I’ve pointed this out before, but it’s worth mentioning again. Lovers of beautiful illustration, and classic illustration from the “Golden Age” in particular, will tell you that computer monitors, for all of their glowing, zillions of colors brilliance, fall behind print when it comes to viewing images. (Seeing the original drawings or paintings in person is always first, of course).

You can get used to viewing images on the screen; and unless you stop and compare, you can forget that computer screens are low-resolution!

Images in print are created by a process in which the tiny dots of color that make up the image are packed 300 per linear inch (2.54cm), or “300dpi”, while even the highest resolution computer monitors in common use display images as somewhere between 100 and 110 pixels per inch (ppi).

If you can find an onscreen image the same size as a printed image and can hold them up together, you’ll see the difference. When it comes to crispness, sharpness and detail, print wins.

I bring this up because I’m reminded how beautiful classic illustration is in print when ever I open a copy of Jim Vedeboncoeur’s ImageS (see my previous post on The Vadeboncoeur Collection of ImageS).

ImageS 11, which just brightened up my mailbox, and my day, is no exception.

ImageS goes beyond even the normal high-resolution methods of ordinary color printing and uses screenless stochastic printing, in which the dot pattern is rendered imperceptible, giving you an image that the closest you will get to viewing the original art by way of magazine or book format reproduction.

In addition, 30 of the reproductions in this issue were reproduced directly from the original art, not from the printed illustrations.

This issue is guest-curated by Susan McKinsey Goldberg and features work from the collection of Susan and Eric Goldberg. It continues the ImageS tradition of showcasing great classic illustrators, well known, lesser known and even unknown, including three previously unpublished paintings by J.C. Leyendecker, and beautiful works by Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, Willy Pogany and more.

The page for ImageS 11 features a small animated-GIF slideshow that doesn’t at all do justice to the real images, but gives you a small notion of the variety of artists and styles.

Images 11 is 44 pages of cover-to cover great illustrations, most full size at 9″ x 12″, on 100 lb coated stock magazine format for $25 ($27.50 USD outside the US); less expensive and more beautiful than most of the illustration books you’ll find at Borders or Barnes & Noble, as if they’d even have a clue who these amazing artists are in a typical bookstore (small independent booksellers excepted, of course).

Worth noting: they only printed 2,000 copies.

(Images above, left to right: Umberto Brunelleschi, George Studdy, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, J.C. Leyendecker)