☛ Desert Island: “AC” by Adrian Tomine, offset lithograph, 18″ x 24″, edition of 200 signed and numbered by the artist (sold out), 2011.

This image was originally developed and used as cover illustration for the third volume of the Japanese magazine In The City titled “Because the Night” (Summer 2011).

In The City is a quarterly literary journal published by BEAMS. It was also published as a limited edition poster in Japan by BEAMS (it is now sold out as well). So far, Tomine created the art cover for all of the magazine five published volumes: Vol. 1 “Summer Rain” (Fall 2010), Vol. 2 “Zen in a Paper” (Spring 2011) Vol. 4 “Favorite Shirts” (Winter 2012) Vol. 5 “Saturday In The Park” (Summer 2012). The cover for the first three issue are also reproduced on Tomine’s blog: “In The City” October 16, 2011. The original art for “AC” can be found on Tomine’s official website: Original Art For Sale.

Limited edition posters of the cover art for vol. 4 and 5 are still available to buy at Desert Island.

Adrian Tomine is a well respected American illustrator. He was born in California in 1974. He currently lives with his wife in Brooklyn, New York. Here’s an excerpt from the biography one can find over at Drawn & Quarterly:

In 1994, at age 20, Tomine began producing Optic Nerve as a regular comic book series for Drawn & Quarterly . He won a Harvey Award for “Best New Talent” the following year. In 1995 his early mini-comics were collected in book form in the perennial fan favorite 32 Stories. In 1997, D+Q published Sleepwalk and Other Stories. Comprised of the first four D+Q issues of Optic Nerve, it remains a best-seller for the company.

In the midst of all this, Tomine continued to produce new issues of Optic Nerve, receive a degree in English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, and even embark on a successful career in commercial illustration. Thanks to his cool, clean, and very distinctive style, Tomine quickly found himself in high demand and his work has graced numerous CD and album covers as well as magazines like The New Yorker, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Time.

He recently produced an illustration for Anthony Lane’s review of Wes Anderson’s new movie Moonrise Kingdom that caught some attention on the web (see The New Yorker: “Stormy Weather” by Anthony Lane, June 6 & 11, 2012, p. 132; subscription is required to access full content; Tomine’s illustration can also be found at his blog: “Stormy Weather”, May 28, 2012).

The first two main resources of information about Adrian Tomine on the web are his official website and his profile at Drawn & Quarterly. Those website offer samples galleries of his illustrations, original art for sale, bibliographies, large PDF previews of some of his books, and some more. Also worth mentioning is his upcoming new comic book New York Drawings (Drawn & Quarterly, October 2012) which will offer a “career-spanning overview of all of his New Yorker work”. D&Q has an interesting preview of the book which can be pre-ordered on Amazon.

For more information about Adrian Tomine, including three recent, in-depth interviews, see the following links:

• The Rumus: “Spotlight Series: Adrian Tomine” by Emma Silvers, December 29, 2011

• The Bat Segundo Show: “Adrian Tomine (BSS #382)” by February 18, 2011. A 50 minutes (51:30) audio interview which can be downloaded. Excerpt are offered at the link.

• The Believer: “Adrian Tomine” by Nicole Rudick, October 2007. One of the richest interview available online.

• NPR: “Adrian Tomine, Drawing Delicately from Life” by Terry Gross, January 31, 2008. One can either download the audio file or read the transcript online.

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I first spotted the “AC” illustration via This Isn’t Happiness.