Mathew Borrett is a Canadian illustrator and visual effects artist who works with architectural illustration and also creates wild and sometimes elaborate imagined structures, some underground, some in cityscapes.

His underground structures, with their maze-like and Escher influenced explorations of divided space, may have grown out of his more traditional architectural subjects, some of which feature cut-away sections.

The “Drawings” section of his website portfolio has selections from the “Room Series”, done with Pigma Micron ink marker pens, as well as pencil drawings and other ink drawings. The “Illustrations” section has some of his more traditional illustration work.

Borrett also maintains a blog, in which you can find preliminary sketches and works in progress. There is also a selection of his images on the Fine Art America site, where they are available as prints.

[Via BoingBoing and Illusion]

Etchings, for me, have a kind of visual magic.

There is something about the character of etched lines that is entrancing in a way quite distinct from other forms of drawing or graphics.

I find it hard to isolate exactly why. Partly, I suppose, it’s the fine line available with an etching needle and carefully prepared plate, and the process by which the ink is transferred to the usually off-white paper, producing muted value contrasts.

A major part of the appeal, though, I think I can assign to the approach and style of line that the medium seems to inspire in its masters — a kind of casual, quick hatching, almost scribbled in places, that is at once subtle and dramatic, quiet and lively, tonal and linear, hard edged and remarkably soft.

Of all of the artists who are masters of etching, my favorites are Rembrandt and Whistler.

They are from different times and sensibilities and have very different approaches as painters, but share a command of the qualities of etching that brings the medium to its highest level.

No doubt Whistler was aware of and studied Rembrandt’s etchings, taking many lessons from the master, as well as the numerous other influences available to him, and putting them in service of his own sensibilities.

In some ways, I think Whistler actually surpasses Rembrandt, particularly in his use of lines to suggest softness, as in his sensitive portraits.

Etchings, by their nature, are drawings meant for reproduction; the artist could make many impressions of his original drawing and sell them, signed and numbered as a limited series, less expensively than paintings.

While Rembrandt’s subjects were often Biblical, Whistler followed the new path of the young artists of his day in taking his subjects from the real world — in particular in scenes of London and Venice.

When I first wrote about Whistler’s etchings back in 2006, the resources available for viewing them on the web were quite limited.

The internet, bless its big ol’ silicon heart, is constantly serving up new resources, and among the best since my original article are the amazing high-resolution collections on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website.

They have an extensive and superb collection of Whistler’s etchings, and have made most of them available in high resolution.

The link I’m providing is just a search of the collection for the terms Whistler and etching. At the bottom of the page is navigation to subsequent pages and a selection of how many results to view per page.

When you click through to an individual image, click on “Fullscreen” under the image and then use the zoom controls at upper left, or even better the Download arrow a lower right, to view the high resolution images.

Bear in mind as you view the etchings that you are essentially seeing them magnified; Whistler’s originals are not large, perhaps 5×7 to 8×10″ (13×18 to 20x25cm) or similar for most of them.

For more information, see my previous post on Whistler’s etchings, in which I recommend some books, and also describe the etching process.

If you respond to the magic of the etched line as I do, I’ll give the selection of Whistler’s etchings on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website my Major Timesink Warning. I could get lost there for hours, wandering through his beautifully drawn intimate views of London wharves and Venetian canals.

Aaron Horkey is an artist and designer from Minnesota whose intricate, richly detailed images can be both beautiful and disconcerting simultaneously.

Horkey has designed and illustrated posters, album covers, skateboard graphics, magazine covers and clothing designs as well as creating graphics for reproduction as limited edition prints.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have a dedicated web presence, and his publishing company, Dead Arts Publishing, ceased production in the time since I put him on my list for a post and finally getting to writing one.

He is represented by Jacky Winter Group, and there is a gallery of his work on their site, but the images are frustratingly small, particularly given the sometimes astonishing level of detail in Horkey’s images.

One of the best sources I’ve found for his work is a series of posts on the Shrieking Tree blog, including a two part interview (and here). These include large (sometimes quite large) images of Horkey’s intricate drawings, often in their preliminary form before color is applied, that give you a much better idea of the nature of his work.

You can also find some of Horkeys posters reproduced reasonably large on OMG Posters, and a selection on Ufunk.

Horkey’s designs often include highly stylized lettering and design elements, on which as much attention is lavished as the imagery, sometimes more. The words are intricate in a way that reminds me of 1960′s psychedelic poster art, with a similar aesthetic of “if you can’t read it, you don’t get it”.

Franklin Booth was a great American Illustrator and one of art history’s masters of the medium of pen and ink.

Booth grew up on a farm in Indiana in the late 1800′s. Innocently misunderstanding the printing technology of the time, he developed his style by copying what he thought were pen and ink illustrations in popular magazines, but were in fact wood engravings.

The result was a unique style that no one else would have attempted, and one that Booth ran with and developed to dizzying heights.

Booth is not nearly as well known as his talent and accomplishments would warrant. When I wrote about him in 2007, there were two recently published collections of his work, one from Auad Publishing and the other from Flesk Publications that are now unfortunately out of print and commanding several times their cover price used.

There are, however, some resources on Booth that have become available since then.

Notably for images, there are a series of posts by indefatigable image poster and enigmatic friend to the internet, Mr. Door Tree on his wonderful (and inaccurately named) blog, Golden Age Comic Book Stories. The link I’m giving is a general search for the artist’s name; be sure to follow the “Next Posts” links the bottom of the pages for more (and click on the images in the posts for the larger versions).

There is also a little trove of Booth’s astonishing illustrations for Estey Organs; some of these are available in higher resolution in the posts I mention above, but they are collected here in a surprising array of images not directly depicting pipe organs, but the concept of enjoying them.

In addition there is a selection of Booth images on The Pictorial Arts

You can also find some good examples of Booth’s work by doing a Flickr search or a Google Image search.

In addition there is a new eBook, The Colors of Black Lines: Franklin Booth’s Life and Work by Thomas E. Rugh. It is available in several eBook formats. Though not a collection of Booth’s work, it is densely illustrated and is probably the most comprehensive source of information on the artist and his work yet undertaken. There is a free sample chapter available as a PDF.

As I’ve pointed out in several previous posts, scratchboard, despite its close relationship to pen and ink, is a medium with its own distinct characteristics, and to my eye a particular visual charm.

There’s just something about a well done scratchboard drawing, the patterns of white lines against black, that grabs my attention and lends itself to extended enjoyment. The beautiful scratchboard illustrations of Ricardo Martinez are a case in point.

Born in Chile, Martinez moved to Spain with his family as a young teenager, established himself there as an illustrator and cartoonist and later moved to the U.S. where he worked for newspapers and did editorial illustration in Miami. He eventually moved back to Madrid, where he became part of the group that created the newspaper “El Mundo”.

Martinez’ editorial clients include Coca Cola, Madrid City Hall, Telefonica, UNICEF, Amnesty International, and Renault.

Martinez doesn’t appear to have a dedicated website or blog, instead relying on showing his work through the site of his artists’ representative, Richard Solomon, as well as a portfolio on the Behance Network. The latter is divided into a selection of his editorial illustrations and a set of his wonderfully eccentric animal illustrations.

There is a brief overview of Martinez’ process on the Richard Solomon site featuring the Steve Jobs portrait shown above.

A recent comment from a reader on a post I did back in 2006 reminded me that I haven’t written for some time about the great science fiction, fantasy and horror illustrator Virgil Finlay.

Though he worked in a variety of media, both in color and in black and white, Finlay is noted primarily for his astonishing ink illustrations, which were combinations of the meticulous and difficult techniques of scratchboard, crosshatch and stipple (the application of a myriad of tiny dots to make a tone).

His proficiency in the medium was matched only by his outrageous imagination, and the combination made him one of the most popular and in-demand science fiction and fantasy illustrators of his time.

Though his career spanned a longer period, Finlay was most active in the 1940′s in 1950′s when his illustrations appeared in numerous “pulp” magazines (so named because for the cheap grade of paper on which they were printed), and many of his images have a deliciously lurid pulp sensibility.

Since I last wrote about him, some new sources for images of his work have become available on the web, though the links I pointed to in my original article are no longer valid (the internet giveth and the internet taketh away).

Also unfortunately, the collections of his work printed in the 1970′s (like The Book of Virgil Finlay) and 1990′s (Virgil Finlay’s Women of the Ages, Virgil Finlay’s Phantasms, Virgil Finlay’s Strange Science and Virgil Finlay’s Far Beyond) are long out of print and have not been reprinted or compiled into a larger compendium as they deserve. However, you can still find used copies of some of them for reasonable prices.

Finlay’s extraordinarily detailed work in particular shines in the high-resolution medium of print, especially in those collections, which were printed on much higher quality paper than the original magazines. There are, however, a few resources on the web with reasonably good images.

One of the best is Golden Age Comic Book Stories (a blog with a much wider reach than its title implies, and for which I’ll issue a Major Time Sink Warning). My link is to a search which lists numerous posts in which Finlay is mentioned. If you’re inclined, keep clicking through “Older Posts” at page bottom, though they can be more or less relevant, the listed posts go on for several pages, and most images are linked to much larger versions.

Another good, and probably quicker, glimpse at Finlay’s work is a post on Monster Brains. There are also several pages of images on Collector’s Showcase (note links to 5 pages at bottom).

Finlay often brought scratchboard, hatching, stipple and deep chiaroscuro to bear in a single image, with masterful control of each technique. Though he was obviously influenced by pen and ink greats like Joseph Clement Coll, Franklin Booth and Howard Pyle, among others, Finlay created a style the was uniquely his own.

For more on Virgil Finlay, see Jim Vedeboncoeur’s article on BPIB, the Wikipedia entry and my previous post.

[Addendum: nice Flickr set from MonsterBrains]

Classic illustration enthusiasts were dismayed a while back to learn of the apparent demise of Bud Plant Illustrated books, a long-time collaboration between Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr. and Bud Plant that was a key source of out of print books about great classic illustrators and comics artists.

The good news turned out to be that Vadeboncoeur and Plant have simply taken their individual contributions into their own separate spaces, where they have been able to refocus their efforts.

Plant is selling a more focused selection of books at the new Bud’s Art Books site and Vadeboncoeur has retooled the venerable bpib.com web address as JVJ Publishing, featuring his absolutely beautiful magazines ImageS and Black & White ImageS, which I have raved about previously (and here).

In addition, Vadeboncoeur is continuing to maintain his terrific resource of classic illustrator biographies (image at left), which is one of the first places I look when researching a classic illustrator. The biographies are short, succinct and information and illustration dense.

Vadeboncoeur has been an important voice in the promotion of great classic illustration from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from artists both well known and undeservedly obscure. One of the joys of ImageS magazine is the mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar; even devoted classic illustration aficionados will frequently be introduced to long lost gems by unfamiliar names.

Vadeboncoeur’s enthusiasm for great classic illustration and his obsessive attention to reproduction quality and image details make every issue of ImageS a treat.

Part of the good news about his recent makeover of the JVJ Publishing site is the inclusion of much larger preview images of the more recent issues, giving you a better taste of the issue’s contents (click on the covers for the pop-up previews). I have to stress, though, that they still don’t provide a realistic picture of the superb image quality of the issues themselves.

The first five issues of ImageS are sold out; issues 6 through 12 are still available. The first issue of ImageS Black & White is sold out; issues 2 through 5 are available.

(Images above: Lejaren A. Hiller, J.C. Leyendecker, Julius Diez, Frank Godwin, Henri-Jules-Ferdinand Bellery-Desfontaines)

It’s customary for many comic book artists and illustrators to publish “sketchbooks”, collections of sketches and drawings of varying degrees of finish, which are frequently more of interest to their dedicated “must have anything” fans than to the more general readership.

And then there’s Mark Schultz.

Flesk Publications, a small artbook publisher who has a record of publishing beautiful volumes of work by terrific illustrators and comics artists, has been publishing collections of his drawings for some time.

It’s worthwhile noting that these collections have been titled “Various Drawings” rather than “sketchbooks”, and very appropriately so; not only are Schultz’s sketches and preliminaries more highly developed than many artists’ finished drawings, his finished drawings are exquisitely finessed.

These volumes include both — Schultz’s beautifully finished brush and ink drawings, and preliminary drawings, usually in pencil, that were done in preparation for the final.

The subject matter follows Schutz’s fondness for adventure fantasy, pulp novels, science fiction and, of course, dinosaurs.

For the uninitiated, Schultz is the creator of the wonderful comics series Xenozoic Tales, a version of which was known for a time as “Cadillacs and Dinosaurs”. I reviewed Flesk’s beautiful collection of the strip last December. The book has since then sold out of its initial press run, but Flesk has just announced that it is again available in a second printing.

Fan’s of Schultz’s comic art, among which I certainly count myself, have long waited for him to return to the series, which is still unfinished. Until he does, there is great delight to be taken in these collections, and they would also be of interest to anyone who enjoys superbly realized action adventure illustration.

I was delighted to receive a review copy of the latest collection, Mark Schultz: Various Drawings Volume 5, which continues to maintain the high level of terrific drawings showcased in the rest of the series.

Some of the drawings are commissions, many referencing existing adventure fantasy characters and stories, including Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, for which the image above, third down and the detail crop below it are of one of several preliminary drawings. The finished brush and ink drawing is presented in the book as a stunning double page fold-out.

All of these collections are an absolute treat. Mark Schultz: Various Drawings #1 and #2 are sold out, volumes #3, 4 and of course this new volume #5, are still available and can be ordered through the Flesk Publications store, along with the Mark Schultz: Blue Book (a collection of his preliminary drawings in non-photo blue pencil), a Xenozoic Tales print and the new printing of the Xenozoic collection.

In addition to the preview images available on the publisher’s pages for the individual titles (which have fortunately been getting a bit larger in more recent presentations), there is a general gallery of Schultz’s work on the Flesk site. Schultz, as far as I can determine, does not have a dedicated website or blog of his own.