on illustration

One of my favorite things to do over the past couple of years has been to outright admire design.  In as many forms as I can find.  I save images, tear others out, look at things and ponder them.   Use them as work breaks, time-killers on MUNI or to make it to an hour on the crosstrainer machine.  Flip through magazines, books, blogs, emails, Etsy shops, tweets.   I love seeing what people are creating, perhaps moreso now that I feel the weight (sadness? despair?) of the reality of aging: The World of Collapsing Possibilities.  Something, I’m realizing, I didn’t fully understand or know until this year.

But I sure know it now.

Last night I did something I haven’t done in over a decade.  I  found myself studying illustration in a book that I picked up from someone’s sidewalk donation box.  The reading was fine, there were cute stories that informed my understanding of celtic folklore and paganism (ahhh, so that’s what May Day was for…), and the words were all printed in a really pretty penciled handwriting…  Maybe it was my super tiredness, but I eventually found myself doing something I haven’t done since I was a child: overlooking the words and flipping through the pages to study the illustration.  wowie wow.  People can do awesome things with charcoal and pencil.

I was immediately rocketed back to being 5 years old and liking Beatrix Potter.  The stories were cute and original and endearing, sure, but I really liked the drawing.   And the fact that they looked like drawings.

And Edward Gorey – pretty sure my checking out of books in my elementary school library had a lot to do with liking his pictures.

Letterpress seems to be one of my default likes – like if a poster or book cover is the result of letterpress, I probably love it.  I’m drawn to concept photography and painting and interesting other forms of art, but I never think of them as something I could ever afford to have for myself.  Similar, maybe, to how I constantly keep choosing t-shirts and casual clothes when shopping.  Hmm…

Anyway, I’m totally in love with these:

And what great design and illustration:

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