illustration

I recently picked up a copy of adventurer and anthropologist William Seabrook's 1929 book on Haitian Voodoo, The Magic Island. The book is out of print, so I thought it would be nice to share some of the wonderful spooky illustrations that accompany the text. See the whole lot on Flickr (My HP Photosmart C4180 scanner is a piece of crap, sorry, if there's enough interest I'll rescan these at higher quality.)
Jim Tierney designed a beautiful set of covers for some of Jules Verne's most famous works. The project was carried out as part of his senior year thesis. He says: I'm a big Verne fan, but a chance to re-design any classic book is always exciting. Classics usually allow for a more personal interpretation, since most people are already vaguely familiar with the premise of the books, and I didn't have to compete with one well-known cover, as I might have with a more recent book. You can see the full set on the Faceout website.
I finally got around to reading my backed-up RSS feeds, and had the chance to peruse these, well, demented 1970s biology textbook illustrations uncovered by Crooked Timber. I mean, what? No - what??! Crooked Timber calls it a "Groovy Prog Rock Wannabe Biology Text." I don't know what to say, except that I went to Artomatic yesterday, which had something like a thousand artists, and this psychedelica is far trippier than anything I saw there. Whoa, man. For the record, if I had, as a child, learned to associate biology with angry disembodied leopard heads flying towards me on Frisbees of fire…
Check out Brian's new review of A History of Paleontology Illustration (Life of the Past) by Jane Davidson, in Palaeontologia Electronica: It is rare for fossils to be featured in fine art, but in the 15th century painting A Goldsmith in His Shop, Possibly Saint Eligius by the Flemish master Petrus Christus there is, if you look carefully, a fossil shark tooth among the objects scattered on the shop's table. The fossil plays a nearly insignificant role in the painting, but it reflects the general interpretation of such natural curiosities at the time. From this modest starting point,…
The Cheerful Cricket and Others (1907) Children's Digital Library The Children's Digital Library doesn't have a sleek interface and it can be a bit hiccupy, but if you poke around you'll find a surprising number of vintage children's books like The Cheerful Cricket and Others (1907) or The Illustrated Alphabet of Birds (1851). Best of all, several of the Oz books illustrated by John R. Neill are here in their entirety! I remember checking these out of the library when I was sick as a child. I think my mom must have charmed the librarian because I remember taking literally stacks of books at…