Colouring Book

I was recently asked to colour in this spread from my sketchbook for a publication and also to remove all parts of the sketchbook (ie the gutter and edges). Unfortunately, I didn't have access to the sketchbook in question but I have been getting more confident with Photoshop lately, so I did some cutting and pasting, using pieces from other sketchbooks and there you have it:

I always prefer to work with my hands, a pen and paper if I can help it, but I am discovering too, that Photoshop can be a fantastic tool if you know how to use it. The number of things it can do is so vast that even though I've been using it for years, I feel like I've only skimmed the surface.

Japanese Puppet

Raum kommt von Räumen

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Here is another very fine little piece of work I found in Berlin; Rita Fürstenau's booklet Raum kommt von Räumen is perhaps best described as fine art illustration. It is A6 sized and folded in on itself in a slightly labyrinthine way. Here is the cover, front and back:

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You continue to unfold the pages, at different angles, until you realise that they are part of one big drawing, populated by strange animals and plants, cities and people. It's very Garden of Earthly Delights. Here is a section:

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As you can see, it's very charming. I like the little jokes and references to space and folding that the artist makes throughout this landscape. Some parts remind me of Escher's prints of impossible architecture and objects.

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I have a feeling that the title is a pun (?) of some sort, but my german isn't good enough to decode it fully. 'Raum' means space and 'Räumen' means to vacate or to clear away. So a direct translation would be: 'Space comes from evacuation' (or simply, 'space comes from making space'). Obviously, there's also a similarity between the two german words. If anyone can do a better translation, please feel free to comment.
The one thing I found disappointing was that only one side of the paper is printed on. It would have been cooler if there were images on both sides, referencing each other, but I can see how that might have been too expensive to produce.

Be sure to have a look at Rita Fürstenau's website too.

Treasures of the Blog World

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I found this blog, A Journey Around My Skull, a cornucopia of images and ephemera. Then I followed the links to other amazing blogs and now I'm lost in the woods.