Here’s a peek into the sketchbook of Letman aka Job Wouters.

Posted by Letman

The artwork for the cover for The Last King of Scotland is inspired by African (Masai) bead-patterns. For the original drawing (A3 size) I used paint-markers on black paper. The chosen colors reference the flag of Uganda, where the story is situated.

The book is published in July as part of a series called ‘Revolutionary Writing’ from Faber and Faber. Art direction by Eleanor Crow.

Amsterdam based designer, Hansje van Halem, runs a gallery called Schrank8 in a display cabinet in the living room of her flat. Letman’s work was recently on show, as featured on the Creative Review blog.

I designed the book for and with Gijs Frieling, a dutch painter and muralist. The concept of the book was to push its appearance (and particularly the typography) to be as close to Gijs’ work as possible. The result is therefore, in a good way, somewhat confusing; it is not clear where Frieling’s work ends and my work starts, and as a result it has become a book that showcases both our work. I am really pleased with the result, and very proud that it has been selected for ”The Best Dutch Book Designs 2009″, a prestigious annual design event in my native Holland. It was printed by Extrapool, who specialise in a traditional printing technique called mimeography, and published by Valiz. The book is available here.

Here’s a really simple but effective animated alphabet from Letman, a little taste of things to come.

“1,2,3,4,5,6,7.” A short movie by Job & Roel Wouters
Roel and me will present a short movie on the rainbowgun: a tool which allows you to paint simultaneously with seven spraycans. A calligraphic monsterbrush so to speak. The idea derives from the desire to paint larger and faster. Also the rainbowgun is a result in my recent search for new aesthetics in writing. I made some rough sketches of the machine, and after that I took my ideas to  Rene Bakker a genius mechanic who did the actual constructing of the tool.

The gun is a little heavier than I expected, and that makes is pretty hard to control. Also I didn’t take into account that spraycans don’t work when held in certain positions, so the movements one can make while writing are more limited than I initially thought. But over-all it comes really close to the sort of ‘giant-brush’ idea that I had in mind when starting up.

If You Could Collaborate exhibition runs from 15 — 23 January.