There’s just something about dragons, in all their scaly, writhing, whip-tailed, bat-winged glory, that gives artists a subject they can really, if you’ll excuse the expression, sink their teeth into.

Breath of Embers: Art of Dragons is a new show at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, California that revels in dragons in a multitude of interpretations by illustrators, fantasy artists and visual development artists. Dragons big and small, fearsome and fanciful, will fill the walls from now through October 31, 2011.

The feature page on the exhibit gives a list of the participating artists with links to their websites or blogs, and the “view pieces” page can be sorted by first or last name, and there is also a choice for “See All” on a single page.

When viewing individual pieces, it’s worth noting that the gallery now has a feature for viewing close-up crops for the images, allowing you to see the details and visual texture that give so many of these works their extra appeal (e.g. images above, bottom two).

(Images above, Justin Gerard, William Stout, Heather Theurer, Omar Rayyan, Eric Velhagen, Caitlin Hackett, Cory Godbey, Olivier Tossan)

Originally trained as a lawyer, 19th Century artist Jean Béraud turned his attention to painting after his studies were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian war.

He was born in St. Petersberg, his father a sculptor, and moved to Paris after his father’s death. After studying with well known portrait artist Léon Bonnat, Béraud painted scenes of life in the Parisian streets, cafes, bistros and theaters.

His style ranged from academically realist to not quite full-on impressionism, though he was at his best, in my eyes, when both influences were evident in the same canvas.

He also painted satirical impressions of Parisian life, including works in which biblical figures appeared in contemporary scenes.

It’s interesting to compare his Absinthe Drinkers (above, bottom) with Degas’s more famous painting of a similar subject.

In his wonderful typographical (and topographical) portrait of Steven Paul Jobs, designer and artist Dylan Roscover defined Jobs’ face and hand in words taken from the “Here’s to the crazy ones…” Apple ads, in typefaces associated with Apple graphic design.

The ads, part of Apple’s famous “Think Different” campaign created by the Los Angeles offices of the TBWA/Chiat/Day agency in 1997, seem particularly appropriate in their description of the dreamers, misfits and rebels who changed the world because they were crazy enough to think they could; that they could make or do things that were, in Jobs’ words, “Insanely Great”.

Here is a link to a version not aired at the time, narrated by Jobs (via Daring Fireball).

In addition to the current landscape of human/tecnology interaction and the redefinition of how business should use and value design (and do business in general), not to mention the nascent revolution in publishing, personal computing and media communication that is known as the iPad, Jobs left us with a number of thought provoking quotes.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
— Steve Jobs

[Addendum: A personal note: Steve Jobs' life was extended because he received a liver transplant. Willam Saletan has written an excellent short article for Slate magazine titled: Help the Next Steve Jobs, If you want to honor Steve Jobs, do what somebody did for him: donate your organs.

If you're confused or have questions about organ donation, get the answers. Every signed donor card changes the numbers — makes the odds better that someone, maybe you or someone you care about, will get a second chance at life.

I call this a personal note because I'm here writing Lines and Colors today by virtue of someone's similar thoughtfulness and generosity. I was fortunate to receive a kidney transplant almost 20 years ago. Here is an educational interactive for which I did illustration and animation on Gift of a Lifetime (click on "Understanding Donation").
— Charley]

In his most recent work painter David J. Teter takes a particular interest in the rough textures and muted colors of the industrial landscape.

Subjects like rusty sheet metal structures, corroded storage tanks and weathered railroad abutments give his compositions a strong geometry, and his controlled palette, often emphasized by the low value contrasts of overcast days, makes the textural aspects of his subjects more prominent.

Teter studied illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasedena, but has shifted his focus to gallery art. In addition to his industrial landscapes, his subjects include landscape, cityscape, seascape and figure.

Teter doesn’t have a website, but maintains an active blog titled Avid Art. You can browse through subjects for paintings within the blog posts by clicking on subject labels like “industrial painting” in the right sidebar of the blog.

In addition you can find his work on the sites of galleries in which he is represented, including Horizon Fine Art in Jackson, WY and the Randy Higbee Gallery in Costa Mesa, CA.

Teter’s work is currently the focus of a solo show at the Randy Higbee Gallery that is on view until October 14th, 2011.

Sketchtravel is a project started by illustrators Gérald Guerlais and Daisuke (“Dice”) Tsutsumi in 2006 in which a single sketchbook has traveled around the world, being handed from artist to artist between 70 artists in 15 cities, each adding a single page to the whole.

The project, which involves well known illustrators, animators and comics artists, benefits Room to Read, an international non-profit devoted to children’s literacy.

The sketchbook was completed by its final contributor, Hayao Miyazaki, in February. The first print edition has just been released in French and is now available on Amazon.fr. English and Japanese editions are planned, though there are no firm details yet.

The sketchbook itself will be auctioned off in Paris, and online, by Pierre berge & Associes on October 17, 2011. Details for the online auction, as well as other information, will be found on the new Sketchtravel website.

Designed by Seth Van Booven, the website itself it entertaining, with parts of the interface animating as you scroll down the page. There is also an impressive list of the contributors, with links to their websites or blogs.

Unfortunately the virtual version of the sketchbook that used to be available on the old site seems to be gone, but you can see more images of pages from the book on the Sketchtravel blog, along with interviews and additional features.

There is also a video trailer for a planned documentary about the project by Catherine Bonvalot available on Sketchtravel.tv.

For more, see my 2007 post on Sketchtravel.

(Images above: Greg Couch, Terada Katsuya, Sylvain Marc, Peter de Séve, Jerome Opena, Erik Tiemens)

Books, we are told, are on the way out — soon to be replaced by iPads and other widgets, complete with fake page-flipping gimmicks to assure us that we are in fact, still reading a book.

We’ll forget for the moment that movies were supposed to be the death of books, just as surely as TV was to be the death of movies and the internet the death of TV, and assume the pundits are correct. So what to do with the remaining dead-tree editions?

UK artist and art director Su Blackwell has one answer, in the form of beautiful cut-book sculptures.

She cuts the pages with a scalpel, forming the printed paper into various forms. Some are elaborate scenes, sitting atop the books from which they were formed, some as simple as flowers in which the ink from the printed lines is arranged to form the dark-hued edges of the blossoms. Some are arranged as dioramas in wooden and glass cases, at times theatrically lit.

In addition to her website, Blackwell also maintins a blog in which she lists upcoming exhibitions and installations.

Her themes frequently seem to be of fantasy, escape, freedom or enchantment — apt for the medium that has so long captured the ephemeral; even if the medium itself were to become ephemeral.

[Via A White Carousel by way of Sean Cowen and Eric Orchard]

When I was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the 1970′s there were two factions in the school, traditionalists and modernists.

Those of us, both faculty and students, who were in the traditionalist faction thought the Academy, of all places, should be bastion of academic art tradition, steeped in the teachings of Eakins and his predecessors. Those in the the modernist faction thought our values hopelessly irrelevant, just as we thought theirs spurious and insubstantial.

Times have, of course, changed somewhat; traditionalism and modernism seem to be in a kind of uneasy détente in the art world as traditional values and representational art have been reestablishing their prominence, and the Academy is perhaps a prime example of the current mix.

That mixture has become evident on the outside of the venerable school and museum as well as the inside, with the creation of the Lenfest Plaza, a reclaimed section of Cherry Street in Philadelphia, linking the Samuel M. V. Hamilton building, where most classes are now conducted, with the Academy’s Landmark building, an architectural marvel from the mind of Victorian era American architect Frank Furness that has been the Academy’s main building for most of its history.

The plaza gives the Academy a “campus” of sorts for the first time in its history (when I was there, the majority of classes were in a building called the “Peale House”, named for Charles Wilson Peale and located several blocks away form the Academy’s main building).

The centerpiece of the new plaza is the “Paint Torch”, a new large scale sculpture by modernist sculptor Claes Oldenberg.

Those who have been reading Lines and Colors for some time will know that I am generally not enthused about post-war modernism (i.e. American modernism), but there are exceptions and Oldenberg is one of them; partly because his sculptures of giant household objects are hilarious, and a breath of fresh air among modernists who take themselves way too seriously, and partly because they accomplish what I think art does for us at its best, allowing us to see the world around us, and the objects we take for granted, with fresh eyes.

Oldenberg’s Paint Torch is a 51ft (15m) high paintbrush, hanging out over the Broad Street sidewalk at a 60° angle, complete with a 6ft (2m) high dropped dollop of paint. It’s called the “Paint Torch” because the brush will light up at night, for the first time tonight, October 1, 2011.

The Academy is celebrating with a day long “Party on the Plaza” which is free and open to the public, as is the Academy’s superb museum of American art today.

As usual, Oldenberg’s work, and its placement, is stirring up a little controversy, but this is one hidebound traditionalist Academy alumni who likes it just fine.

(Photographs from PAFA)

[Addendum: photos from the event, as well as another good photo of the Paint Torch on the OLIN blog as well as extensive PAFA Flickr set.]

I’ve written before about Flesk Publications, a small specialty art book publisher that concentrates on presenting illustrators and comics artists. Among the artists are many that I’ve featured here on Lines and Colors.

Flesk has published a book called Flesk Prime in which five artists are highlighted in the same volume. Four are artists who have been featured in previous dedicated books: William Stout, Petar Meseldžija, Mark Schultz and Gary Gianni (links to my posts); one, Craig Elliott, is the subject of an upcoming title.

The book serves both as an introduction to those artists and as a kind of sampler and introduction to the Flesk line of books — in that the artists exemplify the kind of terrific and often underappreciated talent Flesk spotlights, and the book’s beautiful production values are consistent with the publisher’s consistently high standards.

Flesk Prime also serves as an art book on its own, a beautiful selection of work from five talented illustrators and comics artists. For those like me who already have many of the books in the Flesk line, the features and images are not redundant, each showcasing work that has not appeared in the publisher’s other volumes on these artists.

Unfortunately, the previews of the book on the Flesk site, while they do give you an idea of the book’s appearance, don’t show the artwork itself to best advantage and don’t do the book justice (though the images certainly look better there than in the limited space I have to show them above). If you’re not familiar with these artists, you would do better to look through the site for the individual volumes on them for better examples of their work.

Flesk Prime is available through the Flesk Publications store.