A wise man once said, “Looking through an artist’s sketchbook is like seeing that artist naked.” With this brand-new series of hardcover books, Nerdcore is proud to undress some of pop art’s most daring and original creators, beginning with Joe Ledbetter. Like never before, fans will be welcomed into the creative process, warts and all. Each of the 184 pages in this volume was hand-selected by Mr. Ledbetter from various personal sketchbooks, dating back to 2003 when his now-iconic characters like Mr. Bunny were barely-recognizable scribbles. You’ll be treated to character design experiments for creatures that never were, doodles for vinyl toys that still aren’t, concepts for paintings that already are, and plenty of surprise smudges just because we can. It’s a new kind of artistic intimacy.
Joe Ledbetter’s Sketchbook is anything but polished. It features raw and unfiltered images from the last six years of his career, including:
- Rough compositions for famous paintings
- Mockups for collectible vinyl toys
- Illustration concepts
- Logo trials
- Weird ideas
- To-do lists
- Random phone numbers
- Smudges, fingerprints, moisture rings, ink splatter, and lots of other detritus of creativity
Partnering with some of today’s most esteemed pop artists, Nerdcore’s sketchbook series aims to dismantle the perceived notion that art is always pristine, because it’s imperfections that are the very soul of the piece. Often times, telephone doodles or receipt scribbles are much more telling than a finished painting–which is exactly why every fingerprint, tear, smudge, and stain is left intact in each book. Each edition is hardcover bound and ecologically friendly, printed on premium 100% recycled paper. Nerdcore is now accepting pre-orders for the $25 sketchbook. If you order before September 1st, you have a chance at one of 100 hand-silkscreened, signed and numbered JLED prints. The sketchbooks are expected to ship out in October.
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