JOYENGINE: cause sharing is cool

The latest cover illustration of The New Yorker is stirring up political controversy.  It depicts Barack Obama and his wife enacting their now infamous “terrorist fist jab”, and adorning the oval office with a photo of Osama Bin Laden.  While any child can see that the image is satirical in nature, people are still plenty pissed off.

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton called it “tasteless and offensive” and, according to Jake Tapper at ABC, another high-profile Obama supporter called it “as offensive a caricature as any magazine could publish.”  Artist Barry Blitt defends the cover, saying that “It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.”

While I do not find this illustration to be Blitt’s best work, it is nice to see political art getting this kind of attention and stirring up conversation.  It isn’t created to be shocking, its intention is to poke the media in the eyes for their ridiculous coverage of such rhetoric, and slam those who could actually believe in such nonsense.  Obama supporters need to realize that getting the literal image of “Obama the terrorist” out in the open will cause people to take a stance on the issue.  And anyone who feels its a fair criticism of him is beyond logic at this point.  What to do about such ignorance?

Political illustration has a long and venerable history of saying what can’t be said out loud.  The message is clear, and slimy conservatives attempting to pin Obama with the secret terrorist label get a swift kick in the nuts.  Thanks political illustration!  Stick around, here come the 527 groups…

New illustrations from the cypher13 team working with GTT and MadKast.

 Jan Willem is Zeptonn.  He’s from the Netherlands and he’s awesome.  He’s an illustrator and much of his work revolves around designing t-shirts, wall-decals, stickersets, and (skate)board graphics for some heavy hitting clients.  His new book, entitled Black & White Freedrawings is a wicked collaborative endeavor between himself and 40 other internationally acclaimed artists, including Jon Burgerman, DGPH, Philip Tseng, Hello Brute, Hicalorie, Jawa, Mulheres Barbadas, Nick Deakin, Peskimo, Meomi, Von Glitschka, Shin Tanaka, Meni Tzima and many others.  The books illustrations were passed back and forth between artists with complete freedom resulting in some super creative shit.  To top it off the book was produced in an eco-friendly manner, using a waterless printing process that reduces environmental impact. Computer-to-plate technology and silicon plates eliminate the use of chemicals and water, and vegetable-based inks further reduce resource use and pollution. The paper used is FSC certified 100% recycled, and is produced in a climate neutral fashion. The project is sponsored by BührmannUbbens papier.  Brilliant!!!

Our friend Oscar Woodruff draws a lot. And he’s really good at it. A recent Woodruff encounter with all around rad arty dude, Alex Hanel (who happens to also be plotting world domination… alongside Lifter Baron, of course, as well as some other peops we like to hang with…), resulted in Alex recommending that Oscar look into obtaining a Moleskine Pocket Japanese Notebook. The Moleskine Pocket Japanese book offers a unique accordion style design influenced by the horizontal scrolls and folding screens of traditional Japanese art. Hanel figured it’d be perfect for Oscar’s wild, narrative illustration style, often spanning multiple pages of paper, or bar coasters, or napkins, or pretty much anything you can draw on. Woodruff went out and got one, and he’s kinda been crushing it. See for yourself… Oh, and if all goes to plan there may be a Woodruff show full of these notebooks in the very near future. Our mouse-soft fingers are crossed.

Oscar’s Moleskine all accordian’d out. We had to get on a ladder to snap the pic!

Homey certainly likes to stay up late and draw. Everyone in our lil’ crew - on our side of the globe, can appreciate that.

cypher13 was recently contracted to do some character development for Test Quest’s upcoming facebook app. Basically, we got to design some sweet samuri for SAT prep, cuz learning is awesome! So kids, go to school, study real hard and if ya need help on your SATs, maybe these little guys can help.

Figure now that it is finished I should put it up, right?Full pic up top and detail at the bottom… Maybe some prints available soon?

He’s always watching…

This “You Should Know” is the first of what I hope to be a weekly article or interview featuring an artist (living or dead) that I think everyone ought to know about. Illustration happens to be my area of focus, but I’m keeping the criteria wide open. Ideally this will be a way for me to learn about new artists as well, so if you’d like to see a particular artist featured just shoot me an email at: josh@josholland.com

The first featured artist is a ghost of illustration’s past, Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874-1951).

Leyendecker’s long and illustrious career is so damned interesting, I’m not quite sure where to begin. I think I’ll focus on the lesser known facts. He was personally very shy and something of a recluse, no doubt stemming from the fact that he was gay in a time when being openly gay meant career suicide. His lover became a social icon of the idealized man, appearing as the subject of many of his paintings (the strapping slick-haired blonde fellow). Joseph’s brother Frank was also an incredibly talented artist, though eventually overshadowed by his big brother.

J.C. Leyendecker was among the first artists to create the modern magazine cover that functions as a separately engaging art piece. His 40 year stint painting covers for The Saturday Evening Post made him among the most known artists of his time, and inspired some guy named Norman Rockwell to the point of stalker obsession. Rockwell went so far as moving to the same block that Leyendecker lived on, just to be closer to his idol (who undoubtably influenced the great American illustrator’s every brush stroke).

The tail end of Leyendecker’s career was rocky at best, as he struggled to secure the work that had come so effortlessly throughout his entire career. Rockwell became the new face of the Saturday Evening Post, and Joseph slipped into obscurity. He later died of a heart attack, and his Saturday Evening Post paintings were sold for $75 each by his sister. Something to look forward to kids, becoming the most famous artist of your time, only to die frustrated and forgotten. Yay!

Leyendecker’s painting style is unmistakably his own, shockingly and timelessly modern. His observant shaping, exaggerated anatomy, animated gestures and highly expressive brush strokes will continue to influence and inspire illustrators forever. I’ve had the pleasure of viewing Leyendecker’s work in person, an experience I’d recommend to anyone who has the opportunity as he is truly one of the greatest commercial artists to ever wield a brush.

A picture is worth a 1000 words, right? Eff that. Not in the case of Kluver’s crazy illustrator buddy, Oscar Woodruff. Perhaps a million? Oscar is quite possibly the nastiest illustrator ever, yep ever. He draws cuz he likes to. And, he draws a lot. The character above is part of a world created by and perhaps only intimately known by Woodruff… and maybe Kluver? Anyway, rumor has it that Oscar’s illustrations may be coming to life in some published format here soon. We certainly hope that happens.

Alex, Lucian, and I have been building a little world comprised of 15th century japanese inspired characters and other feudal japanese elements.  We have grand intentions of bringing them to life via a large installation style body of artwork here at the studio, limited edition prints, wallpaper, and integrating them in to all sorts of other goodies.  We wrapped up the first three over the weekend in a super gloss meets super flat style and we’re psyched on how the little ladies came out.  More of this steez soon!

Here is a pretty good interview with Sheffield design duo TADO. It’s a pretty good peek into who they are, how they got going, what they are doing now and what they might up to tomorrow. Make sure to surf the site, The Little Chimp Society, it has some really good content on it for all of you vector/illustration heads out there.