Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon, collectively known as Teetering Bulb, are a an illustrator team living in Brooklyn. Their clients include Realms of Fantasy, Dover Publishing, Wizards of the Coast, Honest Tea and Tor.com.

They are also creators of webcomics; and Tor.com, home of Tor publishing (se my post on Tor.com) is hosting their short story webcomic, The Dreaded Question, as well as a new fantasy story King of an Endless Sky (image above, bottom), which has just started.

The latter, presumably because it only has two episodes, is still lacking page to page navigation. [Addendum: this has been addressed (see this post's comments), and the complete story is available from this page. As of this writing there are three pages, with new updates every Thursday.]

Their comics approach has a nice painted feeling, while still working within the traditional comics framework of color filled line drawings. Their illustration is more painterly, but still has a graphic, linear quality that gives it a particular visual charm.

Their blog features many of their works in various stages of creation, in addition to sketches, studies, anatomy drawings, and finished illustrations.

Their portfolio is basically a subset of blog posts, as are listings in the right hand column for sketchbooks and prints.

[Via LCSV4]

Though it’s been commonly accepted in Europe and Japan for may years, it’s finally creeping into common knowledge here in the U.S. that the medium of comics, or “graphic stories”, is not limited to — a: an audience of kids, and b: stories about steroid disasters in leotards grimacing and punching each other.

Comics is simply a medium, one that can be used to convey or talk about essentially anything, including reportage.

A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge is a graphic story about the disaster (both natural and political) of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

The story is published by Smith Magazine and written and drawn by Josh Neufeld, a member of the ACT-I-VATE comics collective and author of The Vagabonds, with consulting and editing from Jeff Newlet and Miles VanMeter.

A.D. was initially published as a webcomic, which you can still read online at Smith Magazine, and has now been released in book format.

There is a video interview on the making of the story on YouTube.

[Via Salon]

It’s not that often that I get excited about the the occasion of a single painting crossing the Atlantic Ocean, except for those occasions when it happens to be one of the finest paintings by one of history’s finest painters, and particularly if that painter is Johannes Vermeer.

Celebrating the 400th anniversary of the historic voyage of Henry Hudson (as in name of the river) from Amsterdam to New York (as in New Amsterdam), Vermeer’s The Milkmaid (De melkmeid, high resolution image here) will be on loan from Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from September 10 to November 29, 2009.

Historically, Vermeer’s works have not travelled often, though that seems to be happening more frequently these days, and The Milkmaid has not been on this side of the Atlantic since it was exhibited at the 1939 World’s Fair.

The painting, one of only 35 (give or take an attribution) by the enigmatic Dutch artist, is widely acknowledged to be one of his finest, and will be displayed in the company of the Met’s own astonishing collection of 5 Vermeers, including another pinnacle of his work (and my personal favorite), Young Woman with a Water Pitcher..

In both of these works, the humble subject of a woman pouring, or about to pour, liquid from one vessel to another is imbued with Vermeer’s almost magical command of light, pouring in through the vessel of a leaded glass window and drenching his physical objects in its liquid warmth.

The Girl With a Pearl Earring gets the glory because it has become a cultural icon, but it is in Vermeer’s more complete works like these that we see the master’s extraordinary abilities to best advantage.

The Met is also surrounding the Vermeers with works by Pieter de Hooch, Nicolaes Maes and other Vermeer contemporaries (see my post on Pieter de Hooch).

In addition, if you can make it to the exhibition, you are only a short distance from three more of Vermeer’s extraordinary paintings at the Frick Collection. Wow.

For more on Vermeer we can turn, as always, to Jonathan Janson’s amazing web resource, Essential Vermeer (and his related blog, Flying Fox).

Janson has just put the finishing touches on a terrific addition to this already dazzling resource with the Complete Catalog of the Paintings of Johannes Vermeer. This includes a notice for tracking all Vermeer paintings currently traveling, and has in-depth articles and interactive features on all of Vermeer’s known works. (I say known works because Vermeer fans are always hoping another will turn up in a dusty attic in Paris somewhere.)

Janson’s article/interactive on The Milkmaid has a rollover feature that goes into detail about various aspects of the painting and its contents, and there are numerous articles on related topics in other portions of the site. (See my previous posts on Jonathan Janson and The Essential Vermeer.)

So if you are in New York this Fall, and are inclined to experience the magic of light from the 17th Century, captured, distilled and bottled by Vermeer’s genius and released in your presence like a mist of poetry scented photons, here is your chance.

Though she had been given art lessons at home as a child, and followed a desire to be an artist into studies at the Art Institute of Chicago and The Art Student’s League in New York, where she studied with William Merritt Chase (see my post on William Merritt Chase), Georgia O’Keeffe stopped making art soon afterwards, frustrated with her work and direction in pursuing realistic painting.

Four years later she encountered the artistic philosophy of Arthur Wesley Dow while taking a summer course for teachers at the University of Virginia, whose novel ideas insisted that the artist should create based on elements of color and line and the artist’s own inclinations rather than emulating nature. Freed from the constraints she felt in her academic training, she began to reinvestigate the possibilities of art.

A couple of years after that she produced a series of charcoal drawings that a friend of hers brought to the attention of renowned photographer and gallery owner Alfred Steiglitz, and the drawings were exhibited in Steiglitz’s New York gallery without O’Keeffe’s knowledge.

Steiglitz proceeded to convince O’Keeffe to move to New York and pursue painting full time. Steiglitz and O’Keeffe married several years later and were one of the most celebrated artistic collaborations of the 20th Century. Steiglitz produced a remarkable body of portraits of O’Keeffe over the course of their life together and was an indefatigable supporter and promoter of her work.

In New York, O’Keeffe painted large scale canvasses of flowers (for which there was much speculation of sexual suggestion in the imagery), saying later, “I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.”

O’Keef begain spending her summers in New Mexico, producing works inspired by the desert landscape and the light and color of the southwest, along with still lifes and other subjects that reached across the boundaries of representational and nonrepresentational art.

O’Keeffe received both popular and critical acclaim in her lifetime and remains one of the major figures of 20th Century American art.

If you get a chance to see her work in person, you will see how her approach and her use of scale can do one of the things art does best, encourage you to stop and look at things with fresh eyes.

There is an extensive list of museums with her work in their collections on Artcyclopedia.

[Thanks to Bram from Raised by Squirels for correcting my major "O'Keefe" (one "f") typo, title and everything.]

One of animated films that I discovered through Irene Gallo’s Saturday Morning Cartoons listing (see my previous post) delighted me in particular, Kunstbar, by Steve Whitehouse and a group of associates that call themselves The Petrie Lounge. The group includes Denis Gonzalez, John Halfpenny, Chris Labonte and Paul Teglas.

“Kunst” is the word for “art” in German, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish and Estonain. The Kunstbar we encounter is apparently on a side street off one of Giorgio DeChirico’s perspective defying plazas, and is frequented by artistes whose taste in drinks is, um… interesting.

The menu consists of drinks named after artists, a common enough practice, but here the Petrie Lounge crew has taken that idea literally and the drinks are in the spirit of the artist in more than name. Our intrepid protagonist, apparently a dedicated art lover, tries several, much to his detriment and our amusement.

This stylish animated short is a delight for lovers of art and animation alike, so stop by the Kunstbar for a short one.

Oh, and don’t order the Bosch.

In addition to her own terrific blog, The Art Department (required reading for anyone interested in science fiction and fantasy illustration), her contributions to the Tor.com blog, and of course her ongoing work in bringing the best and brightest lights in the field to print in her role as art director at Tor Books, Irene Gallo (see my posts about Irene Gallo and Tor Books) brings her sharp eye to bear in another way we benefit from.

Each Saturday she makes another astute selection of two short animated films worthy of our attention and posts them to her Saturday Morning Cartoon Index on the Tor site.

These shorts are from a variety of creators and sources (though many are sponsored by the national Film Board of Canada), and traverse the spectrum of subject matter, style, emotional tone, animation technique and cinematic direction.

They share one characteristic, they are all terrific examples of short form animation, and a treat to watch.

Gallo keeps the stew well stirred, mixing style and approaches from week to week and selection to selection. Sometimes the two choices for a given week share some common theme or characteristic, as in her matchup of Pyrats and The Tale of How (see my posts on The Tale of How).

There are many weeks of selections already posted, enough to keep you animated and amused for a number of weekdays, as well as looking forward to future Saturday mornings.

(Images at left, Tyger, Pyrats, Syrinx and Strange Invaders, see the Tor page for credits and details)

In a way somewhat analogous Franklin Booth’s unintentional pen and ink imitation of engraved illustrations in the books of his time (the result of innocent ignorance of printing processes), contemporary illustrator Peter Siu deliberately uses pen and ink to emulate the visual charm and delicate detail of wood engravings.

Though the process is reminiscent of older illustrations, Siu brings a modern sensibility to his illustrations and attains a feeling of timelessness.

His long list of clients includes companies like Disney, Visa, Delta Airlines, Visa, Marriott Hotels, Simon & Schuster, McGraw Hill, Random House and many others.

His style lends itself well to product images, advertisements, map graphics and editorial illustrations where the authority of old world engraving and the contemporary flair of modern illustration give both weight and brightness to the subject.

His web site includes a gallery of illustrations in various categories.

You can also view Siu’s work on Workbook, Serbin Directory of Illustration and Martha Productions.

[Suggestion courtesy of Jo Mudd]

As much as I enjoy flowers in their natural setting, or even in a vase, and despite my fondness for still life painting, I have to admit that florals are not among my favorite subjects for paintings. There are exceptions, of course, in which the subject is handled in unusual ways, but direct close-up paintings of flowers rarely appeal to me.

Despite that, Diane Hoeptner, an artist based in Ohio, managed to capture my attention with her floral still life paintings when I first came across her blog.

The appeal for me is not so much the subject itself, but her relaxed painterly approach, rich with casual but luxuriant brushstrokes defining both the flower forms and vessels in which she places her subjects. (Those, in fact are part of the appeal for me, in that I do particularly like still life subjects that include glass jars or vases filled with water.)

Together, the brush marks, paint handling, glassy reflections and often subdued color work to create a strong visual appeal.

Hoeptner (pronounced “hep-ner”) formerly lived in California, where she studied Studio Art at California State University, Northridge and worked for several years as a digital animator for video games and film.

Hoeptner’s floral paintings vary in size, most seem to be around 8×8″ (20×20cm), as in the case of the image above (with detail, larger version here), or 22×22″ (60×60cm), as you can see in photographs of her work in the studio or outdoors.

In addition to her blog, Hoeptner has a web site with galleries of her paintings, some of which are of other subjects like cats or small toys. She also has a presence on eBay where she sells much of the work shown on her blog.

Addendum: There is an interview with Hoeptner on Pat Washington’s blog.

[Via Mick McGinty (see my posts on Mick McGinty)]

Jody A. Lee is a New York based artist and illustrator, best known for her work in the field of fantasy illustration.

Originally from San Francisco, Lee studied at the Academy of Art College there, majoring in Illustration.

Her work, done in oil on canvas or acrylic or oil on illustration board, often includes decorative motifs incorporated with the representational images, sometimes done with metallic gold or silver paints.

Her images are frequently rendered with a high level of detail and attention to visual texture, which can make an effective contrast against the more graphic decorative elements.

Her web site includes a Portfolio of illustration and a Gallery of paintings, drawings and sketches.

I found the pop-out thumbnail navigation awkward and not conducive to browsing. Fortunately, when in the Portfolio section at least, there is an option under the main images for “Quickreference” which gives access to an easier to browse thumbnail page. Be sure to click on the main images for the larger versions.

There is also a section of Portraits and a page describing her media and methods.

Norwegian symbolist Edvard Munch is another of those artists, like Whistler or even Hokusai, whose oeuvre is condensed to a single image in the minds of most people, in this case his iconic image The Scream.

There are actually several versions of The Scream, including both paintings and prints, more than one of which have been the target of high-profile art thefts (later recovered).

The theme of suffering and mental anguish carried through much of Munch’s work, however.

His formative years were marked by a father who was fanatically religious and obsessed with sorrow and death. His Mother and beloved elder sister died of consumption, now known as tuberculosis, when Munch was five and fourteen, respectively; and one of his younger sisters developed a mental illness at an early age.

Munch himself was a sickly child, often in bed for long periods where he would draw to keep himself amused. In addition to religious subjects, his father schooled Munch and his remaining children in literature, including frequent readings of ghost stories and the work of Edgar Allen Poe.

Munch’s later life was torn by dramatically unhappy love affairs, alcoholism, associates with morbid philosophical influences and restless traveling.

The expressions of anxiety, unhappiness, fear and grief resonated with those who viewed his art, and he became a widely sought out and influential artist, beyond his native Norway and particularly in Germany, where he lived and worked for many years.

He was one of the founders of the Expressionist school, in which color, line and the delineation of recognizable objects are distorted at will for emotional effect; often, as in Munch’s case, centering on anxiety, fear, despair and spiritual angst. As in many expressionist works, the dark emotional tone is often belied by a palette of intense colors.

Not all of his works are as negatively charged or emotionally dark as his signature pieces, many are more straightforward and representational, and in his early years, even impressionistic.

There is a series of galleries on edvard-munch.com that gives a good overview, arranged by subject. edvardmunch.info has a list (no thumbnails, but links to images) arranged roughly chronologically.

In addition to his work as a painter, Munch was a printmaker and created etchings, wood engravings and lithographs. There is an exhibition of 40 prints that will be at the National Gallery of Scotland from 19 September to 6 December, 2009. The exhibit is from from the Munch Museum in Oslo, which is dedicated to his prints.

In his paintings, Munch was concerned with the effects of color, and the way one’s perception of a scene could change with time of day or emotional state; saying: “The fact is that at different times you see with different eyes. You see differently in the morning from in the evening. The way in which one sees also depends on one’s mood…”