I have in my possession a small but growing collection of convention sketchbooks, and despite the fact that many of them are priced really high for their page-count, I don't have a one that I'm unhappy to have bought. I'm fascinated to get an insight into the creative process, and it's always nice to see the work that creators I have enjoyed have done that won't ever see print, or might be rough drafts of the final product. The Dave Johnson Sketchbook, at 64 pages for $7.99, is more reasonably priced than many sketchbooks, and is, rather than a quick-stapled batch of paper, an honest-to-God prestige format special with glossy covers, sharp white paper and everything. Forget about the format, however... the important thing is the artwork, which is fantastic.
Johnson's covers have been a favorite of mine for some time, but he has also been largely responsible for my picking up some gaming material, notably D20 Modern, because of his contributions. His work here contains no small amount of his design work for the urban magic of D20 Modern or the Magic: The Gathering ads, as well as some general character studies and portraits of people both realistic and definitely imagined. Johnson varies his style within this genre to include the hyper-detailed guns and robots reminiscent of anime to a slick, mainstream magazine look. The general feel is fairly modern, with a lot of guns and clothes and cool little stuff like that, and it's all just beautiful stuff.
There's also more than a touch of humor in some of the cartoons here. Johnson intersperses his realistic urban designs with goofy things like a bizarre little one-eyed creature, a pulp-looking masked crimefighter declaring "I hate spies!" and a riff on card graphics, amongst other things. While the overall presentation is pretty polished for a sketchbook, there's definitely a sense from some of this that Johnson is just kind of goofing around, and that sense of fun is infectious.
Probably the high point for me is a series of designs for starships and battle armor that looks like prelim work for something that is never identified. I hope that at some point this design work will manifest elsewhere, because they are stunning designs. Some of it looks like model sheets for animation or movies, some of it like designs for comics, but all of it shows that Johnson, on top of being a talented artist, has a terrific design sense. Of course, anyone who has seen his covers knows that already.
This is a must-buy for Dave Johnson fans, and I wouldn't hesitate to remind it to fans of "Art Of" science-fiction books either. This is a compilation of some beautiful designs and quick cartoons and sketches from a phenomenally talented artist. I would love to see more sketchbooks of this quality, featuring either Johnson or other artists working for Atomeka, as soon as possible.
