Illustration / Sam Friedman’s abstract lines
Brooklyn Illustrator Sam Friedman has the most graceful line quality. In whatever form it takes, from abstract line to bold cursive, it’s this beautiful line quality that is clearly the embodiment of his work. In Friedman’s work, this line is often built up in dense, colorful layers to create the most intense abstract fields, guaranteed make your eyes spin. Punctuated with bold shapes and imagery, with a distinct graffiti influence, Freidman makes it pretty clear that the boundaries for his technique are endless.



Tagged: Brooklyn, Brooklyn illustrators, line drawings, New York, New York artists
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Recent MICA illustration graduate, Kali Ciesemier posseses a particularly bold and versatile sensibility. She is clearly having a blast experimenting with different styles which ought to appeal to a wide range of clients. I particularly enjoy her poster section where she explores everything from textured pen and ink, to clean digital lines - all to extraordinary results. Having already illustrated projects from theater sets, to posters, to editorial, Ciesemier has hit the ground running having only graduated this May. With her wide range, it will be exciting to see how defines her work in the successful years ahead.
Brendan Monroe and Evah Fan open up
The duo of Brendan Monroe and Evah Fan are one of those creative, powerhouse couples. Though two entirely individual artists, the influence they exert upon one another is subtle yet undeniable. Both create the kind of art that that makes you giddy with pleasure, while the lack of pretension puts you completely at ease. You get the undeniable sense that these are two people who simply live and breathe creativity and love every moment of it. Two amazing artists with a wholly individual take on life and the world around them. I had the pleasure to grill them both. Read more
I’ve known the New York-based artist Jordan Awan for quite a long time now. Since he was in high school in fact. So I have had the privilege of watching his art truly evolve into something amazing. Read more
Also by ILANA KOHN
I declare New York-based illustrator Phillip Fivel Nessen one of the most chameleon-like illustrators I have ever come across. In many cases, for someone working as an illustrator, this sort of quality tends to be seen as a negative. Nessen commands each style so effortlessly, though, and with such originality, that we can hardly complain? Despite the wide range of styles, I find I can easily pin it down as having come from him each and every time. I love everything in his portfolio, from the illustrated type (which seems to be his latest obsession), to his colourful print like illustrations, to his moody, scratchy older work, to his trippy Milton Glaser-like works, to his amazing alter ego, Abe Twist. And I wait in anticipation for his next whim.
I’m really digging Los Angeles-based illustrator Jon Han’s textured, colourful, almost scientific work. I find it particularly refreshing how Han frequently eschews most of the physical detail within his tiny figures, which lends itself all the more to further enhancing the diagram like quality of his work.
Admiring the work of New York illustrator Aaron Meshon, you can’t help but start to feel like a happy go lucky little kid. And it’s a safe bet to assume that real kids really dig his stuff as well. His store, a colourful array of lunchboxes, puzzles, and backpacks, makes me miss being ten. But heck, maybe I’ll just buy myself a new lunchbox, anyway. Read more
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Obsessive, impossibly intricate art can sometimes veer off into self-congratulatory messes, overwhelming viewers while not having any real substance. Vasco Morao’s Escher-esque line drawings are rather simple, however, and have a gorgeous, meandering, and meditative quality about them. Read more
Man, I remember shaking my tail to Come on Eileen many moons ago — when rat-tails were a right of passage and Molly Ringwald held both the lock and the key to my tiny pitter pattering heart. Back then it was all ice-skating and fairy floss; skateboards and trading cards. It was bags of chips by the rusty school fence and sunburnt faces on crackling summer days. It was Pepsi and Milo; showbags at the Easter show; and games of Twister by the electric heater. And all the while a soundtrack of pure musical and lyrical indulgence played on and on and on. Mighty props to the 80s. If it weren’t for the misdemeanors and feeing of unbridled potential that pervaded that decade like a bad New Romantic haircut, then every year since wouldn’t have made any sense at all.
Listen to Nouvelle Vague’s version of Come on Eileen.
Australian group Pivot have recently signed with the mighty Warp label and — even better (well, for us anyway) — have written a fun Secret Playlist for us. You can see where the many disparate influences have seeped into their latest recording, the beautiful and colourful, O Soundtrack My Heart.
We have a bunch of new playlists up on our sister site, My Secret Playlist, a music discovery website and weekly email publication in which we invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. Over the past few weeks, acts such as The B52s, Team Genius, Pivot, Jukebox the Ghost, Moby, Katy Perry, and the Dandy Warhols, among many others, have written about the music that inspires them. To sign-up to receive the weekly My Secret Playlist publication, just enter your email address into the website’s subscription box.
Though most know Max Bode as an art director over at the ubiquitous New Yorker, he is in fact quite an illustrator. Creating bright, clean illustrations, in a style at times reminiscent of old video games and cartoons, Bode work is a real treat, especially when stumbling across one of his illustrations in the New Yorker.
In 2004, a local government in Paris revealed plans to redevelop an area of the city. However, in response to time lag and a lack of consultation, a residents group launched a virtual design competition for the area in Second Life. Read more
Derrick R. Cruz has channeled his talent for creating densely detailed works into the creation of the brand Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons. Fuelled by the New York city art and fashion scene, Cruz’s pieces are timeless but relevant, and beautifully detailed in their imperfections. They combine gold, silver, resin and bronze to create dark but wearable art.
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
Kikkerland, the company behind those campfire tea light holders, has a line of amazing snap-together anatomic models of beetles, frogs, moths, cows, humans, and a wide range of other animals, even a wooly mammoth. Where the hell were these when I was a kid?
Located on a mountain in country outside Mudgee, in New South Wales, Australia, a permanent camp designed by Casey Brown has been set. A timber structure clad in copper has been designed to have a closed state and an open state. From the closed position, the flanks of copper are hoisted and capture views across the valley. With an imagery of structures, materials and mechanics of old, there is something romantic about this foothold on the hill.
There are two Americas: one which strives to create its own culture, music, and art with a strong sense of ethics in mind, and another that drinks 32-ounce energy drinks before waiting on line to get into a club packed with women trying to get back at their overbearing fathers, and homophobic men with a fondness for Axe body spray. How do we bridge the divide?
Some friends and I serendipitously stumbled across the work the artist Hiro Kurata the other night and we have been jointly obsessing over it since. Kurata’s work is torrid, moody and fragmented like a restless dream. Bursting with texture and patterns, it’s simply brilliant. As my friend Andrew Degraff accurately put it, ‘It’s like Savador Dali thrown through a plate glass window’. Indeed. Read more
I love the sense of intimacy about the work of Chicago-based photographer, Brian Ulrich. His retail project Copia ‘is a long-term photographic examination of the peculiarities and complexities of the consumer-dominated culture in which we live’. We interviewed him recently and asked him what camera he uses once he gets inside a store he’s photographing: Read more
This beautifully soft, handmade and dyed scarf is by the New York-based designer, Ryan Sullivan. They can be purchased through the Lost At E Minor store. Read more
Happy, happy, joy, joy! We have a TV On The Radio poster designed by Tunde, as well as Dear Science on vinyl, to give away to a randomly selected Lost At E Minor subscriber who leaves a comment under this post telling us why they simply must have it.
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