Amidst the zine-iness and scene-iness of the New York Art Book Fair at PS1, I spent time last Friday with several books in the upper range of outstanding-ness.
The detail above is from a botanical illustration entitled "Douglas Maple," painted in gouache by Leanne Shapton. Her reworking of The Native Trees of Canada, first printed in 1917, has just been published by Drawn & Quarterly of Toronto. Selections of Shapton's paintings are visible at design*sponge, at the NYTimes, and at Drawn & Quarterly, where one can download a pdf of six of her leaf-and-branch pictures.
I'm especially drawn to Shapton's renderings of conifer branches, such as those of the Rocky Mountain Juniper and the Jack Pine.
Shapton has painted books before, giving new meaning to the term "block book" by cutting blocks of wood to the size of novels and re-painting covers on them:
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