ColorFlip
May 15, 2008 | Categories: Illustration / Television

The last few posts have been very pink today, so I thought I’d continue this trend a little with a post about a fun little site called ColorFlip. There’s really nothing to it, it’s just a site where you “turn a page” from one color to the next. This goes on forever and ever as far as I can tell, but the sounds of the flipping and colors of the screen are pretty rad.

ColorFlip was created by Rafaël Rozendaal, a guy who just makes all sorts of interactive… things. His site has been around since 2001 and since then he’s created over 25 projects which entice you for maybe a minute or so, but I think that’s the fun of it. Be sure to check out ColorFlip and then check out his site to try the other awesome things he’s done.

Found through Fecal Face

Bobby

Photos From Kevin Lyons’ Show, Your Mom’s In My Business
May 12, 2008 | Categories: Art / Design / Illustration

Last Friday I popped over to the Kevin Lyons show over at HVW8 on Melrose and it was a good time. The show is called Your Mom’s In My Business and was made up of drawings and doodles that Kevin made while he was riding the train 4 hours a day back and forth to work. The work isn’t deep and full of meaning, but it has a good sense of humor and is sharp as a tack. It’s not even all his own work, some things are pulled from magazines and who knows where, but it’s rad nonetheless. The show’s gonna be up until June 15th, so be sure to stop by if you’re in the area.

To see a bunch more photos of the show check out my Flickr Set!

Bobby

Penguin Books Releasing New James Bond Covers
May 9, 2008 | Categories: Books / Design / Illustration

I never thought I’d be posting another Penguin Books story, but they’ve totally upped their game as of late! Following on the heels of their Shepard Fairey redesigned covers they’ve decided to redesign the covers of all the James Bond books in honor of (what would have been) Ian Fleming’s 100th birthday. The covers were created by illustrator Michael Gillette and feature beautiful women, a well-known vice of James Bond, with beautiful type artfully placed over their body.

The covers themselves are great, perfectly minimal, but they’ve also thought about the spines as well, adorning them with silhouettes of women and a good numbering system to keep your collection in order. I think this redesign is so successful, it works on so many levels. These are going to be released in hardback on May 29th, and you may just want to pick up the entire set just to have the hottest bookshelf ever.

Bobby

Art Shows This Weekend
May 8, 2008 | Categories: Art / Design / Illustration

There are a ton of good art shows this weekend, too many for me to post about individually, so I thought I’d do more of a round-up and sum things up better. Most of the shows take place around L.A., but one is in San Francisco and one is in Brooklyn, but all of them are awesome.

Thursday, May 8th 2008

Fellow Traveler - 8 pm
Featuring Justin Fines, Dan Funderburgh, and Kevin Devine

Fellow Traveler is new work by three Brooklyn artists originally from the American midwest. Like many immigrants, they celebrate their shared origins, but are also interested in where their individual paths diverge. Fellow Traveler are not adherents to a school or aesthetic, they are sympathetic allies with a shared perspective that refuse to be limited or defined by geography.

Click here for more info.

Friday, May 9th 2008

Your Mom’s In My Business - 6 to 10 pm
Featuring Kevin Lyons

Kevin Lyons was one of my favorite designers back in the day, seeing how he was the brains behind Urban Outfitters back then, and his hand drawn fonts were like a dream. Since then he’s been working I’m sure, but I haven’t heard of anything from him a while. So it’s exciting to see that he’s having a new show with all sorts of new work. Some guy named Dj Susreshot is gonna be there as well, so it should be a good time.

Click here for more info.

ARTribe - 7 to 10 pm
Featuring a bunch of young artists

The ARTribe organization is made up of Los Angeles high school students dedicated to raising money for a worthy cause by promoting artwork created by fellow high school students at the Santa Monica Art Studios. Our event will showcase the work of talented local teenagers determined to make a difference in the world through their creativity. Photography, sculpture, film, drawings, and paintings selected by a panel of artists and jurors will be on exhibition. The art will be on display in the generous space afforded by Studio 1. Artwork will be made available for sale at the event and 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the S.P.I.R.A.L Foundation.

Click here for more info.

Forever and Never - 6 to 9 pm
Featuring Michael Sieben and Nat Swope

An ongoing collaborative print project between Michael Sieben and Nat Swope exhibiting 20 - 12″ x 12″ prints.
Framed and unframed prints will be for sale. $30 - $100

How could you pass up a show like that?

Click here for more info.

Saturday, May 10th 2008

Scion Art Tour 4 - 8 to 10 pm
Featuring Andrew Pommier, Andy Mueller, Angela Boatwright, Blaine Fontana, Blek LeRat, Books llll, Caia Koopman, Chris Yormick, Cody Hudson, Dalek, David Choe, Eye One, Francesco LoCastro, Freddi C, J. Shea, James Jean, Jeff Soto, Joshua Krause, Kelsey Brookes, Kenton Parker, Kofie, Mel Kadel, Michael Sieben, Mike Giant, Rammellzee, RETNA, R. Grimes, Ron English, Sam Flores, Sage Vaughn, Skwerm, Tim McCormick, Travis Millard, and The London Police

Scion’s Installation 4, “It’s A Beautiful World,” will open in
Los Angeles, the last of nine cities on the national tour, on May 10. The innovative Scion
Installation Art Tour launched its fourth installment last July and features a diverse array of
artists from around the world. The theme, “It’s a Beautiful World,” was interpreted by each
artist, in one of four mediums— painting, photography, sculpture, and collage. The culmination of the tour is accompanied by a live auction where all of the artwork will be auctioned off to the public, and 100 percent of the proceeds will go toward art related charities.

Click here for more info.

Bobby

Oliver Munday
May 6, 2008 | Categories: Art / Design / Illustration

An important part of being a superstar designer is having a name that sounds famous. Think of Zaha Hadid, Yves Behar, Marc Newson, Karim Rashid… all great names. So when I came across the work of Oliver Munday, I thought he had to be good, and it turns out I was right.

Oliver lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland and has an amazing portfolio of work. His choices of color and shape are totally spot on, and his projects are really fun. The photos above are a self promotional book he created that I thought was rather fun and creative. It has all sorts of fun icons and images inside, but the cover is my favorite part. Check out the rest of his work, you’ll certainly find something you like.

Found through FormFiftyFive

Bobby

Pigeons From Hell: An Interview with Nathan Fox
May 5, 2008 | Categories: Art / Comic Books / Illustration

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from illustrator and Kitsune Noir friend Nathan Fox and it mentioned he had a new comic out called Pigeons From Hell. I had NO idea that he was working on a comic book so I went out and bought it the very next day, read it all the way through and was amazed. The story is adapted from a Robert E. Howard story, the guy who created and wrote Conan the Barbarian, though this story is a spooky/horror kind of story set in a swamp in the South.

Nathan’s art has never looked more beautiful, and it’s pretty rad to see him doing sequential artwork for a change. The story is also colored by the amazing Jeromy Cox, who colored one of my all-time favorite comics, Promethea. Since I was so enamored with the first issue of the series, I did a little interview with Nathan and asked him a little about the book and his new experience with comics.

+KN: So how did you get attached to drawing Pigeons From Hell?

Nathan Fox: I’ve been sending my work around for a while through pitches and narrative illustration work, trying to see if anyone would take a chance, and Matt Dryer at Dark Horse called me up for Pigeons From Hell.

+KN: Were you a fan of Robert E. Howard’s work before you started work on the comic?

Nathan Fox: Nope. Didn’t know about Joe’s work at all. I really didn’t know that much about the breadth of Howard’s work out there to tell you the truth beyond the barbarian movies. I only knew about Conan comics wise but rarely picked up any issues except for Greg Ruth’s work on the series. Love his stuff. But once I got into Howard’s writing and short stories and read the original Pigeons From Hell and caught up with the work Joe had been doing I was sold. And here we are.

Keep reading Pigeons From Hell: An Interview with Nathan Fox…

Bury Me in the Sand, A New Show by Geoff McFetridge
April 23, 2008 | Categories: Art / Design / Illustration

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything about Geoff McFetridge, or at least it seems like a long time to me. Anyhow, Geoff is having a show this Friday at Mollusk called Bury Me in the Sand. From what I’ve seen of the show it looks like he’ll have some new screenprints, including one GIANT piece that looks like it would be a sail for a sailboat. Also be sure to check out Mullosk’s website and shirts they sell as well. They have a really great online store and I bought Jeff one of their t-shirts for Hanukkah last year and it looked great.

The show goes from 7 to 10 pm and music provided by DJ Trace. I wish I was going to be in SF this weekend, I’d love to see this show! Check under the cut for some preview photos that Mollusk posted.

Keep reading Bury Me in the Sand, A New Show by Geoff McFetridge…

Poolga
April 22, 2008 | Categories: Apple / Art / Design / Illustration

When I started doing the Desktop Wallpaper Project, I made the iPhone and PSP versions because I knew that I wanted to carry around these awesome images as well. But the DWP only comes out once a week, so if you’re ever in need of more backgrounds for your iPhone, head over to the folks at Poolga.

Poolga works on the same mantra that the DWP does, make awesome backgrounds for your iPhone. The ones above were created by an artist named Eika, or Karina Eibatova, an artist from Goteborg, Sweden. She’s just one of over 30 artists who’ve contributed, so you could basically have a new background every day of the month if you wanted. Definitely pop over and check out all the great images!

Bobby

Mats!? Traveler of Time and SPACE
April 18, 2008 | Categories: Art / Comic Books / Illustration

If you’re in Los Angeles tonight I highly suggest stopping by my favorite comic book shop Secret Headquarters for the opening of a new art show titled, Mats!? Traveler of Time and SPACE. Mats was born in France to Swedish parents, and has been drawing weird shit since he was in kindergarten. I stopped by the shop yesterday night and was able to take a sneak peek at the artwork and it looks like it’s going to be a really rad show.

The opening goes from 8 to 10 pm tonight and Mats artwork will be up until April 30th in case you can’t make it tonight!

Bobby

Copenhagen Jazz Festival 2008 Poster by Kasper Eistrup
April 18, 2008 | Categories: Art / Design / Illustration / Music

Good morning everyone! First off I just want to say that I think today is going to be a really good day. Last night I signed the lease on my new apartment, so that stress is gone. And then after that I met up with my friend Max and we talked about some upcoming business with the blog, and I also randomly got to see my friends Kyle, Michael, Aron and Elliel as well. Then this morning I actually woke up rather early for a change, and I’ve already come across something awesome to post about!

The poster you see above was created by Kasper Eistrup, a Danish musician who is in the band Kashmir, one of Denmark’s more popular bands. For years now he’s done the covers and music videos for his band, but in 2006 he took the time to create enough work for a one man show at the Falkener Gallery in Copenhagen. Because of his obvious talent, the folks at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival commissioned him to create this years poster, and I would admit that it’s incredibly rad. The poster features a random jazz fan, it’s really no one in particular, which was Eistrup’s point:

”I have chosen to shift the focus away from the performing musician and his or her instrument, and instead portray an ardent music lover as he stands before a current of sound waves. I wanted to create a picture that was steaming with music, without directly using the usual symbols to depict it. It turned out to be a harder task than I’d expected, since a saxophone or well-know jazz figure would have given an instant, clear signal, but my objective was to achieve the same effect without them. As to whether or not I’ve succeeded, I leave that up to the observer.”

I’m absolutely in love with the “current of sound waves” behind him. And so you know, the poster is watercolor or gouache, I can’t really tell, but it’s all hand-painted, which is really nice to see these days. The color choices and the lighting is also extremely spot on, like in my mind this poster couldn’t be any better, it’s as close to perfection as you can get.

To see a larger version of the poster, you can click here, or to buy for yourself, take a visit over to here.

Found through Dansk Dynamit

Bobby