colours are still as vibrant as they would have been the day it was printed. I reckon it was before WW2, looking at the style of the drawings. The Soviet Government of the time must have had a large budget for literature - and lots of cheap labour. Curiously, the text is in English (maybe it was produced for export - who knows). Here's a good link for the writer's biography: http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/literature/nikolay-leskov/

"Lefty, The Tale Of Cross-Eyed Lefty Of Tula And The Steel Flea" by Nikolai Leskov (Progress Publishers, Moscow)

This is a very important piece of Russian literature judging by a small research I did on the Internet - I haven't had the time to read it myself yet. It was written in 1881 by Nikolai Leskov(1831-1895) and you can find a synopsis on the story in wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Cross-eyed_Lefty_from_Tula_and_the_Steel_Flea I'm not sure when this particular edition came out which annoys me a bit as I would like to know more about the illustrator of whom there is nothing online! His (or her) name is credited in the back of the book as N. Kuzmin but there are no other clues. If any blog readers recognise the name and style I'd be grateful if they could send me a note. I think these pictures are truly fantastic. Just taking a close look at those faces and poses - they reveal nationality, emotions, social status, intelligence of each character before you even start reading the story.

Beetles Series, 2012 (Harris)

Here are some more pictures I'll be showing with Society6 - the link is: http://society6.com/sofo7 There are thousands of other artists on this site, quite a number of pictures each so it's incredibly difficult to look for anything specific. Some of the work is very imaginative and of high quality but it varies a lot. We'll see what happens...

"Knapweed" 2012

I've recently added some of my work for sale on the Society6 website - any comments are welcomed. I was going to post a link to it but their website seems to be offline at the moment for maintenance so I'll try again tomorrow.

"A Book Of Wizards" - Part 2, Illustrations by Robin Jacques(1966)

Robin Jacques (1920-1995), was an other great name in the 20th century British illustration. Self-taught - he illustrated classics such as Gulliver's Travels, Don Quixote, Arabian Nights, Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales and many many others. Here's a link to his obituary in The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-robin-jacques-1612378.html

You have to look closely at these pictures to appreciate the excellent draughtsmanship and the enormous amount of work and care that went into them (Damien Hirst eat your heart out). The faces of the characters are so real you think you might have met them in the past, yet the lines in the drawings are so delicate and sensitive creating space and movement. You can even detect humor in their expressions and postures. Apparently Robin Jacques learned to draw by copying figures from books on human anatomy for years while later he began using life models so Art Colleges are not always the only way to get into Art.