The Comic book I’m (slowly) working on for Blankslate Books, finally has a name.

I was given practically free reign to design a whole wrap around book jacket for a novel that documents the author’s travels around Romania and the gypsies that he meets. If you dream of never seeing cars and wish you could live without this thar internet thing, this book is for you!

I just got my copy of Patrick McNeil’s excellent new book The Web Designer’s Idea Book. Patrick runs designmeltdown.com which if you haven’t checked it out is a deep, rich vein of design ideas from websites around the world. Patrick has categorized hundreds of sites based on theme, style and function on his site, which he has translated into print for his book.
I am lucky enough to have a screenshot of my humble, aging portfolio website jonkeegan.com featured on page 36 (itty-bitty, tucked away into the corner).
Thanks Patrick for including my site in your book, and for creating such an excellent design resource!

An image for the next issue of the Color Ink Book. And when I finished it, I just had to colour it in! That’s what it’s for… (to U.S. readers, “color” is spelt differently in the U.K.)

An image for “Número A”, a ‘zine printed in Argentina by “Dos Fuerzas”.

Week of the zines:

An image for the folks at crayonlegs.com who are doing a ‘zine about “Facial Hair”.

An image for a zine put together by some Kingston students called “This is it”. This is for the “Fun” themed issue. I can’t think of anything more fun than flying a kite whilst wearing a bear skin.
I’m also featured in issue five of Document’s +1 magazine. You can pick it up for free at hip and with it boutiques or download it as a PDF zine from plus1mag.com .

I’m extremely happy to announce that I will be working on a new separate comic book that will (eventually) be published by Blankslate Books. Blankslate is a new independent publisher set up by Kenny Penman and James Hamilton, founders of Forbidden Planet international. At the moment I’m still bouncing around some ideas and have just started to sketch to get a feel for how I want to tell the story. I plan to start working on finished artwork by the beginning of September. In the meantime, go check out the Blankslate blog for it’s imminent publishing schedule- they’ve got some rad stuff planned…

Recently I read two excellent graphic novels by the Italian comics creator Gipi. Both Garage Band and Notes For A War Story tell small yet compelling stories through rich characters and gorgeous art. While the characters are simply drawn, the landscapes they inhabit are intricate and impressive. Executed in pencils and watercolor, many panels are mini masterpieces. Above is my own watercolor cityscape inspired by his.
Gipi has his own blog. It is in Italian and you can see it here.

This is an image I made for a small edition art book that collects together a bunch of cool artists from all over the world that are influenced by eastern european aesthetics/folk lore. The image itself is based on an idea I’ve got floating around my head about a florist and his wife. More soon when the book is available…

Here’s another preview page from the book proposal I’m working on at the moment… Since last week’s post, I have been asked to contribute to uber cool comics site Partyka and have been featured in another Serbian magazine article, this time in
Slovo Magazine– which again I can’t read because it’s in Serbian.