We live in a wonderfully weird world, in which life has taken forms more spectacularly bizarre and varied than the imaginings of any fantasy or concept artist (which, given the talents of many of those amazing artists, is saying something).

Nature has provided us with a record of some of the wildest experiments of the past, most notable among them might be the dinosaurs, which have captured the public’s imagination since the first artistic reconstructions of them in the 19th century.

But there are many eras of geologic time and restless evolutional experimentation in nature’s vast fossil scrapbook, from long before the dinosaurs as well as the epochs between their demise and our short time on the stage.

William Stout, a multi-talented artist who I have written about previously, has created murals of several periods of prehistoric life for The Houston Museum of Natural Science, Walt Disney World’s Animal Kingdom, and the San Diego Natural History Museum (see my previous post on William Stout’s murals for the San Diego Natural History Museum).

Flesk Publications, a terrific independent art book publisher that I have also written about before, has published a lavish, beautifully designed and printed book devoted to displaying all of Stout’s prehistoric life murals.

The book is 144 pages in nicely large horizontal coffee-table format (10×12″, 25×30cm), crafted with with Flesk’s usual meticulous attention to quality and detail, and features reproductions not only from the finished murals, but from the preliminary half-size paintings submitted to the museum paleontologists for approval before the final paintings ere undertaken, as well as the sketches on which they were based and even some of the briefly notated thumbnail sketches that preceded those.

In fact, as much as I admire Stout’s final mural art, which displays a painterly approach rarely found in scientific murals, it is often his beautiful pen, ink and watercolor drawings that I find most appealing.

As I mentioned at the outset, there are wonderfully strange animals from many periods of life on Earth represented here, from the time before the dinosaurs up to our own ancestors, arrayed in dramatic scenes teeming with life and alive with color.

The book attempts to show not only the range of the mural subjects, but the range of artistic approaches Stout applied to the various tasks involved in the process of creating the murals. There is a pleasing variety to the formal and informal pencil drawings, ink sketches, watercolor renderings and finished oil paintings within the overall continuity of Stout’s recognizable style.

The Flesk Publications page devoted to the book unfortunately only shows a couple of images from the book, so you don’t really get a feeling for that variety.

You can see some of the paintings for the San Diego Natural History Museum in high-resolution here, and you can see a brief look at one of the ink and watercolor drawings in the animation on the Museum’s Fossil Mysteries page (from which I extracted the low-resolution image above, top), but there is no other web preview I can find to show you the character of the pencil, pen and watercolor renderings.

William Stout: Prehistoric Life Murals is available through the usual book channels, but can also be ordered directly from the Flesk Publications site in either a regular hardcover edition ($39.95), or a limited signed edition ($49.95).

Since the jolt of receiving my Coraline Mystery Box I’ve been understandably curious about the upcoming animated movie, and equally frustrated that I can’t yet find a significant repository of Coraline concept art (though I did come across some very early concept drawings here).

I’ve also noticed that the Coraline movie web site is now active, with a nicely responsive Flash interface and lots of stuff to explore and download; and the ASFIA-Hollywood Animation Archive has added a few more Coraline Mystery Boxes to its tally.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been happily feeding my Coraline fascination with the excellent graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel by veteran comics artist P. Craig Russell, which Santa, and/or my stepdaughter, brought me for Christmas.

The book is a hardback, a bit smaller in aspect than typical American comic size, but certainly big enough to give the art a good sized canvas. It’s also worth noting that the book, at almost 200 pages and consisting of a complete story, can be correctly called a “graphic novel”; as opposed to the constant misuse of that term by the mainstream comic companies to apply to the last six issues of some superhero comic slapped into a square binding.

Russell is no stranger to working with Gaiman’s material, Coraline is his fifth collaboration (including a stint as my favorite artist for Sandman), and he is currently adapting Gaiman’s The Dream Hunters as a graphic story. When HarperCollins originally proposed a graphic novel adaptation to Gaiman, he immediately asked that it be done by Russell.

Russell’s adaptation of Coraline was begun prior to the release of visual concepts for the movie and is free of the influence of the film. This is a Good Thing; not that the movie doesn’t look great, everything I’ve seen from it looks amazing; I’m just glad the graphic story is an independent artist’s interpretation of the novel and not part of a “movie package”.

Russell’s vision of the story is more straightforward than the highly stylized character designs featured in the film, with a realistic representation of Coraline, her parents and the other major characters; giving it more of the feeling one might conjure up on one’s own mind when reading the prose version.

Russell’s elegant linework, refined draftsmanship and keen sense of design are well suited to the story and its setting, and he seems to take particular delight in his portrayal of the old house and its surrounds.

Lovern Kindzierski contributes restrained and effective color to the artwork, Todd Kline adds nice touches to the lettering and the entire package is very satisfying, almost like a deliciously dark children’s picture book for adults.

There are some pages you can see on Gaiman’s site (from which the image above is taken, also here) and a couple bits of art (and here) on Russell’s site. There is an interview with Russell on Newsarama.

The HarperCollins site has a page devoted to the Coraline Graphic Novel; and both that site and Neil Gaiman’s Mouse Circus page have a Browse Inside link that takes you to a preview that is almost 40 pages long (large and long enough to get you reading and hooked on the story – clever).

Addendum: P. Craig Russell has begun a series of video talks on graphic storytelling on the PCR TV site. In the first installment, he talks about story openings, using his graphic story adaptation of Pelléas & Mélisande as an example. New segments will be added weekly on Mondays.

To go along with my previous post about 2008 Best Graphic Novel Lists, here’s a list of lists from various corners for art, design and photography books for 2008:

About.com: Best 10 Art Books of 2008

New York Times: 2008 Holiday Gift Guide, The Best Art Architecture and Design Books (if it asks for a login, try BugMeNot)

SFGate: Art and Photography Books

Times Online: The Times Christmas Books 2008: Art

Times Online: The Sunday TImes books of the year: Art

Chicago Tribune: Beautiful art books published in 2008

Artforum: Books: Best of 2008

Time Out London: Best Christmas gift books 2008: Art

Booklist Online: Top 10: The Arts

[Image above: Classical Painting Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice, Painter in a Savage Land: The Strange Saga of the First European Artist in North America, Chagall: A Biography, Artists and Their Studios, Colour (Documents of Contemporary Art), Let's See: Writings on Art from The New Yorker]

In these days of increased reliance on web-based shopping, online book merchants like Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Powells offer much wider selections than physical stores, even large ones, can provide. (Though nothing still beats the personal selections made by owners of small, independent booksellers, if you’re lucky enough to have access to one.)

The big selections of books available through the online sellers works well for finding a book that you already are familiar with and have decided to buy, but browsing, a practice of key importance to all book lovers, is hard to duplicate in the window of a web browser (despite the name).

This is particularly difficult in the case of art, illustration and design books.

The online booksellers have tried to make up for this in various ways with reviews, recommendations, ratings, and more recently, small visual excerpts form the books.

The latter, as exemplified by Amazon, is particularly bad at delivering on its premise, hampered perhaps by overzealous intellectual property lawyers and poor think-through on the part of the company. These “Look Inside” features usually disappoint, showing a table of contents, some opening pages and a bit of an index, but little (if any) of the heart of a book. I get the impression the preview pages are chosen by an algorithm or numeric formula, rather than a person.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a site where art related books are reviewed and described, accompanied by a few carefully chosen (by a human), high-resolution images that really give you an idea of the book’s visual content?

Enter Parka Blogs, a blog by Teih Yi Chie, an illustrator and cartoonist, blogging under the alias of Parka, who makes a point of doing just that.

The Art Book List is heavy on movie and animation concept art, illustration, anime and science fiction, but within that vein does a great job on the books that are reviewed. (If anyone starts a review blog like this for gallery and museum art books, please let me know!)

The reviews themselves are succinct and give a nice overview of the book. The killer feature though, is the selection of well-chosen images from the books, images that are actually representative of the books’ content (are you listening, big-time online booksellers?), and often supplemented with video “flip-throughs”, in which the entire book is quickly flipped through, giving you on overall impression of the amount and kind of images that make up the body of the book.

The still images are linked to larger versions on Flickr, the largest of which are nicely high resolusion, giving you a browsing experience that is next-best to actually having the book in your hands when deciding what to buy.

The Art Book list is divided into types of movies, individual studios (like Pixar and Studio Ghibli), as well as collections of work by individual concept artists, illustrators and others.

There is also a shorter list of Intsructional Books.

The site provides a list of relevant links; and the blog itself can also, of course, be read like a blog, browsing back by date or searching out topics of interest. In addition to the reviews, he covers topics of interest in similar veins. I came across Parka Blogs when he was kind enough to post a brief article about Lines and Colors a few days ago.

The Parka Blogs book reviews are accompanied by links to the reviewed books on Amazon. Purchases made through his links return a small percentage to the reviewer so he can, what else?, buy more books to enjoy and review.

(Images above: from Parka’s reviews of The Art of Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith, Miyazaki’s Magical World, Covers by James Jean and The Art of Kung Fu Panda. See my posts on Hayao Miyazaki and James Jean.)

You will often hear the phrase “big shoes to fill” applied to the task of filling a role formerly held by someone whose accomplishments were significant and difficult to achieve.

Illustrator and comics artist Gary Gianni put on some big shoes when he stepped into the role of illustrator for Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant newspaper comic strip.

Hal Foster (who will certainly be the subject of a future lines and colors post) was one of the three or four greatest newspaper comics artists in the history of the medium; and, to my mind, should be on the list of all time best pen and ink artists.

Gianni took over the illustration chores on the strip from John Cullen Murphy, who was Foster’s assistant, and had taken the reins on the strip when Foster retired in 1970.

Gianni’s previous work included illustrations for versions of classics like Moby Dick and Kidnapped, and he created graphic novel versions of Tales of O. Henry and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He also worked for mainstream American comic book companies on titles like Indiana Jones and The Shrine Of The Sea Devil, Batman: Black and White (for which his story won an Eisner Award in 1997) and The Monstermen Mysteries, which ran as a backup feature for Mike Mignola’s Hellboy.

The Prince Valiant Page is a new book from Flesk Publications (see my previous posts on Flesk Publications) that showcases Gianni’s work on the strip, and also offers a glimpse into his background.

The book is written by Gianni, and offers an insightful look into his working process, and his collaboration with Mark Schultz, a terrific artist himself, who handles the writing on the current strip.

Gianni talks about his admiration for Foster, as well as other great pen and ink artists like Joseph Clement Coll and Franklin Booth, an admiration that is evident in his refined ink drawing style.

In the process of describing how a modern Prince Valiant page is created, including the use of models and reference, we get to see a number of pages of Gianni’s pencil drawings before they were inked. These, though not meant as finished art, have a wonderful tonal quality that is very different from the final ink drawings.

I have to admit that I didn’t have a proper appreciation for Gianni’s work prior to seeing this volume; partly because I had not seen much of his other illustration and comics work except in scattered examples, and partly because of the terrible job that modern newspapers do of presenting their comics.

One of the things that newspapers do to render their comic strips ineffectual, particularly those few remaining adventure strips, is to print them too small to allow for any real visual excitement. The original Prince Valiant pages, like those of Little Nemo in Slumberland and many other comic strips in the early 20th Century, were sized to full newspaper pages. (See my post on Winsor McCay.)

As time went on, and the role of newspaper comics as one of the major forms of home entertainment was superseded by movies and then television, newspaper editors (or more likely, owners and accountants) continually reduced the size of newspaper comics. In an age where home video screens and computer monitors keep getting bigger and bigger, this is a trend that, if continued, will eventually result in microscopic panels; which will undoubtedly help in the efforts of newspapers to remove all entertaining content as their circulation drops.

Prince Valiant is now down to 1/5th of a page at most in the newspapers, but several of the Gianni & Schultz strips are printed in the book as fold-out pages, doubling the book’s 9×12″ (23×30cm) size; nice and big, though still far short of a full newspaper page. It’s enough to let Gianni’s work shine, and make you wish for a volume of the strips at this size.

There is a collection of the Gianni & Schultz strips, Prince Valiant: Far From Camelot due in the (presumably near) future, but the Amazon pre-publication listing doesn’t include that book’s dimensions.

You can see a recent Prince Valiant strip on the King Features site, but you apparently can’t see the current one, or search the archives, without getting a membership of some kind, in an effort to… well, I don’t know why; I guess as part of the continuing effort on the part of newspapers and syndicates to discourage reader interest.

In the meanwhile, we have this beautiful volume to appreciate Gianni’s work. The Prince Valiant Page can be ordered directly from Flesk Publications in either hardback or limited edition signed, slipcase hardback. The book includes a foreword by Hellboy’s Mike Mignola and an introduction by Robert Wagner, who played the character in the 1954 Cinemascope movie.

Flesk has done their usual superb job of showcasing the art, jamming the book cover-to-cover with wonderful examples and using the highest production values. It certainly makes you wish newspapers would treat their comics with half as much respect.

Gianni and Schultz continue their work on the Prince Valiant weekly strip, trying to give us a taste of the former glory of newspaper adventure strips within the restricted confines of their 1/5th of a page.

It’s a valiant effort.

Kazu Kibuishi, who I have mentioned before, both in reference to his wonderful online comic Copper (also here), and as the primary force behind the Flight comics anthologies, has been hard at work for the last two years on a graphic novel project that has finally been released.

Amulet, Book One: The Stonekeeper is the first volume of a larger, three volume project (though it reads well as a story in itself).

The story is a fantasy adventure in which two siblings, an older sister and younger brother, must rescue their mother from deadly peril. It is something of a coming of age story in that they have the ability to take actions and effect events, but must take responsibility as well.

In it, Kibuishi combines some themes he has favored in his work on Copper and his longer pieces in Flight — the viewpoint of children, the visual textures of elements of the natural world like rocks and water, fanciful imaginative vistas, atmospheric color and eccentric flying machines.

I won’t describe it in too much detail because I enjoyed the little surprises I encountered in the story and I don’t want to deny you the same.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book, though, is the way Kibuishi has chosen to create his narrative.

You’ll find no panel-length word balloons with characters expounding on back-story or setup, no caption panels, no pages of exposition; everything is shown graphically, cinematically.

Many sequences are presented wordlessly, or almost so, relying on the flow of sequenced images to convey the narrative. This is where a comics artist’s skills as a visual storyteller are tested, and Kibuishi shows that he has studied some of the masters, probably both in comics and in film, where many of the same problems must be resolved. In both the set up and handling of the story you can see the influence of Anime masters like Hayao Miyazaki.

The drawings of the characters in Amulet are simplified, almost cartoonish; delineated with thin, single-weight outlines, and filled with areas of flat color or gentle gradations. Again, this is very like Anime, but without the slavish projection of Anime’s exaggerated stylizations to which so many young comics artists are inordinately prone.

The panel backgrounds in Amulet are often more implied that realized, with muted suggestions of detail overlayed with gradients of textured color. The exceptions are the dramatic establishing panels where the details of the background are important. There, of course, Kibuishi has a chance to show off his fertile imagination, in both fantasy and “real world” settings that are rich with texture and detail.

Throughout, his linework is controlled but retains a casual feeling; lines that accidentally cross another form or a panel border, and would normally be corrected, are left in place; nothing is ruled; even the panel borders are rough edged. Overall, the line, color and visual tone of the drawings are perfectly suited to the story.

One of the decisions about the presentation of this story that I’m not so fond of is the size of the book. The paperback edition is about 6×9″ (15×23cm), somewhat smaller than traditional comic book/graphic novel size. The book reads fine at that size, but I just prefer the larger canvas (which is why I really like the European graphic album format which is over twice the size of this volume).

The book is published by Scholastic, and this is the same format as their color editions of Jeff Smith’s Bone. In both cases it may be a compromise to keep the price of a 200 page color graphic novel down to under $10; which, for work of this caliber, is a tremendous bargain.

Kibuishi has created a page devoted to Amulet, in which he collects many of the posts from his Bolt City blog that have chronicled his work on the book; although, like many comics authors and artists, he has been so close to the project that he has neglected to include introductory information for newcomers.

As a better introduction, there is a 12 page excerpt from the beginning of the story (non-spoiler) on the New York magazine web site (who now has a terrific regular practice of excerpting recent graphic novels on their Comics Page). There is also an interview with Kibuishi about the project on Newsarama.

I received a copy of Steve Rude: Artist in Motion from Flesk Publications.

Flesk is a small specialty art book publisher that was the subject of one of my first posts on lines and colors in which I praised their terrific collections of the work of pen and ink greats Joseph Clement Coll and Franklin Booth.

Since then, much to my delight, they have continued to expand and produce terrific books on illustrators like James Bama and contemporary comics artists like Mark Schultz and Steve Rude; and I wrote a follow up post on Flesk last Summer.

Over that time I’ve come to expect high standards in the production of their books, which are simply excellent, but I have to admit I was actually surprised at what a beautiful book they have produced in this latest volume. Not only is it a larger and more extensive book than I had expected, it covers a range of Rude’s work that was eye-opening.

Steve Rude is best known as a comic book artist. He is the co-creator, with writer Mike Baron, of Nexus, one of the most unique takes on the science fiction/super-hero genre ever produced. Rude has also applied his superb draftsmanship and story-telling skills to several other comics projects, including his own character The Moth, and mainstream characters like Superman, and even Space Ghost.

There is, of course, plenty of art from Nexus and Rude’s other comics work here, including preliminary sketches, model sheets, penciled and inked pages (often of the same page or panel, which I particularly enjoy). There are also many of his painted comics covers. In addition, however, are a large number of his other paintings, which is where the book really shines.

Rude is an artist who isn’t afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve. He has taken as his favorites some of the best, Alex Raymond, Jack Kirby and Russ Manning in the comics field, and for painting some of the terrific and under-appreciated illustrators of the mid-20th century like Harry Anderson, John Gannam, Haddon Sundblom, and in particular, Andrew Loomis.

Rude was instrumental in the production of the book, and in fact shares writing credit with publisher John Fleskes; and he is not only quick to acknowledge his admiration for these artists, but goes into some detail about them and also discusses his process of learning and discovering techniques form the study of their work.

That’s another remarkable thing about the book, in the process of creating a dazzling art book of Rude’s work, there are enough studies, preliminaries, and step-throughs that the book is also instructional. In several cases it includes original reference photos and preliminary sketches next to the finished work. There are also sections of Rude’s life drawing and animation work.

If you’re not familiar with Rude’s work, you can browse through the small gallery on the Flesk site and also click on the right two images on the book’s page. Unfortunately, the images are small and the ones chosen fall way short of giving a feeling for the real nature of the book.

You can also see some of Rude’s work on his own site, including a clip of one of the painting demos he has been giving in various locations.

All in all, this is a beautiful book notable to those interested in both comic book art and illustration in the classic tradition.

Steve Rude: Artist in Motion can be ordered directly from Flesk Publications, from Amazon, or from your local bookstore or comic book store.

Chris Ware, who I wrote about here and here, has just released The Acme Novelty Date Book, Volume Two: 1995-2000.

For those of you who are only familiar with Ware’s precise, carefully controlled marvels of precision comic art, these two volumes are something else altogether.

Basically they’re sketchbooks, not that different in essence from sketchbooks released by a number of comic artists and illustrators, with a mixture of sketches from life and fanciful doodling, often accented with handwritten notes.

You may notice a similarity in particular to the sketchbooks of Robert Crumb. Though not the marvellously expressive cartoonist that Crumb is, I think Ware is actually a better draftsman, despite his occasional notes of complaint about his own drawing ability.

What sets Ware apart from most, and invites comparison with Crumb, is the exceptional mind and original talent behind the sketches.

The drawings themselves are in turn loose, careful, freewheelingly imaginative, and when drawn from life, wonderfully observant, both of people and of everyday scenes.

Even those not familiar with Ware’s work, particularly if they enjoy sketchbooks, will find much to like in this volume. The sketches for the most part have a personal quality, the kind of honest, often casual, observations of what is a hand when one picks up a sketchbook. A far cry from the careful, self-conscious presentation drawings that many comic artists like to publish as “sketchbooks”.

Artists who frequently fill their own sketchbooks with observations from what’s around them whenever they get the chance will find common ground and inspiration here, quick sketches of people, sketched from angles the indicate the subject was often unaware of being drawn, and numerous room interiors and street scenes, drawn in simple line or detailed crosshatch pen and ink, and often colored with modest but very effective watercolor washes. There are travel sketches from Europe and “around the corner” scenes from Ware’s native Chigago. One is a very detailed watercolor and ink drawing of an airplane cabin, obviously filling as much time as possible on a trans-Atlantic flight.

There are lots of drawings of simple household objects, kitchen counters, tables, chairs and odds and ends like toy robots. There is also plenty of cartoon sketching, including sketches of classic early 20th Century comic characters, like those from Gasoline Alley, as well as sketches and doodles of his own characters, designs for his wonderful fake ads and other germinating ideas. There are lots of handwritten notes about where things were sketched, along with longer passages of various ideas, notions, ramblings, rants and diatribes, giving an unusual glimpse into his thought process.

There are also some comics stories, comics that are printed small enough to have you squinting, nose to the page, but comics nonetheless, and drawn much more freely than you will ever see in his finished comics.

I don’t know what size the original sketchbooks are, but most of the sketches have a feeling of being printed at the size they might have been done, so perhaps the comics were drawn that small.

Interestingly, the paper is off-white and flecked with spots and ink smudges, giving the book feeling of sketchbook pages that have been collected into a classic old library binding, another of Ware’s wonderfully imaginative an detailed book designs.

The image above is not an actual spread, but two separate pages I’ve put together to try to give an idea of the variety in the book.

All in all, this is a treat for fans of Chris Ware, and fans of sketching and sketchbooks in general. This is the second of two volumes, covering the years stated in the title. The first one was composed of sketchbook material from 1986-1995.

There are a few mentions of the first one on the web that include some images from that volume, and a scattering of mentions are begining to appear for Volume Two.

Here are two Acme Novelty Datebook Volume One posts on Book By Its Cover and Read About Comics; and and article from The Comics Reporter on Volume Two.

For the benefit of those in other parts of the world, I’ll mention that today is Veterans Day here in the U.S., a day set aside to remember and honor those who have served in the military over the history of the country; though particular attention is given, as it should be, to those involved in conflicts within the memory of living persons.

This past Memorial Day (a U.S. holiday in observance of those who have died in military service) I wrote a post about the PBS series They Drew Fire: Combat Artists of World War II, in which I mentioned this often neglected function of art.

Art as reportage in general, and combat art in particular, gets looked down on by the art establishment as irrelevant, and often “not art”; but then the art establishment has always attempted to elevate itself at the cost of narrowing its vision. The fact is that visual arts like drawing and painting are very different from photography, and reporting a time, place or event through that process gives insight into life and human experience unlike any other. If the purpose of art is to communicate, here is that communication at its most raw and direct.

Artists have been painting their visions of war for centuries, but combat artists have a unique role, that of soldier and artist, participant and reporter, subject and observer. They are able to give us the reality of war in a way that carries the undeniable weight of personal experience.

Art of War: Eyewitness U.S. Combat Art From the Revolution through the Twentieth Century is a collection that puts together artwork depicting war at the level of those who experienced it, both from artists in combat and outside observers who were adapt at capturing some of the same reality.

The book, by combat artist Avery Chenoweth, includes art by a few names you will recognize, John Singer Sargent and Edouard Manet among them, but is mostly of names known only to those familiar with combat art. Some were artist/correspondents for magazines, who also went to the front lines, but most are actual combat artists, soldiers who did double duty as artists.

This is not the “military art” of glorified war machines, sleek warplanes, dramatic fighting ships and cool tanks (though I have to admit here that the 12 year boy in the back of my brain still has a fascination with such things), nor is it an anti-war treatise; it is work by artists who tried to portray war as they saw it, directly, immediately and without filter or apology.

I think it would be hard for those with direct experience of combat to glorify war, leave that to the video game companies and movie makers; combat artists need to convey their experience as honestly as possible.

I haven’t read Art of War, I’m basing my comments on the book on information from those who have, as well as articles and reviews, particularly an excellent article on combat art from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, that includes information about Marine Staff Sargent Michael Fay, a contemporary combat artist assigned in Iraq.

I think it’s important that collections like this exist. Here is a role for art that isn’t emphasized and discussed enough. Not only is it a visceral example of the power of art to communicate; but it serves as a reminder, even for those of us who are vehemently anti-war, that the sacrifices of those who have served their nation by putting on a uniform and stepping into the inferno deserve our recognition.

[Images above: "Gassed" by John Singer Sargent (WW I), "Mortarburst" (field sketch) and "The Price" (final painting) by Tom Lea (WW II), "Trip flares" by Michael Fay (Iraq II)]

There are a number of illustration annuals, showcasing the editors’ choices for notable contemporary illustration. I look forward to several of them, The Society of Illustrator’s Annual, for example, but for many years (14 to be exact) my favorite illustration annual has been Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, edited by Cathy Fenner and Arine Fenner.

They are aided each year by a jury of top artists in the field, and, in addition to displaying the work chosen from hundreds of submissions, they bestow several awards, including a Grand Master Award, honoring a respected veteran who has made an outstanding contribution to the field, which this year goes to Syd Mead.

Submissions are open to anyone, though there is an entry fee ($20), and the selection is competitive. The Call for Entries for the next volume, Spectrum 15, is now open. The deadline is January 25, 2008.

There is a good article on Irene Gallo’s always informative blog The Art Department from almost exactly a year ago, in which she writes about the Call for Entries for the volume that just came out. In it she discusses why an artist would pay to have their work considered for entry in the collections. (See also my previous post on Irene Gallo.)

Originally concentrating on fantasy, science fiction and horror illustration, with a minor in comics, the selection of work for the Spectrum collections has widened in recent years to include film and gaming concept art, as well as more mainstream illustrators whose work can fit into those categories.

My first reaction when I encountered Spectrum 14 years ago and leafed through it’s pages full of gloriously imaginative and beautifully executed work was “Wow, cool!”, which has continued to be my reaction each subsequent year, as the editors show a remarkable tendency to showcase illustration, comics and fantasy art that I really like.

They have in fact, included work form a remarkable number of artists that I’ve featured for you here in lines and colors posts. There is a partial list of them in my post from last year on Spectrum 13.

Spectrum 14 just hit the stores yesterday, at least for those of us who buy their copy in bookstores that sell comics. Other bookstores should have it soon.

I’m second to none in my appreciation of artwork on the web, but there is one factor that is still lacking. Compared to print, computer monitors are low-resolution (maybe 100ppi tops for the most part; though advances in the Apple’s new Leopard operating system are laying the groundwork for true high resolution (200-300ppi) computer screens in the near future).

In the meantime, if you like the fantastic art that I’ve featured over the years on lines and colors, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll enjoy seeing the work in the Spectrum collections, in the high resolution print medium for which it was intended.