Slowly filling my bookcase...

A couple of Thursdays ago, I was in Newtown with M. We were just doing a bit of window shopping in between class, and I'd been hoping to pick up a tattoo magazine or tattoo art book so we went to Pentimento and Mag Nation. Whilst there, I fell in love with a few books: mostly on illustrators (see my obsession growing? I have so many illustrators that I'm loving and getting all sorts of inspiration from, who I'm going to slowly introduce you to), but I couldn't decide on which books to buy with my limited funds.

That night at home I went a little bit crazy on Amazon and The Book Depository- I'm not going to admit how many books I bought! Since then I've been waiting with barely controlled excitement for my books to arrive...when on Thursday, what appeared in my mailbox but Juxtapoz Illustration!Originally, the Juxtapoz name was attached only to the Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine established by Robert Williams in 1994, which is a magazine which aimed at validating the developing lowbrow art movement in an intelligent format. In the last few years, Juxtapoz has expanded its publishing empire to include a series of books, including but not limited to, my new favourite book (until the others arrive, perhaps); Juxtapoz Dark Arts; and Juxtapoz Tattoo.

What I really like about the presentation of these books is the neatness- each artist is given a short profile page, with several following pages dedicated to their work. It is clean, simple and uncluttered, and really allows the reader to appreciate the artwork without getting lost in fancy borders or layouts. By presenting the carefully selected artists in alphabetical order, the turn of a page to a new artist's work can be a total surprise and contradiction to what you have just seen: which makes the whole process so much more fun! Each artist chosen has such a different and distinct style, so that you never think "didn't I just see this a few artists ago?"

Here are just a few examples of the incredible variety of illustrators in Juxtapoz Illustration:

...and I could go on, but then this post would never end. I can't wait to go exploring more of the artwork by each illustrator: if I don't get too lost in this magical world of illustration (I feel a little bit like Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole) I'll come back and share the works and artists that I like best.

Just a few formalities: Juxtapoz Illustration was produced by R. Rock Enterprises with Z. Oxford as the Project Manager, and was published by Gingko Press in the USA (California, to be precise) in 2008.