Mark Ryden's artwork for Time Takes Time

A little bit of trivia: the artwork for Ringo's album Time Takes Time you see above was created by Mark Ryden, a famous american painter that besides doing record covers for big name artists (among them Michael Jackson, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Jeff Beck to name just a small few), has built a reputation on creating some very striking pieces of work that portray the darkest sides of what is generally perceived as children's fare. As always, Wikipedia is your best friend in these and other matters:

Mark Ryden's paintings instantly trigger a warped déjà vu. His works recall a parallel universe of 1950s Little Golden Books and the whimsy of Lewis Carroll. His cheery bunnies, rendered in the glowing hues of children's books, are more likely to be carving slabs of meat rather than frolicking in the forest. Ryden's work mingles superb technique with outre images to create a world of strange and disturbing beauty. At once intriguing and unsettling, baffling and enchanting, Ryden's works are subtle amalgams of many sources and influences as wide-ranging as Psychedelic and Vienna School artists, Neon Park and Ernst Fuchs, to classical French formalists Ingres and David.

Ryden's work combines a saccharine cartoon-like sensibility - much like the doe-eyed Margaret Keane creatures of the 1960s - with a detailed fullness and a creepy combination of numerology, little girls, meat, Catholic and Buddhist symbolism, and carnivalesque Americana. Toys are a big component of his art. His work ranges from large highly-polished oil paintings to small black-and-white works on paper. Like modern illustrators Sir John Tenniel and Edward Gorey, Ryden is influenced by the fantastic art of Alice in Wonderland and early Renaissance landscapes.

See more of his work over at his official site. I promise you it's really worth it.

Alan Aldridge Illustrator Extraordinaire

The lovely picture you see above is by renowned artist Alan Aldridge, a very famous english illustrator who did the bulk of his work in the 60's and the 70's. Here's what our friend Wikipedia has to say about him:

Alan Aldridge is a UK artist. Born in 1943 in East London, he currently resides in Los Angeles. His career began in 1965 when he happened to meet the art director of Penguin Books, and began producing illustrations for book covers. Over the next two years he took over as art director, and introduced his style which resonated with the mood of the time. In 1968 he moved to his own graphic-design firm, INK, which became closely involved with graphic images for the Beatles and Apple Corps.

During the 1960s and 1970s he was responsible for a great many album covers, and helped create the graphic style of that era. He designed a series of science fiction book covers for Penguin Books. He made a big impression with his illustrations for the Beatles Illustrated Song lyrics. He also provided illustrations for "The Penguin Book of Comics", a history of British and American comic art. His work was characterised by a flowing, cartoony style and soft airbrushing - very much in step with the psychedelic styles of the times. In the theatre, in February 1969 he designed the graphics for controversial Jane Arden (director) play Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven at the London Arts Laboratory, Drury Lane.

He is possibly best known, however, for the picture book The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper Feast (1973), a series of illustrations of anthropomorphic insects and other creatures, which he created in collaboration with William Plomer, who wrote the accompanying verses. This was based on William Roscoe's poem of the same name, but was inspired when Aldridge read that John Tenniel had told Lewis Carroll it was impossible to draw a wasp in a wig.

If you do a simple google search for him, you'll be sure to find lots of truly wonderful images that really capture a sort of magical imagination deeply rooted in the best breed of british whimsy. But for now, I'm going to leave you with a Beatles record cover designed by Aldridge and initially proposed for the White Album. I'm glad this gobsmackingly beautiful illustration was not binned for it's one of my favorite Beatles images ever. See you soon!

Ringo's Singles

A little bit of vinyl heaven for you here in the format of some of Mr. Starkey's single record releases. Fun covers, too as you can see.