a peek at monika forsberg’s walkyland

 

These days I’ve been loving Monika Forsberg’s wonderfully quirky art. I’m taken with her vivid colors and interesting compositions, as well as how she blends humor and fantasy with reality.

 

 

A Monika Forsberg design is bold, eye-catching and very distinctive.

 

 

Though she now lives and works in North London, she’s originally from Sweden. She grew up in a northern seaside town where it was almost always winter.

 

 

In her early 20’s, Monika moved to London to study art and animation at the Royal College of Art. Her boyfriend is also an artist and they are the parents of two boys. After the birth of her second son, she decided to pursue illustration.

 

 

Her work appears in books and magazines, on fabric and paper products (gift wrap, greeting cards, planners, stationery), and a variety of children’s products (games, puzzles, backpacks, baby clothes).

 

 

 

Her client list includes Anthropologie, eeBoo, NY Review, United Nations, Gorman Clothing, Oopsie Daisy and Unicef.

 

 

Monika begins her pieces with pen, paint, and paper — drawing by hand while sitting on her bed listening to audio books or radio documentaries. When she’s compiled a stack of drawings, she moves to her computer, where she scans them in before assembling the best ones in Photoshop.

 

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nine cool things on a tuesday

1. Recently I’ve been on a Becca Stadtlander kick, browsing her work online and catching up with the children’s books she’s illustrated so far.

You might know her from David Elliott’s On the Wing (Candlewick, 2014), Eugenie Doyle’s Sleep Tight Farm (Chronicle Books, 2016), or maybe even the two Classics Unfolded titles she’s done — The Secret Garden and Pride and Prejudice (these are 14-scene concertina fold-out books).

I particularly love her still life paintings. Her fine lines, delicate details and pleasing compositions lend a unique beauty to everyday objects.

And isn’t this butterfly painting gorgeous?

You can purchase prints at her Etsy Shop and greeting cards at Red Cap Cards. And do look for the books she’s illustrated if you’re not already familiar with them. Just lovely!

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Maira Kalman’s Ah-hA to Zig-Zag, a cool puzzle, and the cutest eyebrows on earth

#52 in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the alphabet.

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“Isn’t that the only way to curate a life? To live among things that make you gasp with Delight?” ~ Maira Kalman

 

A.

Ah-hA!

TheRe You Are.

Are you ready
to REAd the

Alphabet?

perhAps you should
put on youR
ThinKing
CAP
(but don’t think too much)

 

Pretty much everything Maira Kalman does makes me gasp with delight.

I don’t know how she does it, or why it happens, but with each new book that delight intensifies. I am convinced she must eat magical cakes or a proliferation of napoleons prepared by exceedingly handsome mustachioed pastry chefs, or as in the case of this particular picture book, artfully burnt toast and ginger tea (steeped in whimsy).

In Ah-hA to Zig-Zag, her new alphabet book written especially for kids and the forever young at heart, the letter A stands for CAP, F for a hat From France that is “fluffy and frothy and fantastic and funny,” and Q for “quite the toaster.”

Though the book cleverly spotlights “31 Funny Excellent Beautiful Surprising Helpful Amazing Objects” from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC (to celebrate its re-opening in December 2014), only three objects actually begin with their corresponding letters — Pocket, Umbrella, and Zig-Zag (Chair). 

But that’s just what makes this book so totally Maira. Instead of the conventional, “A is for Apple” format, this alphabet à la Maira is an idiosyncratic commentary, an affectionate conversation with YOU where she free associates with her chosen objects in funny, unexpected, and surprisingly profound ways. We get a good dose of those 26 beautiful letters alright, along with a fascinating design history primer spanning centuries.

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