Yuko Yamamoto's paper craft illustrations

Yuko Yamamoto’s illustrations are stylish and sophisticated; her choices of colour and layout appear to look effortless. She works in collage, paper cutting, drawing, and watercolour. There is a very feminine quality to her portfolio online, due to the subjects she chooses to illustrate and her beautifully balanced; and thought out colour combinations.

I first got directed to her site with a link to her paper cuts, on the first page of images she adorns herself in the soft white foliage of her designs, a promising start I thought, on the next linked page more portfolio were pieces exhibited, I discovered that the paper cuts were not getting more intricately complex by either method or composition. Throughout her series of pieces, was the organic nature of her designs and the use of the camera to better showcase them. Her photographs compositions were as vital as the work itself, using shadows and lighting techniques and placement, using curved objects such as a studio chair, it’s interesting seeing how the piece of delicate 2D design falls softly into the 3D object.

Her pencil drawings have the same flair and style as the subjects she illustrates, again there is a simplicity and elegance of line. Her drawings of the shop fronts Chanel and Mui Mui added a touch of class.

The illustrative collages I think I liked best because of her combined skills of paper crafting with a playful sense of colour. There was an appealing vintage theme throughout her designs, best seen with the illustration of objects such as an SLR camera, a screw-top pepper pot and a key which might fit an old French chateau, I’d very much like to imagine.

Though she is a Japanese illustrator with an innate compositional sense, her illustrations are inspired by a French vintage style from the 1920s onwards. Everything is artfully composed, the way she photographed her paper cut designs was an interesting two-step process. As appealing as her work is I am yearning to see a more conceptual approach to her designs. However, what is absolutely apparent is the high-end presentation of all her creative pieces.

Yuko Yamamoto online portfolio

Birds I've Been

After considering the personal and collective thoughts, in the book titled Working On My #Novel, I decided Maude White’s exquisitely beautiful hand carved paper art would be perfect to showcase. She explains the concept behind her artworks as follows: “Birds I’ve Been is a new series of cut paper art that examines both women and birds; as observers witnessing the intimacy and action of others, and as participants experiencing and processing events.”

Firstly, I find it interesting that the method of hand-carved paper craft sounds softer and more human, perhaps to laser-cut paper art, though I should think with using either method that there are pros and cons. The paper cut pieces suggestively look more animated than static images, perhaps it’s the compositional positioning of key elements. Reminiscent of Lotte Reiner’s magical silhouette puppetry of tales such as Hansel and Gretel (a short film made in 1955 that used paper cut silhouettes that could be animated by a series of jointed points). There are a few pieces that are suggestively much deeper than the fragile paper cut surface quality; what are the actions of others the artist mentions in her statement? Furthermore… the designed motifs illustrate a different species of bird in each piece (the bird species take on a symbolic reference with each individual piece), juxtaposed with other storytelling elements, like the wind whipping up a storm, the woman’s hair unravelling into a woven ball, and the swan with his wings outstretched whilst the woman's sitting in a despairing pose.

The consideration of choosing the framing of the pieces is interesting too. As the paper cut birds are suspended in glass frames the detail becomes very subtle and mysterious with no added background as an offset. The mounted pieces with the white paper on a dark inky background are slightly reminiscent of the traditional silhouette portraits from the 18th and 19th centuries but in reverse! There’s something very complete and pure about the subject matter when it’s depicted in white, white can also mean kindness. Please visit the link at the bottom of the page to see more pieces and further details of her current exhibition in New York via her personal website.

Maude White: Paper Carving Artist

Working on my #novel

A newly published book by US artist Cory Arcangel has sourced from twitter 127 tweets which include the phrasing in whatever personal context “working on my novel”. It’s a book about the creative process of writing a book: the struggle and conflicts, the time, the feedback and support. Apart from its cute concept, which kind of reminds me of an episode of Seinfeld when Kramer comes up with the idea of a Coffee Table Book about coffee tables. The prototype of his idea, he demonstrates further by adding legs to the book so that it can be used as a small coffee table in itself and it gets published, now that was hilarious! Maybe the pointlessness of it is the motive for its publication.

CR article with feedback: Can't wait to finish this : ) so can work on my #novel

The New Yorker unveils its first animated GIF cover

It had to happen; The New Yorker unveils its first animated GIF cover that is illustrated by Christoph Niemann and aptly titled Rainy Day. He mentions in The Guardian online, “When I arrived in New York for the first time, it was pouring. Maybe that’s why, to my mind, there’s no place on earth where being stuck in traffic on a rainy day is more beautiful.” I agree with him to an extent, that there is a certain romance to rain, (songs have been made up about it, most notably Singin’ In The Rain, sung and danced by Gene Kelly).

On a visual level the haziness makes it harder to define objects, shapes and textures, colours soften in focus but exaggerate in intensity. Umbrellas are often a plethora of colours brighten up any sky, as do colours reflecting on the street. However, being stuck in a traffic jam is not so much fun, but it is a nice touch to re-think of the very first impression of the city with the first animated cover design.

I love the simplicity of the graphics, the yellow and orange of the taxi add a warmth to the gentle grey background. The blurriness of the colours certainly feels like looking through a glass window of some kind. The alluring image mesmerises the viewer as gentle randomised soft spots of raindrops fall, tear-shaped, but happy ones.

The effect of the overall design composition is twofold: it is conceptually meaningful and visually beautiful simultaneously. Obviously, the print edition is a static image, the animated GIF art is aimed at online audiences. Fans of digital art now wait with baited breath for the next edition.

The Guardian article link

Celestial Eyes

The Gatsby cover, as I mentioned in my previous post about the relationship between author and illustrator with regard to this iconic cover; I wanted to find out more about Francis Cugat and his design sketches. Here is an interesting essay (link) on discussing Cugat’s preliminary drawings he did, and it argues that the preliminary sketches by the artist of the Long Island Railroad, among the Ash Heaps shows that there is no billboard of Dr T. J. Eckleburg. The essay suggests that Fitzgerald was still to conceive the idea, it states:

“The fact that in Cugat’s sketch there is no indication of a billboard, much less the bespectacled eyes of Doctor Eckleburg, suggests that Fitzgerald had yet to conceive his optical symbolòor at least, had yet to share it with either his editor or the artist. We are left then with the enticing possibility that Fitzgerald’s arresting image was originally prompted by Cugat’s fantastic apparitions over the valley of ashes; in other words, that the author derived his inventive metamorphosis from a recurrent theme of Cugat’s trial jackets, one which the artist himself was to reinterpret and transform through subsequent drafts.” 

Fitzgerald before marrying Zelda and publishing his first novel This Side of Paradise had a brief career at Barron Collier advertising agency New York. Surely he would have known something about billboards and the business of advertising, such as the importance of design and location, so the artwork and copy being seen by a moving vehicle. Also, a little deeper than that, its impact on the transformation of the surrounding environmental scenes, affecting people’s lives in some way. The bespectacled eyes of Doctor Eckleburg in the book, interestingly the billboard had become redundant and seemed to serve no further purpose.

I think the title of the painting was the trigger that  Fitzgerald needed, enabling him to think between the celestial eyes and his previous experience of working in an advertising company. Charles Scribner (his publisher)  says, “it became the most celebrated jacket art and widely disseminated jacket art in 20th-century American literature.”

In 1915 Francis Cugat was commissioned to paint portraits of the stars at the Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre. Moving to Hollywood in 1925 worked as a set designer with Douglas Fairbanks, it was through his works in the film industry that his works became known to the publisher Charles Scribner. Later in 1942 Cugat had a solo exhibition of his paintings in NewYork. Apart from the celebrated Gatsby cover; Cugat was a Technicolor consultant and was credited for technical work on sixty-eight Hollywood films.

 Murtore, Raisa and Rimini Theatre Cards - 1915–1917

George Gershwin (An American in Paris) - c. 1928, Etching.

Celestial Eyes - A painting for the cover of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Technicolor Color Consultant for the 1955 movie Three for the Show

Technicolor Color Consultant for the John Ford/John Wayne film The Quiet Man

French Quarter, New Orleans landscape painting

Bridgetoan Harbor, Barbados landscape painting

Fitzgerald Dust Jackets

This is a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first edition books, purchased by Matthew Bruccoli an American Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. At his first attempt to purchase at a charity auction almost completely failed, there were too many other bidders. It was during a break that he noticed Scottie Fitzerald and got talking with her. When the next auction round started he felt a little more determined at bidding. Turning around to see who he was bidding against, he was very surprised to see that it was Scottie Fitzerald. He immediately withdrew from bidding, only to find moments later the book, Taps at Reveille, handed to him. Bruccoli remembers as if it was yesterday, “She told me later that I looked so disappointed about losing out on the other books that she wanted to cheer me up. Later, I learned that she did impulsive things like that all the time. She took it as her responsibility to make people happy.” She had bought the book as a gift for him! After this the two became firm friends and collaborated, publishing a number of essays, conversational pieces and biography A Brief Life of Fitzgerald. 

Though all the books are first editions, they are far from immaculate. However, they are quite remarkable; the books have been personally inscribed by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Since Bruccoli passed the collection has been kindly donated to the University of Carolina, and is second only to the F. Scott Fitzgerald collection at Princeton University Library.

Matthew Bruccoli’s first introduction to Fitzerald’s writings was by listening to a radio play a dramatisation of The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, whilst riding in the back of his parents’ Dodge. Furthermore, it inspired a love of books, he went on to be a student at Yale University. “The wit and warmth of his prose appeal to me as much today as they did when I first began reading it,” he said. “But I’m also disturbed by the popular image of Fitzgerald that obscures the real man.” This collection costs thousands of dollars but is now valued at nearly $2 million. Since his passing, the collection has been kindly donated to the University of Carolina, as to benefit all the students.

  

The earliest first edition book jacket This Side of Paradise, 1920 became the most popular book of the year. The unfinished novel The Last Tycoon, published in 1941 was completed by a close friend. From a Graphic design perspective, there are several interesting things to note about these book jackets, approved at the time by both Fitzgerald, and Charles Scribner’s Sons Publishers in New York. Firstly, the typographic treatments of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s author's credit, the letting on most jackets is designed to fit with the title font of the book, the title always taking precedence with colour, and font size. All bar the first three book jackets, have his name in different font settings and styles. The first three novels published by W. E Hill, are quite formulaic as a set with a monochromatic style. There’s a font consistency between all three with pencil photorealistic drawings of the characters poised as if on a movie set. I think that the cover illustration on This Side of Paradise and The beautiful and the Damned looks, especially like himself and Zelda. The body language on these covers is quite provoking if I am correct by the likenesses.

From 1922 with Tales of the Jazz Age, a new illustrator John Held was commissioned. The typographic treatment is hand rendered, rather than a typeset. The cover image depicts a scene of dancers in a characterised style in contrast to the older covers with photorealist drawings. He approached the cover of The Vegetable with the same freehand font treatment and illustrative style using a brilliant red background. Therein for each new book jacket, a new illustrator was commissioned. As a result, the novels individually stand apart, yet as a collection of works by the same author they fit together well; by strong colour, association is considered as vintage colours today. The style is often monochromatic with either red, yellow, orange or green. In the case of Tender is the Night, it’s all of those colours, but in simple blocks of colour. Unfortunately not credited to the illustrator; I think that it's a stunning illustrated design. 

Additionally, apart from W. E Hill’s composed illustrations, there is a sense of motion with the others that echoes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s style of prose. There’s continuous movement throughout the text. This translates visually within the elements of design: dancing, fireworks, rippling water and large romantic italics. The iconic The Great Gatsby’s cover art is illustrated by a little known Spanish artist Francis Cugat, who created the piece as Fitzgerald was writing the final drafts of the novel. The heroine's discombobulated head, melting into cobalt night sky; her irises transfigured into reclining nudes, glowing like car headlights. There’s an alluring sadness streaming from one eye is a green luminescent tear; it impressed him so much that he decried the visual imagery in his novel. It is even suggested that the Dr T. J. Eckleburg advertising billboard was added later too (see link below). Scribner (his publisher) quotes the author as saying, “For Christ’s sake, don’t give anyone that jacket you’re saving for me. I’ve written it into the book.” This is the first I’ve heard of such a thing—A fantastic collaboration between author and illustrator. The result is of course unsurpassable.  

This Side of Paradise (1920)
 Dust Jacket Illustration by W. E. Hill

Flappers and Philosophers (1920) 
Dust Jacket Illustration by W. E. Hill

The Beautiful and Damned (1922)
 Dust Jacket Illustration by W. E. Hill

Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
 Dust Jacket Illustration by John Held, Jr.

The Vegetable; or, From President to Postman (1923)
 Dust Jacket Illustration by John Held, Jr

 Gatsby (1925)
 Dust Jacket Illustration by Francis Cugat

 All the Sad Young Men (1926)
 Dust Jacket Illustration by Cleonike Damianakes

 Tender is the Night (1934) 
Dust Jacket Illustration unsigned

 Taps at Reveille (1935) 
Dust Jacket Illustration by Doris Speigel

The Last Tycoon (1941)

Save Me the Waltz (1932) 
by Zelda Fitzgerald
Dust Jacket Illustration by Cleonike Damianak

The Romantic Egoists (1974), front cover

The Romantic Egoists (1974), back cover

F. Scott Fitzgerald Collection, by Kathy Dowell.
 Courtesy of Ex Libris, an annual publication of the Division of Libraries and Information Systems of the University of South Carolina, 1994. Copyright 1996, the Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina.

Francis Cugat’s jacket for The Great Gatsby