Matthew Meyer grew up in New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia, and studied illustration at the Ringling College of Art in Florida.

After traveling to Japan on a study abroad program, he was so inspired by Japanese art and culture that he moved there in 2007.

Meyer has been using digital art to create images inspired by Japanese culture, though with his own unique point of view.

As a long time resident of the Philadelphia area, I particularly enjoy his series of 100 Famous Views of Philadelphia (images above, top three), a reference to Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, with Philadelphia landmarks portrayed in the style of Japanese woodblock prints.

Meyer also has a series of his interpretation of Yokai, monsters from Japanese folklore, that he ran on his blog as “A Yokai A Day” (above, bottom three).

You can find prints of his work in his Etsy shop.

Meyer also has a printed collection of Yokai, The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: a Field Guide to Japanese Yokai (Amazon link).

Paul Roden and Valerie Lueth are collaborative artists working in woodblock prints, and are also husband and wife.

Tugboat Printshop is their online store and gallery. The site not only showcases their work but is in large part devoted to process, and details various aspects of the creation and production of their prints.

Their work has that wonderful graphic punch that woodcuts can so nicely provide, frequently with bright, high chroma colors added in subsequent steps of the printing process. At times their compositions walk the line (if you’ll excuse the expression) between decorative and pictorial. (I’ve taken the liberty in some of the images above of cropping in on the image area and eliminating the prints actual borders in order to reproduce them larger in a limited space.)

When viewing their site, the Printshop/Store section acts as a gallery, but there is also an Archive, not a easily accessible from the main menus, within which are additional sections like Life of Leisure, Deep Blue Sea and others.

You will find a section on their working methods within Shop Info, under which the initial sub-section is Printshop and Process.

It’s worth noting, though, that when browsing the prints in the Store gallery, clicking through to the individual detail page for the work will often provide additional background information and images of the process for that individual work.

[Via Belinda Del Pesco, on @bdelpesco]

Meloncolia I, Albrecht Dürer.

One of the most iconic engravings by one of art’s great printmakers, Melelcolia (an archaic spelling of melancholia) is filled with symbols of alchemy and carpentry (architecture), along with various measuring tools, an hourglass, a polyhedron and a “magic square” — the rows of which add up to 34 in all directions.

The middle two numbers in the bottom row of the magic square are the date of the engraving, 1514. It has been pointed out that 34 is a number in the Fibonacci sequence (associated with the “golden section”).

The title’s “I”, as announced in the banner-like wings of a bat/rat/snake thing as it flies out of a burst of light under the arch of a rainbow, indicates that this may have been intended as the first of a series of representations of the “four temperaments”: melencolic, phlegmatic, choleric and sanguine.

If you dig, you will find many interpretations and discussions of this work, filled as it is with symbols and enigmas perhaps known only to Durer himself — like the vague skull or phantom face many see in the leading face of the polyhedron.

This example of the engraving, in its second state, is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Use the “Fullscreen” link below the image and then the zoom controls or download arrow. Spend some time with it; if nothing else it is beautifully drawn and rendered.

One of many possible interpretations suggests that the apparently brooding figure, accompanied by a cherub-like genius (in the ancient meaning of an attending spirit), might be a symbol of the artist.

Is there a relationship between the artist and the melancholic? Does art spring from a troubled mind? Must you “pay the dues to sing the blues”, as the song suggests? Maybe this is Durer’s meditation on those questions.

I think it’s interesting, however, to note that the face of the main figure, on close inspection, looks more pensive than what we usually think of as melancholy.

Up and Down, M.C. Escher.

One of my favorites from Escher, a simple and elegant brain twist from the master of pulling your perceptions out from under you (and this inspiration for this panel from my webcomic).

Sherrie York is a Colorado artist who works primarily in the medium of reduction linocut.

This is a relief printing method in which the run of a given print is done in stages of impressions from the same block —as the block is re-cut and reduced in printing surface to be printed in a different color with each successive pass.

On her website, York has galleries of her linocut prints, as well as woodcuts, painting and drawings.

She also has a page describing the process, and often goes into more detail on her blog, Brush and Baren.

[Via Making a Mark]

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow has placed online a catalog of their collection of Japanese Prints from the 18th and 19th centuries.

You can browse through sections for landscapes, beauties, actors, warriors, sumo wrestlers, flowers and birds.

You can also browse by artist or school, and there are additional reference materials.

(Images above: Katsushika Hokusai, Katsukawa Shunkō Ii, Utagawa Hirosige I, Utagawa Hirosige, Shosai Ikkei, Kikugawa Eiza, Kitagawa Utamaro)

[Via MetaFilter]

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.

The amazing, fascinating, enlightening, bizarre and wonderful cornucopia of visual ephemera from books, periodicals and other sources known as BibliOdyssey recently turned 7.

That means the rabbit hole goes even deeper.

I’ll wish author peacay many happy returns, and if you get fascinated with this stuff the way I do, I’ll issue my Major Time Sink Warning, and wish you bon voyage.

(Images above: Wendel Dietterlin, Jacques Callot, Sir Peter Lely, Barbaro, Master IAM of Zwolle, James Bruce, Walter Rothschild, Charles Meryon, [unkonwn])