Hot Springs

...and wandering through the forest we stumbled upon...

Randy Taguchi

I was desperately trying to find the cover artist for this book by Japanese fiction writer Randy Taguchi but alas, I could not find anything. It is the single most beautiful cover I have ever seen. The book is a reflection of Mount Fuji through four different stories that involve the giant of nature and a quest to find the meaning of life. To the bookstore, I say...

Kazumasa Nagai

As the golden gleams of the two setting suns cover the enchanted territories, 

the creatures of the night prepare their rituals to each moon, 

for they reside 

in a land which has not one but five. 

You can shadow them at midnight 

while they sip from the river of cristaline water 

made into a silver stream 

by the bright bright moonlight.

The inversion of war images

Overkill  by  seyna

Cityscape heartbeats

The city is chaos. If I were to be blessed with the talent of putting down movement in ink, this is how I would recreate the City of London. A stormy 'tea party' of all kind of shapes, lines and blank spots. It is almost as if every object has its own heart beat, creating a movement sometimes simultaneous and sometimes opposite. The dynamism of the objects would open and close passageways on different times. This way, the inhabitants of the illustration would only be able to hope for the gates to be open, for if not, they would have to go around another shaped angle to find an alternative way to reach their destination.

Midland made Hokusai

If Katsushika Hokusai were to be born in the nineteen eighties, his name would have been Stephen Larder. Similarly to the Japanese print master's works, the delicate lines and sculptural depiction of nature and landscape are remarkably detailed in the works of this young english illustrator. Instead of dragons, japanese emperors and courtesans, Larder depicts a group of 'punkers' sitting in the grass of what could be one of the city parks of London. I am not sure if the artist was influenced by the style of Hokusai , but when I first looked at the piece I imagined the figures to be japanese warriors resting in 'the greensward'.

Intensely artistically confusing. Genius.