The Dublin Sketchers group have a ‘Sketchcrawl’ fundraising event this Saturday 15th May. It will start out in the Grand Canal area before moving down past their Leeson St offices and the Concert Hall to the Grafton St area, with pauses at each location for people to sketch. More info here.
Frank Frazetta, the fantasy painter and illustrator whose images of sinewy warriors and lush vixens graced paperback novels, album covers and comic books for decades and became something close to the contemporary visual definition of the sword-and-sorcery genres, died Monday after suffering a stroke the night before. He was 82.
Frazetta was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Feb. 9, 1928. By age 8, he was studying at the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Art. One of his key influences was Hal Foster, the great comic-strip artist whose “Tarzan” became a compass point for Frazetta’s own jungle scenes.
By 16, Frazetta was working in the booming field of illustration in New York. He toiled under Al Capp on “Li’l Abner” and on his own strip, “Johnny Comet,” in the early 1950s. In comic books, he worked on “The Shining Knight” and a western hero called “Ghost Rider,” but his fame would come with a paintbrush and in a more sensual sector when, in the 1960s, he began painting covers for paperbacks and magazines.
It was his covers for the “Conan” paperbacks of the 1960s, especially, that created a new overheated vision of fantasy realms.
Guillermo del Toro, the Oscar-nominated co-writer of “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which he also directed along with the “Hellboy” films, said that Frazetta was nothing less than “an Olympian artist that defined fantasy art for the 20th century.” The filmmaker, reached Monday in New Zealand where he is working on a two-film adaptation of “The Hobbit,” said Frazetta’s influence is difficult to explain to people outside the fantasy world, just as Norman Rockwell would be an elusive figure to define for someone unfamiliar with the U.S. heartland.
“He gave the world a new pantheon of heroes,” the filmmaker said by e-mail. “He took the mantle from J. Allen St. John and Joseph Clement Coll and added blood, sweat and sexual power to their legacy…. He somehow created a second narrative layer for every book he ever illustrated.”
Monday saw the announcement of Ireland’s first children’s laureate.
Nominations were open for writers/illustrators with a body of high quality children’s writing or illustration – who have also had a positive impact on readers as well as other writers and illustrators. (In other words… not just anybody.)
The inaugural award went to Siobhán Parkinson – a stallworth of Irish children’s books, advocay and general soap-boxery. And… well Siobhán says it all better in her own words in her own words.
Chris Ware’s solution to an annual 500 cover feature of Fortune Magazine proved a bit too close to the bone. Daniel Pelavin’s clean typographic solution won out in the end. Here’s a selection of previous cover designs.
Here’s some recent work created by members of Illustrators Ireland (IGI). Each member has submitted one of their favourite illustrations from the previous month, either commissioned or personal. Follow the link below to see all this month’s entries.
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Children’s Book Ireland have announced details of their CBI Conference :Nurturing the Seed: Prospects and Possibilities for Children’s Books.
Taking place in The National Gallery on May 15th-16th it features a presentation by Spanish Illustrator Elena Odriozola (image above), current UK Children’s Laureate Anthony Browne (image below) as well as Marcus Sedgwick, Nikki Gamble, Sarah Rees Brennan, Jane Mitchell, Natasha Mac a’Bháird, Kieran Mark Crowley, Peter Prendergast, Michael Rosen, Siobhán Parkinson, Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin and Ireland’s first Children’s Laureate.
For more details and how to purchase tickets visit the CBI website.
The Gallery Zozimus on Francis St in Dublin is opening its doors tomorrow to welcome the dreamboat laureate – chaperoned by illustrator Annie West – and Irish Times Artoon illustrator and poet Tom Mathews.
The exhibition of illustration will open today at 6pm (SHARP) and will be presided over by author, broadcaster and impresario Charlie Connelly.
Unlike many art exhibition openings , this will be a bit different as there will be no mention whatever of the “parallel abstraction of shape and form whilst manoeuvring between the conflict and tension of light and shadow in the emotional chaos of the unconscious symbolism”. Delight the eye and treat yourself to a piece of really fine art that will make you laugh today and tomorrow.
Does this man even want to be found? Uncompromising German film director Werner Herzog reads the children’s classic Where’s Waldo (no not really).
