ARTBOOK SPOTLIGHT: Illustrations of Rock

JAPAN ONLY
various artists – Hakusensha – 1979 – 82 pgs

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this book.  It’s a collection of illustrations by 70s shoujo mangaka of their favorite rock songs.  I won’t lie, this is one of the coolest artbooks I own.  It’s also pretty rare and valuable, I paid quite a bit for it and it’s the only copy I’ve ever seen for sale.

I scanned a little more of this than I would have liked to, but it’s unusual, and this is likely the only place most of these illustrations appeared.  I do feel bad featuring artwork like this though, so if I’m asked to take it down, I will.

It is worth looking at.  Even if only to see that Keiko Takemiya is/was a Bee Gees fan.

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ARTBOOK SPOTLIGHT: Vagabond Illustration Collection: Sumi

Takehiko Inoue – Viz – 2008 – paperback – 158 pages
Sumi is still in print and available in English, so if you’re interested, try Amazon.

Viz has published a fair number of artbooks over the years, most as tie-ins to very popular series.  I have most of a few of them.  In the spirit of “don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” that CMX has inspired in me lately, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at one of them, so here’s one I picked up a few months back.

Viz’s artbooks are often near-perfect reproductions of a book that has already come out in Japan, and they are generally indistinguishable from their Japanese counterparts save for language and a few publisher logos. The books in Viz’s “The Art Of” line are almost all hardcovers, but this Inoue book happens to be paperback. I believe most of these books are printed in Japan, and I’ve never noticed any printing quality or binding issues. They are very, very nice books, and usually aren’t that expensive considering what they are.

Sumi features Takehiko Inoue’s black and white illustration work from Vagabond.  There is a companion volume, Water, that features the color artwork, but I’ve never seen that one myself. Inoue is quite an artist, especially with ink illustrations.  He uses gestural, heavy inks intermittently throughout Vagabond, and its one of the things I love most about the series.

So.  Here’s a brief look at it.  Once again, I kind of hate posting images, so if asked to take them down, I will.  Also, another reminder that I don’t have a scanner, Photoshop, or knowledge of how to take good digital stills.

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ARTBOOK SPOTLIGHT: Moyoco Anno Prints 21

Since I have completely failed at writing features (I’ve got about three in drafts right now that I’m too much of a coward to post), I thought I’d try something different and do an occasional feature on an artbook.  I wouldn’t say I’m a collector, but I have accumulated some over the years, and I’ll try to show off one a month.  Let’s see how long I can stick to this plan.

I’ve thought about doing this before (another draft is an artbook spotlight I wrote about four years ago, then took down after one day), but I do have objections to posting artwork like this.  Considering the fact that I’m taking photos of only a few pages in an extremely dark room rather than scanning it, I don’t think it’ll really serve as a substitute to buying the book, though, and I hope that it’ll pique curiosity.

Anyway.  I’ve failed in my mission already, because this isn’t an artbook, but an issue of an art magazine featuring Moyoco Anno.  I picked it up about a month or two ago, and it’s pretty cool, so I guess it counts.

Once again, my images are taken with a digital camera and are of terrible quality, and in the case of Moyoco Anno especially, the colors are ruined and don’t do the real thing justice.  If I am asked to take the images down, I will.

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