Neargo

This is a picture book about the country of cats, the writer has visited a city named Neargo, which situated to the south of Milan, Italy. The city abuts Genoa, has a population of around 200 thousand, with rich surroundings and was encycled by the beautiful ocean. There are innumerrable tourists coming to visit neargo each year, besides for the beautiful scenery, they are visiting for the lovely cats living here.

All the cats living in Neargo have to register their ID.

The cat currency: euros are normally interchangable, but the main currency in Neargo is N, N=22.2 yen. There are cats patterns on the bills, they arefollowed by the tourists because of rare and lovely.

Travel Illustrations-2

Bookcover:

Title: Turkey travel illustrations
Writer: Peiyu, Zhang
A geography teacher in Zhongshan Girl's high school of Tai Wan.
Enjoys drawing while travelling, she's been to Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey,Czech, Austria and Hungary. She's been awarded one of the"Asia-Pacific creative teachers".

Pages inside:

Peiyu's drawing materials:

This book was done by Peiyu Zhang when travelling to Turkey for two months.She has documented all her travel experience and adventures of mind in this travel diary.She's got lightening, enlivening texts and elegant, amusing illustrations.

The picture books that are popular among markets are almost only with illustrations, however, this book has included texts, index,page number all hand drawn by writer herself. So this book has somehow been unique from picture book publishing.
As a travel book, it is lovely and sincere. Unlike the overall travel books with landscape photos, this one was done with elegant and careful illustrations, vivid texts and many details of the writer herself like travel maps and daily expenses. So this book is both worth appreciating and its functional as well.

Chinese Posters

The Cultural Revolution in China produced thousands of powerful social and political posters exhorting the Chinese people in a sweeping transformation of Chinese society. These brilliantly colorful images of cultural celebration, industrial development, agricultural production, and revolutionary heroes were displayed in homes and public spaces across the country.Chinese Posters collects more than 150 of the most striking of these posters and offers background on their social and political context and production. An essay by Ann Tompkins provides a personal account of living in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution.　

web:google books　

I came across this book in the store of tate modern gallery, and was fasinated by its content. I was surprised that there could be such a book in an outstanding gallery in UK, and it drew my attention on the relationship between politics and arts.

A strong relationship between the arts and politics, particularly between various kinds of art and power,occurs across historical epochs and cultures. As they respond to contemporaneous events and politics, the arts take on political as well as social dimensions, becoming themselves a focus of controversy and even a force of political as well as social change.

web: wikipedia

I'm particularly interested in the relationship between politics and arts in Beijing, because I've seen a lot in the modern art in Beijing, and I will do more research later on.

Lonely passenger's mystic banquet

From www: Sina Blog

Those are from "catridgebox" picture book store in Beijing, it was uncle Lan's new book release day. There were handmade puppets everywhere in the store, it's a great feast for the eyes.


Story by: Lan Huo
Illustrator:Cocoidoor

It is the first handmade puppet picture book released in China.

About uncle Lan:

He takes loneliness to everywhere in the world, just like when he was trvelling, he takes loneliness everywhere in the world into his stories.
No matter his fairytales, music critics or small novels. Trains, hotels, journeys, all about encountering and farewelling, they are one's destiny.

Jimmy

Jimmy , B.A. in Fine Arts, with a major in Design. Since 1998, Jimmy published several illustrated books with amazing originality and multi-faceted narratives. He had set a fashion in creating and publishing illustrated books in Taiwan and then international markets. Utilizing images as a refreshing form of literary language, Jimmy creates in his works poetic frames that emit charms and appeals.

So far, his books are translated into English, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean and so forth. Being the most popular illustrator author in Asia, creating lots of fantasy and touch hearts cross all generation. Immersing in his works is just like to go into Jimmy's inner world, his inviting stories reflect our real life, more and more people are intoxicated by his vivid strokes and his magic realism narratives. Now in Asia, "Jimmy" is like a pop of a new life style.

From www: Metapedia

Below are the books I've read and like written and illustrated by Jimmy.

Making picture books for adults

Jimmy Liao's illustrated books about people coping in the modern urban world have been a big hit with office workers, housewives and other adults.

The picture books are popular because they touch on common feelings of being alienated, stressed out by work or fears about losing jobs and loved ones, readers say. Most of the pages in the paperback books -- usually the size of a cocktail napkin -- have one line of text and a clever, cute or whimsical cartoon-like drawing that advances the plot.

From www: Taipei Times

Unlike modernism trying to present the truth of world, postmodernism aims to create new world by languages. Jimmy attempts to replace the sole meaning of fixed language; instead, his use of illustrations can boost imagination. His whimsical and poetic moments gave birth to beautiful ideas, which are transmitted by pictures. There would be various interpretations and understandings of the same picture book and they all depend on reader’s personal experience. In a postmodernism age, picture plays an important part of communication, and it is able to leave a blank space for free imagination. That is a crucial feature that pictures books of Jimmy can translate into several languages and touch people of distinct cultures.

From Jimmys own articles, I found that he's not good at remembering numbers or dates, however, he's quite good at remembering scenes and pictorial information. Many of his pictures in his novels came from his dream or a short period time of pictorial memory. Also, he felt forced to draw when he first started his career, all his characters were tools for him to make a living, he didn't have any sentiment on them. Until he got very sick, he had to fight against destiny, he started to miss his characters, and started to put his real emotions inside them, and this gradually made him become a master and get successful afterwards.