Kindling: 12 Removable Prints

by James Jean

This collection of brand new work by James Jean showcases the larger-than-life power of his fine art painting. Bursting with unexpected beauty and hidden meaning, each of these 12 large-format prints features a lush painting on one side and a collection of intricate preliminary sketches on the other side. Housed in a sturdy keepsake portfolio, the pages, including an over-sized gatefold poster, can be left in place and leafed through time and again or removed from the portfolio and framed as eye-catching wall art.

Genres: Art

12 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

James Jean is a Taiwanese-American award winning artist and illustrator living in Los Angeles. He was born in Taiwan but was raised in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey. He was educated at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Upon graduating in 2001, he quickly became a cover artist for DC Comics, garnering seven Eisner awards, three consecutive Harvey awards, two gold medals and a silver from the Society of Illustrators of LA, and a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators of NY. He has also worked in advertising, and has contributed to many national and international publications. His clients include Time Magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, ESPN, Atlantic Records, Target, Playboy, Knopf, Prada among others. He has also illustrated covers for the comic book series Fables and The Umbrella Academy, for which he has won six Eisner Awards for "Best Cover Artist".

James Jean currently has seven published works, all of which collect his illustrations and art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jean

Reviews

[Parka · Rating 5 out of 5]

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

Kindling is also the name of the exhibition James Jean held earlier in 2009. This poster book contains a selection of those works. They are all personal, non-commissioned pieces.

The book itself is pretty big at about 20 inches diagonal. There are 12 high quality prints on white cardboard, each easily detachable. I guess this format is chosen so that people can frame them or just paste them on walls.

Speaking of framing artwork, I met a guy who had a gallery of James Jean art at his home. This was while we were sitting on the floor queuing for the James Jean panel at San Diego Comic Con 2009. Seeing the copy of Kindling in my hand, he asked which was my favourite piece, and proceeded to show me his gallery on his iPhone. Now that's what I call a James Jean collector!

My favourite piece is the one with the butterfly head doing makeup in from of the mirror. That's the kind of style I like about his art — mixing unworldly imagination with fine art. This is perhaps what makes his work so unique. He has won six Eisner Awards for the best cover artist from 2004 to 2009. That's every year consecutively. It's an amazing achievement considering how many great artists are out there.

This book is a worthy collection for any collector. My recommendation is to get it now before it goes out of print, like many of his older books.

[CJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The prints are of high enough quality to frame and all have the pencil work, which often is as good or even better than the final pieces on the back.

Would be 5 stars but besides the one fold out which gives the entire print a decent amount of room some of the paintings originally covered multiple canvas, would have been better if these were given one page per canvas.

[Jennyappleseed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buy two.