Book Review: Welcome to Forest Island

Welcome to Forest Island. It's a highly imaginative and magical world created by Bwana Spoons. He's a painter, designer, silkscreener, and zinester whose work has been featured on shoes, skateboards, t-shirts, baby strollers, and in gallery shows throughout the US, Tokyo, and Paris.

This is not a very big art book but is filled with paintings and sketches on 144 full-color pages. You'll see a lot of weird inhabitants on the island — whales with legs, Rainbowasaurus, Jessie (I think it's a bat) wanderer, giant mushrooms and many other whimsical forest dwellers.

It's very hard to describe the art. Indie? Expressionism? But most definitely unique. His paintings has bright colours, high contrast, and nice textural feel. If you can browse through the book, you'll instantly know whether you like it or not.

You can check out more art from Bwana Spoons at grasshutcorp.com/bwana and bwanards.blogspot.com. That's where all his characters take form as toys. They look really good.

I can't say that his style of art appeals to me but I really like the toys he designs, strangely. So definitely check out his blog.

This book is provided by Top Shelf Productions. Thanks.

This is an alternative cover, which is the one I have.

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Places to get Welcome to Forest Island:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de | Amazon.co.jp