Charles Harper and Eleanor Grosch

I bought these prints by local artist Eleanor Grosch last year. They immediately reminded me of Charley Harper's illustration style (especially the focus on gracefully curved birds). I wondered what she thought of his work, and then I saw on her blog that he's her favorite artist! "I'd like to thing our work has some similarities," she writes; I for one have always associated the two. Do check out her shop, where you can see more of her work, including some beautiful stuff using more pattern. And take a look at Caroline Tiger's interview with Grosch.

Charley Harper, for his part, seems to be cropping up quite a bit recently. After writing about Harper in Handmade Modern, Todd Oldham has a 420-page, $200 monograph, Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life (no, that isn't an extra zero) due out in June. Just a few days ago print & pattern ran a post on Harper, too. I saw this set of notecards at a shop yesterday and was tempted to buy it—if this set had been in stock, I would have bought it. Actually, I probably would have bought two, one to use and one to frame/admire. But for now, I'm waiting for my copy of Introducing Our Western Birds to arrive after reading about it here—it seems to be illustrated in a similar style.

All the bird business got me itching to stamp out the Feeding Frenzy pattern I've had in my head for a while now. I'd like to print yardage too, but for now I wanted to see how the crowds of pigeons looked on these book covers, as I'm thinking of starting an Etsy shop.

And Column Inches? It's still coming along, but slowly due to the slice-and-dice improvisational technique I'm improvising (no, that isn't redundant). The top looks completely pieced together from this photo, but it isn't quite wide enough. I wish some of the text strips were a bit more angled, so I'm seeing what I can do with the last few pieces.