Leroy Neiman (1921-2012)

A profile video of the artist Leroy Neiman, who passed away earlier this week.

Goodnight iPad

Over at Brain Pickings blog there is a post of The Best Children’s and Picture Books of 2011. Here is a video version of one of them—Goodnight iPad.

Babar at 80

An interview with Laurent de Brunhoff, the current writer and illustrator of the Babar the elephant books.

Maurice Sendak & The Hobbit

Here is an essay from the LA Times' blog "Hero Complex" about an attempt, in the 1960's, to have Maurice Sendak create a set of illustrations for The Hobbit.

The Hobbit illustrated by Maurice Sendak?

National Museum of American Illustration

A nice video from the National Museum of American Illustration.

Rochefoucauld Grail - Follow Up

The Rochefoucauld Grail. which I blogged about back in November, has sold for £2.39m ($3.71m). Here is the story from the Independent.

The Other Aubrey

What Aubrey Bodine is to black and white photography, Aubrey Beardsley is to black and white illustration. Beardsley was one of the most successful book illustrators of the 19th century. From The Independent, here is a selection of his work, as well as a couple other illustrators.

Fancy and Imagination

Images of the Brain

The New York Times has an article and a set of illustration from the new book, Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century. Included is this image that looks like a detail from a Gustav Klimt painting, but is actually an image of the Neocortex of the brain.

Visualizing the Beautiful Mind

The Birds of America

An original double elephant folio edition of John James Audobon's The Birds of America has sold at auction for $11.5, making it the most expensive print book ever sold. I bought a series of books that reproduce the original 4 volumes on ebay a couple years ago for much less, but it is probably not even baby elephant size. Here is an article with a video about the book.

Audubon's Birds of America: The world's most expensive book

Happy St. Nicholas Day

This link is from the Smithsonian Libraries' Facebook feed, but I really like this illustration, which looks like it may be from the Wiener Werkstätte. So I have cribbed it, as well as the link to their blog post.

Happy St. Nicholas Day

The Rochefoucauld Grail

If you have an extra £2m, you might want to bid on the Rochefoucauld Grail. Three of the original four volumes of this 14th century illuminated manuscript of the King Arthur story are going up for sale at Sotheby's. More information at this article from guardian.co.uk, and the set of illustrations linked to below, including this image of Joseph of Arimathea delivering the Holy Grail to Britain.

King Arthur manuscript up for sale

The Raven

For Halloween, a Christopher Walken reading of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. Illustration used in the video are by Gustave Dore.

Charlotte's Web Cover Art

Charlotte's Web cover art sells for more than $155,000.

'CHARLOTTE'S WEB' cover art snares $155K at auction