I just came across Jeremy Bastian this morning in Cory Doctrow’s post on BoingBoing about a commissioned drawing he did: an extravagantly detailed homage to Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo (see my posts on Winsor McCay, and here).

The owner of the drawing, Ben Friedman, has been kind enough to share it with us by posting images of it on ComicArtFans (images above, top, and detail, second down). You can see the full piece here and here, and details 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Bastien is a contemporary comics artist with a wonderfully anachronistic style, picking up the fine line illustration styles of the late 19th Century and applying them to his own idiosynchratic vision.

In checking out Bastian’s website, I found it sadly lacking in information about his most prominent project, a comics series called Cursed Pirate Girl.

He gives a brief, colorful description of the story, a couple of prominent raves by Mike Mignola and Mouse Guard’s David Peterson, and a link to an under-construction “Booty” page, but no indication of what the comic is, who publishes it, where it might be found or even whether it exists in digital or printed form. (When amateurs make websites they frequently overlook the critical factor that other people don’t know what they know and need introductory information.)

With a bit of digging, I was able to discover that Cursed Pirate Girl is a printed comics series, published by Olympian Publishing, which apparently has issues 1 and 3 of a three part series still available.

Comixcology, which sells digital versions of comics for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, lists issues 1-3 as “of 6″. I don’t know if they are split up differently for digital distribution, or if three more issues are planned.

Delightfully, Comixcology has provided a 7 page online preview of Cursed Pirate Girl #1 (bottom three images, above), making up for the inexplicable lack of images on Bastian’s site.

You will find a few images on Bastian’s website, mixed in with personal travel photos in the “updates” section (I can’t give you a direct link because the site is in frames); but they are mostly sketches.

I found another image on Guy Davis’s site of a drawing Bastian did of Davis’s character The Marquis, and a portrait of Leto II from Dune on Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin Time!! (see my post on Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin Time!!).

There are also reviews and articles about Cursed Pirate Girl on Read About Comics, CBR’s Robot 6 and Broken Frontier; as well as an interview on Newsarama.

Bastian also contributed a short Story to David Peterson’s Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #1.

Olympian Publishing is producing an audio drama adaptation of Cursed Pirate Girl, with Stephanie Leonidas (Mirrormask, Dracula) as the lead.

Here’s hoping that some of the attention Basitan has been getting results in a graphic album collection of the issues to date, and broader awareness of his unique talent.

Blow Up: Hanuka, Shimizu, Weber is an exhibit at the Society of Illustrators in NY that features three artists I’ve profiled previously, Tomer Hanuka, Yuko Shimizu and Sam Weber.

The organizers make a point of the disparate backgrounds and visual approaches of the three artists.

Hanuka’s richly colored comics illustrations, Shimizu’s admixture of Yukio-e and pop culture and Weber’s sometimes brooding, often monochromatic intensity make for an interesting study in contrasts.

Though there isn’t an online gallery of work from the exhibit, you can find plenty of work by all three illustrators on their respective blogs and websites (listed below).

Blow Up: Hanuka, Shimizu, Weber is on display at the Society of Illustrators, New York until October 16, 2010.

(Images above: exhibition poster, Yuko Shimizu, Sam Weber, Tomer Hanuka; note: I have no idea if any of the bottom 3 pieces will be in the exhibit, I simply picked works I like to represent each artist)

Don Kenn (whose blog also confusingly lists him as John Kenn) is a Danish writer and director of childrens’ television shows. In his limited spare time he draws “Monsterdrawings” on Post-It notes; as he describes them “…a little window into a different world, made on office supplies”.

The drawings, of ghouls and ghosts, sea monsters and living islands, haunted woods and city streets, combine the imaginative ramblings of doodles with a technique of hatching tones and range of atmosphere and effect reminiscent of Edward Gorey.

Kenn often juxtaposes passages of dense hatching with areas of open space, to excellent effect.

I understand the fun of using unusual art supplies like Post-It notes, and I certainly understand the appeal of off-white drawing surfaces, because I prefer them myself; but I think Kenn’s Monsterdrawings are too good to be wasted on non-archival materials.

I would love to suggest the nicely off-white Strathmore Series #400 sketchpads and the Sakura Pigma Micron markers I described in my post on My Pocket Rembrandt.

At the very least, somebody give the man a Moleskine.

[Via Sandbox World]

I have long been fascinated by pen and ink drawing, and its mirror world cousin, scratchboard.

Both are demanding mediums, but scratchboard is additionally difficult in that the unfamiliarity of working by subtraction rather than addition takes some practice, as well a mental shift (in common with some printmaking techniques); but the rewards are a kind of textural quality and visual appeal unlike any other medium.

There are some excellent contemporary scratchboard artists carrying forward the tradition; perhaps the best known and most accomplished of which is Canadian illustrator Mark Summers.

Summers combines superb draftsmanship, a talent for whimsey and humorous exaggeration and a knack for likenesses, both contemporary and historic, with a flair that have made his unique illustrations in demand and a common sight for readers of Time, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic Monthly, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times Book Review and numerous other publications and a range of book publishers an corporate clients.

He has received awards form the Society of Illustrators and been featured in juried shows, collections and publications like Step by Step Graphics, Communication Arts, Print and Applied Arts.

If you are a book lover, you may in remember his wonderful series of literary portraits that were prominent in Barnes and Noble bookstores a few years ago (I particularly loved his portrayals of Edgar Allan Poe).

Summers was born in Ontario and studied a the Ontario College of Art. He was introduced to scratchboard by Duncan Macpherson, an editorial cartoonist who drew for the Montreal Standard and the Toronto Star.

Summers doesn’t have a dedicated website, but since I last wrote about him in 2007, a new resource for viewing his art has become available. In addition to the portfolio on the site of his artist’s representative, Richard Solomon, and his portfolio on The iSpot, he now has a presence on the relatively new Behance Network.

In the latter you will find a section of delightfully Wicked Portraits, with Summers’ portrayals of notorious heavies from history, such as Edward VII (image above, top), in the company of such cheery chums as Torquemada, Rasputin, Genghis Kahn and Atilla the Hun.

In these and many of his recent illustrations, he enlivens his scratchboard drawings with tones of watercolor and sometimes oil glazes. There is a step through and description of his working process on the Richard Solomon site, and the same process is also shown a little larger at the bottom of this page on the Behance site. In addition, Summers has left a few replies to comments on my earlier post about his work with answers to questions about his technique.

Summers’ illustrations are featured in a new book, Vanity Fair’s Presidential Profiles: Defining Portraits, Deeds, and Misdeeds of 43 Notable Americans–And What Each One Really Thought About His Predecessor.

Kenn Backhaus is a contemporary realist painter who is a Signature Member of Oil Painters of America and past president of Plein Air Painters of America.

Backhaus was one of the painters featured in the 2007 PBS series Plein Air, Painting the American Landscape, and is instrumental in the independently produced series Passport and Palette, which was recently running on the Create TV cable network.

The latter is one of the better instructional painting shows I’ve seen, and I found the episodes with Backhaus to be the most instructive.

Backhaus was born in Wisconsin and attended the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee. He pursued a successful career as an illustrator and designer, earning recognition from the Society of Illustrators in New York as well as national and local awards; but after ten years or so his passion for plein air painting took over and became his primary focus.

He paints with the crisp immediacy often associated with the best plein air painters, using textural brushstrokes and the artful simplification of forms to their essentials to capture fleeting light in the field.

Unlike a number of contemporary plein air painters who feel the need to emulate Impressionist colors, Backhaus exercises restraint in his color palette, refusing to overstate colors simply for effect. Instead he searches out the real light and color of the scene before him, finding compositional drama in value contrasts and richness of color in the carefully noted relationships of adjacent colors.

There is a gallery of work on his website (note at the top a link to a second page). Unfortunately, the images are on the small side. Somewhat larger images can be found on the websites of galleries where his work is represented (listed below).

In addition to pursuing his painting, Backhaus devotes time to a number of workshops and seminars throughout the year. You can see his current schedule here. The next workshop is a 5 day outdoor and studio class at the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops in Greenville, NY from September 26 to October 2, 2010.

He is also leading the Passport and Palette travel workshop in the South of France from October 16-25, 2010. These painting trips will be filmed as part of upcoming Passport and Palette episodes.