Join us in celebrating the newly released book Drawn In: A Peek into the Inspiring Sketchbooks of 44 Fine Artists, Illustrators, Graphic Designers, and Cartoonists. The book shares large full-color images and profiles each of the amazingly talented artists that discuss their sketchbooks and how they use them.

Meet artists from the book and get a book signed! Flip through their sketchbooks!

Some of the artists who will be at the event are Ana Benaroya, Jen Corace, Christian DeFilippo, Rob Dunlavey, Ben Finer, Jessica Hische, Matt Leines, Mike Lowery, Alex Lukas, Ted McGrath, Leif Parsons, Claudia Pearson, Mike Sudal, Jenny Volvovski and Ben K. Voss.

Thursday, June 30th at 6pm

at Powerhouse Arena in Dumbo
37 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

All are invited so bring friends! Drinks will be served.

See more about the book in a review and interview by Maria Popova (Brainpickings.org) that appeared in The Atlantic online right here.

I went for a few reasons. The first is that I authored and illustrated a book that’s coming out this Fall from Storey Publishing called Farm Anatomy. It’s 224 pages of painted illustrations that give a look at the curious parts of country life. At the show, I finally got to meet some of the fantastic Storey team I’ve been working with. I wasn’t sure I was supposed to talk about the book yet so I haven’t mentioned it on the blog before. But now that it debuted at the expo, I can finally start to share it. It’s been the biggest project I’ve ever done (it’s still not even finished!). I’ll be showing a lot of the making off and peeks of the spreads in the coming months.

I also did this year’s tote bag giveaway for Chronicle Books and the drawings they used to decorate their booth. When I first arrived and looked around the crowds, the totes were everywhere. It was such an incredible feeling seeing so many strangers carrying it around. Also I’ve never gotten to see my illustrations as big as they appeared on Chronicle’s booth. I am pretty psyched to be associated with such a great publisher! They have some seriously beautiful stuff coming out and I’m so honored to have a line of stationery coming out with them this Fall as well. (If you want a tote and aren’t going to BEA, you can buy one for $2.99 here. It’s made from all recycled materials!)

The third exciting reason for going to the show was that my good friend Grace Bonney of Design Sponge has her new book coming out called Design Sponge At Home. The book comes out this Fall as well, so Grace was there promoting it with a blad (stands for basic layout and design) which shows samples spreads from the book. My company ALSO designed the book and I did the all the interior illustrations. I also did the illustration on the coverwrap which was printed with gold foil (it’s hard to tell from photos.) I am so happy for her because I know how hard she worked on the book. There’s no doubt it will be a hit!

After being completely happily overwhelmed by the top three things, I did have a chance to wander the show and see some of the new books coming out soon. I am super excited that Sophie Blackall’s Missed Connections series is coming out as a book from Workman Publishing. I also am just as thrilled that a big book of Paula Scher’s Maps is coming out with Princeton Architectural Press. Other books that definitely made my Fall wishlist are Typography Sketchbooks (Jessica Hische, and Will Miller’s sketchbooks are in Drawn In and are quite incredible so I wouldn’t mind seeing more type sketches)(also how many books can Steve Heller author? It’s quite insane), James Jean’s Rebus, Shakespeare’s Love Sonnets (illustrated by my friend Caitlin Keegan) The Conductor, (looks so sweet!), How Carrots Won the Trojan War (because Gilbert Ford’s illustrations are so fun!) and The Art of Instruction, which looks especially gorgeous.

A few more scenes from around the show are below: (Sorry for the bad photography- all taken with my iphone.)

Anthony Cuday’s Vita is a dark narrative of a man who wakes up in the woods. I’ve been following Anthony’s work for a while, and I was excited to meet him and pick up this zine. His beautiful, curving linework and strong graphic sensibility make every image compelling.

Katie Turner’s My Week in Bologna is a personal narrative of the trip she took to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in March 2010. Her crayon drawings, fun lettering, and little labeled pictures perfectly match the journal-style writing.

Aron Nels Steinke’s The Super Crazy Cat Dance is, like the cover says, a super fun crazy comic for kids and grownups alike. Even if you’re not a cat person, it’s hard not to like two little girls doing the cat dance, going to the moon to find moon kitties, and then being friends with dogs and cats alike. I especially love Aron’s intricate patterning. He’s adapted this comic into a full-color children’s book you can buy here

left Jordan Crane signing Uptight, right Vanessa Davis signing Make Me A Woman

left Lizz Hickey selling large prints- I bought one- an etching!, right Charles Burns signing Black Hole

left Kim Deitch, right Caroline Hwang

left the always smiling Lynda Barry, right Renee French

Our Exquisite Book Chicago event will go on as scheduled. I won’t be able to make it for the event but my ALSO partners Jenny and Matt will be there along with artists Anders Nilsen, Lilli Carre, Paul Hornschemeier, Lauren Nassef and Isaac Tobin. The event should be super fun- go get a book signed and watch the artists draw exquisite corpse games. Here’s all the info:

Friday 11/5 at 7pm
Quimby’s
1854 W. North Ave
Chicago, IL 60622

Also if you are in New York this weekend one of my favorite annual book events will be happening- The NY Art Book Fair. Definitely check this out. Find out more about that here.

See you next week. Stay tuned Monday for an interview with the awesome Vanessa Davis.

Homepage image from Lilli Carre’s piece for The Exquisite Book available as a print here.

This was only the second zine’s mate – the first one last year was enormously popular with so many people showing up to opening night that someone called the police. It was a bit like an art book fair for sardines so this year’s move to a bigger venue was a welcome change.

At zine’s mate 2010 there were lots of events but my favourite was UMA Design Farm who set up a little studio with colourful backgrounds and wacky props on opening night, took peoples photos and made them a book in 20 minutes (thereby providing the perfect birthday present for my friend Akie). There was a great wall piece at the entrance by Naoki Sato and Daijiro Ohara – you can see him with a pencil touching it up here.

This year’s fair was a whole lot more international – I particularly liked Morel Books from London and Split Fountain from Auckland (I tried on a great pinhole sweater at their stall – tuck your head in and watch the world go by upside down on your belly). It felt like there was a whole lot more photography than last year and less illustration.

From the website: “Garo Manga, 1964-1973 will be an exhibition focused around the renowned manga (Japanese comics) journal Garo during the period of its greatest aesthetic experimentation and political commitment. Garo is well-known amongst comic enthusiasts and historians of postwar Japanese culture both for its challenging of formal and thematic conventions within the field of comics as well as for its engagement with the main political issues of the day, from rightwing incursions into national education policy to Japanese involvement in the Vietnam War.”

The Center for Book Arts space isn’t huge, but they have filled and organized the show nicely with so many books. I’m not normally a manga fan, yet these are quite beautiful looking and I was really impressed. I mostly liked seeing the ones about real life personal situations. Some of covers of the books are so graphic and bold and others were quite painterly. The interior pages are all nicely aging into a pretty yellow-ed tint. I recognized two of the manga artists because of the recent re-printing of their work by Drawn & Quarterly, (along with the help of Adrian Tomine)- Yoshihiro Tatsumi (The Push Man and Other Stories, A Drifting Life, Abandon the Old in Tokyo, Good-Bye, and the brand new Black Blizzard etc.) and Seiichi Hayashi (Red Colored Elergy) I’m glad to have gotten to see them in their original bound form. To learn more about the show check out The Center for Book Arts site.