“The other day I got an e-mail from Carson Van Osten, a famous Disney artist who did many Disney Comic Books and created the famous “Comic Strip Artist’s Kit”. It was created to help beginning comic artists deal with perspective problems and other drawing difficulties. I scanned my old xeroxes a while ago. It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever seen about practical staging and drawing for storyboards or comic books.

Anyway Carson saw it on my blog and read what nice things people had said about it and it really meant a lot to him. And he offered to send me an original copy of the handout, which is 11 x 17. I’ll scan it big so you can really see it well and print it out on 11 x 17 paper if you want to. He was even nice enough to inscribe it to me and if you print it out big you can read it.

Here’s the history of the handout, in Carson’s own words…”

“I put together this list of my favorite figure drawing, sketching and anatomy books for fellow artists and student friends. You can download any and all of these books for free. I hope you’ll find them useful.”

“DrawIt is not your typical image-editor. It does not fill up your window with lots of pallets you don’t use but instead presents with just one simple and clean window. Nevertheless, DrawIt packs an impressive feature-list into this single window. DrawIt is layer-based, has a powerful vector-drawing tool, incredible support for masks and much, much more. Check the feature-list below to discover why DrawIt might be the tool you need.”

“The below image looks like a simple gradient with my website’s name on it. But it’s more than that. There’s a picture hidden in that gradient. Can you find it?”

“…if you are working on an engraving, you will probably find there are a lot of grey areas where the lines were close together. Assuming you used at least 1200dpi for the scan, and preferably 1600 or 2400, there should be at least four or five pixels between the lines, which should be at least two or three pixels wide…”

“On mission along the border of Chad and Darfur, Human Rights Watch researchers gave children notebooks and crayons to keep them occupied while they spoke with the children’s parents. Without any instruction or guidance, the children drew scenes from their experiences of the war in Darfur: the attacks by the Janjaweed, the bombings by Sudanese government forces, the shootings, the burning of entire villages, and the flight to Chad.”

“Sketching User Experiences is Bill Buxton’s new book arguing that the process of sketching is distinct from prototyping, and an integral part of design. Buxton opens with the canonical example of great design, Apple’s iPod, to show that its “overnight” success actually came after 3+ years of development and updates, and moves on to talk about the lack of design in typical software organizations… About 1/3rd through the book, Buxton cuts to the chase with an 11-point definition of sketching as distinct from prototyping. Most importantly to Buxton, sketches are fast, cheap, and divergent. They develop quickly with only minimal detail to make a point, and are intended to communicate the essential ideas of a maximally-wide variety of design possibilities.” (Thanks Magnetbox!)

“I’ve had trouble justifying my excitement about this intricate visual detail, so I thought it would be good to collect a bunch of examples from over fifty years of information design history, to show it as a powerful visual element in ubicomp situations.

Even though the dashed line has emerged from a designer’s shorthand and from the limitations of monotone printing techniques, it has a clear and simple visual magic, the ability to express something three- or four-dimensional in two dimensions.” (Thanks Stephen!)

Note: XPLANE founder Dave Gray is quoted in the post, which features an XPLANATiON worked on by yours truly!

“A while back, when I posted my profile of Dave Bamundo as part of my illustrator series, Art Talks, Edel suggested I do a series about art directors. I thought it was a great idea and would be a terrific way to learn more about the people who hire us and collaborate with us and figure so large in our world. So this is the first in my new series of art director profiles, of Steven Heller, who critiqued my portfolio back in the early ’90s and subsequently hired me for the Book Review.”

“My name is Andy. On the 29th of May I was hit by a motorcycle while biking to work and broke my right arm at my wrist, elbow and shoulder. Unfortunately, I’m right-handed. To my right are my ongoing attempts to teach myself to adequately draw as a leftie.”

Hey L.A. — this event is just a few hours from now: Sunday, June 24 at 7pm at Machine Project, 1200 D North Alvarado, Los Angeles, Cal.: “It is hard to believe there is anything new to be discovered about perspective drawing. But in 2004 twin artists Trevor and Ryan Oakes made a startling discovery about how to render perspectival images on the inner surface on a sphere. Their discovery is all the more intriguing in the light of recent controversy surrounding David Hockney’s thesis about the use of spherical lenses in the making of perspective drawings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”

XPLANE alumnus Dan Zettwoch has a show up at the Art Annex Gallery of St. Louis Community College: “The show is called ‘Ruined Pants’ and is chock full of my homemade screenprints, everything from birth announcements to holiday cards to comic book covers to punk rock flyers I’ve made over the past few years.”

If you’re in St. Louis, Missouri, stop by Friday, June 8, between 6 and 8 p.m. for the opening reception and some excellent art.

“You can now set content types for your Flickr uploads. It looks like Flickr is finally recognizing illustrations as acceptable content.”

Another talented St. Louis illustrator: “my name is matthew woodson. i am a 23 year old illustrator based in st louis, mo. i graduated from the school of the art institute of chicago in early 2006… This blog was created to showcase my personal artistic process in working as an illustrator, as well as a place for me to generally complain. I personally find while looking at other artist’s art blogs that I am always a little more interested in the process involved rather than the product.”

“Freeverse today announced an update to Lineform, the drawing and illustration program for Mac OS X. A Universal application, Lineform is designed for artists looking for a more manageable and less costly modern alternative to Adobe Illustrator. Lineform is the recipient of a 2006 Apple Design Award.”