Joann Sfar's work is a curiosity for me, i both like it and don't like it.

I mean, i would like to dismiss it, at times it seems far too rudimentary and his line too nervously scratchy, but, but, but theres a joy in his work that has me hooked... i just can't deny it.

I think its the sheer boldness of his work that attracts me... its audaciously simple and charmingly direct. It strikes me as the work of someone who is brimming with ideas and is determined to get them out and vitalized by sharing them with a wider public. Sometimes i think its easy to forget the joy of sharing your work with others, deviantart is a good antidote for this, but it seems that this joy is something that Sfar thrives upon, he has apparently released over a hundred books since the 1990s.

I wonder at that sort of productivity, it makes me smile, and it makes me want to rattle my recalcitrant chains and, not so much as take a metaphorical leaf from Mr. Sfar's book but, sit down and finally produce a story start to finish and share it with others.

Actually, thinking about it in those terms, i have to say that for me Joann Sfar is inspirational

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At last i have found a very very useful and fun resource on Deviantart!

After just over a year of posting I had begun to think that Deviantart was dominated by Manga, Fanart, and Photography. Its not that i would disparage any of these things, and even amongst this sprawling cluttered chaos, i have found some gems of artists and even better some gems of good folks.

All and all though i did gets to wondering, just where are all the illustrators at?

Well the answer it seems is that quite a lot of them hang out at the 'Children's Illustrator Club', which i stumbled upon through a link on Koda-chrome's (one of those gems that i was talking about) page [link]

I am just familiarizing myself with the 'Children's Illustrator Club', but i can already tell that it is a very useful resource for anyone interested in that area... not only that but it seems like a fun and friendly community of professional and amateur artists.

I submitted to join the club last week and after some fretting, much to my joy i was accepted in, just the other day (yes, a marmot gets to worrying about such things).

So, if you're interested in children's illustration at all, or if you just want to check out some beautiful art then I'd advise you do check the club out
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De Crecy, a french author and artist, and is the illustrator whose work re-opened my eyes to the joys of Bandes Dessines, French Comic books. I toddled across his books while browsing in the library and immediately fell for his blend of surreal intimacy and quirky detail.

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I suppose that for most De Crecy's work would be familiar from his association with Stephan Chomet, with whom he has created some grand graphic novels and whose sensibilities seem to extend across Chomet's animations such as 'Triplets de Belleville' or my favorite 'La Vieille Dame et les Pigeons'.

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For me, De Crecy's work is characterized by scratchy nervous lines coupled with warm washes of tone and colour. His graphic novel work shows a mania for interior details, his interiors are festooned with knick-knacks heirlooms and oddities in a manner true many he French household, his urban settings display a blend that slides between Eugene Atget's Paris and Tim Burton's Gotham; his characters are nothing but unique, gnarly old dogs, doddering octogenarian miscreants, super-fruit, a seal with a bionic body, the fully functioning head of a cardinal... all in all a strange blend, somehow bringing to my mind the warming flavors of a vin chaud from a street side vendor.

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One of the most wonderful artists that i have stumbled across in my exploration of European sequential art has to be Lorenzo Mattotti. [link]

Mattotti is another Italian artist, perhaps its something they have in the water over there, who is a bit of an all-rounder dabbling in comics, illustration and fine art. Personally, I have had the most exposure to his graphic novel illustrations and they have thrilled me no end.

Mattotti's art displays a bold use of colour which, if bright rich and joyous, never strays into garish. He manages to couple this with a simplified use of shapes and swerving curves and most baffling to me a lack of outlines. There is also a feathered textured quality to his work that more or less goaded me back to using colouring pencils.

In my opinion the two best best books i have read hat displays this type of work has to be 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde', an adaption of the classic story which is updated to the Weimar Germany of Otto Dix and George Grosz, and the more sonorous 'Capoto', the story of early navigator.

My favorite work by him however is Stigmata, a black and white feast of scribbled meshing crosshatch and sinuous lines. What i appreciate about his approach to black and white work like this are the raw textures of the pen hatching which would normally be blocked in and cleaned up by a more orthodox artist.

I have recently encountered and have fallen ass over elbow in awe with the work of the Italian illustrator Sergio Toppi.

Toppi has been working for decades in the world of European comics/sequential art and his work displays a really idiosyncratic approach to pictorial story telling. Rather than rely on the traditional method of separating the page into panels Toppis pages more often are composed of a single montage of different elements all sewn together with beautifully lush black and white line work. The wonder for me is just how, using this method, he manages to successfully compose the different elements so that they let the narrative flow in a clear manner.

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The second link is my favorite as it seems to be an exhibition of his actual work pages and not the subsequent prints, i prefer this as, for me, it makes the work far more human and intriguing!