Incubation [Limited Edition Sketchbook]

by Charles Burns

Incubation is a brand new unique sketchbook by Charles Burns in that it focuses on his color work. The images within were selectedby the artist from his notebooks from the period during the years when he was working on his Nit Nit trilogy (X'ed Out, The Hive, Sugar Skull). This booklet offers a first-time look into Burn's color process with examples of his sketches, conceptual drawings, color studies, and notes, etc... all presented beautifully in full-color throughout. It is a great companion piece to his previous sketchbook Echo Echo [link to Echo Echo page], a collection of his graphite pencil sketches for his best selling book Black Hole.

Genres: Comics

38 pages, Unknown Binding

Published November 1, 2015

About the author

Charles Burns is an American cartoonist and illustrator.
Burns grew up in Seattle in the 1970s. His comic book work rose to prominence in Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly magazine 'RAW' in the mid-1980s. Nowadays, Burns is best known for the horror/coming of age graphic novel Black Hole, originally serialised in twelve issues between 1995 and 2004. The story was eventually collected in one volume by Pantheon Books and received Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz awards in 2005. His following works X'ed Out (2010), The Hive (2012), Sugar Skull (2014), Last Look (2016) and Last Cut (2024) have also been published by Pantheon Books, although the latter was first released in France as a series of three French comic albums.
As an illustrator, Charles Burns has been involved in a wide range of projects, from Iggy Pop album covers to an ad campaign for Altoids. In 1992 he designed the sets for Mark Morris's restaging of The Nutcracker (renamed The Hard Nut) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He illustrated covers for Time, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. He was also tapped as the official cover artist for The Believer magazine at its inception in 2003.
Burns lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughters.

Reviews

[Lex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charles Burns’ sketches are fantastic and haunting. It’s a joy to get a window into the process of his creation of the Last Look trilogy.

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sketchbook by Charles Burns (CB) is almost wordless, marginal notes being the only writing. If you have not seen the work of CB I highly recommend that you look him up. There is an almost nightmarish perspective on what we take as common place situations; a stripping away of the familiar that we expected to encounter on a day to day basis. Hauntingly provocative.