Evaline Ness-- "Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog"

I struck the mother lode over the weekend. I hit up a thrift store I hadn't been to in over a year and wound up buying about 20 books for only $9! Most of them are classic children's books from the '50s and '60s. Here's a look at Evaline Ness, who I just discovered this weekend and am totally geeking out over.

Herbert Railton-- "Pen Drawings of Florence"

This installment isn’t from a book I personally own. About a year and a half ago, I checked out “Pen Drawings of Florence” by Herbert Railton from the library and was so taken with the inkwork that I scanned the entire thing at high resolution. It was published in 1890 and would’ve cost a small fortune to buy. I used to do a lot of high-detail ink renderings myself (though they weren’t nearly as well-executed as these) before I started working with washes and doing more economical drawings to record an impression.

Detail of above:

Detail of above:

Since this book was originally published almost 120 years ago and I haven’t found any recent publications of it, I’m going to assume I’m not stepping on any legal toes by sharing it. If I am, let me know and I'll remove it. For a limited time only, you can download the hi-res scans from my server so you can study the detail of the inkwork or print it out for reference or whatever. I doubt this'll burst my bandwidth limit. The file size is 144MB. If anyone knows of a place where I can put the large zip file permanently, I’d appreciate a point in the right direction. Thanks and enjoy!

"Pen Drawings of Florence" by Herbert Railton

Marcel Marlier-- "Debbie's Visit to the Countryside"

I spend a lot of time at the thrift store. I always have. There are just too many wierdly awesome things there from old childhood toys and creepy ceramic figurines to tacky clothes and old VHS tapes. My parents bought most of my clothes and toys from the thrift store when I was growing up and I guess I just never outgrew it. Aside from clothes, books are one of my absolute favorite things to buy thrifted. You never know what kind of gorgeous or completely off-the-wall vintage book you're going to find there and I've built up a sizable collection over the years with nothing but spare change! It's a resource few artists tap but I highly recommend giving it a shot.

Here are some illustrations from a book I found last month, that I've been meaning to scan and share. The book is "Debbie's Visit to the Countryside" by Gilbert Delahaye, illustrated by Marcel Marlier, 1980. It was so beautifully rendered, I couldn't resist.