Robots & Donuts -  The Art Of Eric Joyner
                                             (2008 - Dark Horse Books)  

     I enjoy this art very much, but I have to criticize this one-of-a-kind, 184-page, book for seeming 'padded'.  While almost all the art is 'well-presented', many of the pages are given over to pencil studies, and then color studies, of the painting presented on the page (or pages . . .) following those.  And while I frequently like the presentation of usually more abstract-looking color studies, for this particular artist, the color studies really aren't very different from the style of his final result.  On top of that, a not insignificant portion of the paintings on display are very, very slight variations of other included paintings.  The chapters each take three nearly blank pages to delineate them from the previous one (though granted, one of those three will have a small excerpt from one of the grouped paintings).  I'm tickled by Joyner's affection for retro toy robots and their juxtaposition into otherwise dramatic themes, but the effect of seeing the same double-handful of models used again and again starts to become annoying - I ended up coming to treasure those examples of his work without the robots (or the donuts).  Double-page spreads abound, many of them full-bleed.  There's 31 such items, but nearly half of them suffer, with the central gutter splitting something it ought not to.  There's also a very long fold-out (painting on one side, color-study on the other . . .) that's very effective, though it wouldn't be my choice to include the device.  The captions are the titles of the pieces, accompanied by the identification of its owner.  Frequently, there is an enjoyable anecdote about the depiction, the rest of the text being only a short foreword and a biography.  The chapters are:  Pastoral, Shipping And Transportation, Noir, Boxing, Surreal, Big Monsters, and Robots And Donuts (don't misapprehend the latter, as those two dominate *all* the chapters . . .).

Other Dark Horse monographs

  Charles Vess:   Drawing Down The Moon - The Art Of Charles Vess

  Visions - The Art Of Arthur Suydam

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