Ok I’m officially in love. Claire Wendling (the site is in French, so now you know where she’s from as well) is the most amazing artist I’ve seen in a bloody good long while. I’ve got two of her art books here in front of me and each page oozes with inspiration. In many ways the woman was born to depress the shit out of me, because she’s that bloody good at what she does.

I bought her smaller book Iguana Bay 2.0 around a year ago or something, however what I didn’t expect was her latest offering (it’s not even on her site yet), Drawers 2.0 is an amazing collection of drawings and illustrations from an artist at the top of her game. I seriously recommend you go out and buy this book if you’re into Don Bluth type of artwork mixed in with a serious chic french BD stylings. She uses several mediums to bring her vision to life, using just pencils, going a bit more dark with simple ink brush work. Her painted work is exceptional as well, however in my eyes her most sublime artwork are the ones that are coloured in photoshop with flat colours. It gives this animated look that is absolutely stunning. While Disney has decided to go all 3D, I think it shows a distinct lack of vision on their part. 2d animation is not dead, and the likes of Miyazaki show this off again and again. Wendling shows what can be achieved as Drawers 2.0 shows a number of animation sketch stills for an animated series called Ozma that is not going to get made, which is a shame, I’d have bought it in a second.

Both these books (not sure about her other publications to be honest) are from publishing house Le Cycliste (shocking site, easily one of the worst I’ve seen for a proper publisher in a good long while) and are hardcover books. The paper is nice and thick and even though the binding is the stitch type (which is the more expensive type) I don’t think they got that aspect as well as they could have.

In any case for anyone looking to be inspired, Claire Wendling is your woman as she’ll take you to places you couldn’t have imagined yourself.