Today the Independent ran a story listing the best illustrators in Britain, and two of my favorite artists, Stanley Donwood and Tom Gauld, were right at the top. Funny enough, I don’t really consider either of them illustrators…

Stanley Donwood

More of a fine artist than illustrator, Stanley Donwood, 38, created the artwork for Radiohead’s album sleeves. The man himself is not one naturally drawn to the limelight. For years, the only way to contact him was to fax his local pub in Bath, from whence any communication would be forwarded to him. Much of Donwood’s work delights in rediscovering antiquated processes. A recent series of images, London Views, created a panorama of the capital out of 14 pieces of hand-cut linoleum, printed on a Victorian printing press. His latest work, If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now (recently shown at the Lazarides Gallery in London’s Soho), comprises a series of darkly compelling etchings that used the century-old photogravure technique.

Tom Gauld

Tom Gauld is a 30-year-old illustrator and comic book artist who lives and works in London. With Simone Lia, whom he met while studying at the Royal College of Art, Gauld publishes a series of delightful, poignant comics under the imprint Cabanon Press. His subject matter is a long way from the superhero deeds that many associate with the genre, retaining a very British reserve that grounds the extraordinary in the everyday. Just check out his treatment for the cover of a special Penguin edition of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (pictured above). His commissioned illustrations have appeared in The Guardian, Time Out, New Scientist and Prospect.

Once upon a time, I spent six months in Cambridge, England, living in a closet-sized apartment, reading Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, missing a woman with whom I’d just fallen in love, sketching a world that was 5000 miles away, and losing twenty pounds to a culture of bad food and worse weather.

Around my second term of study, and at a point when my mental health was slipping, I wound up playing keyboards and singing backup for a singer/songwriter named Jeremy Warmsley. Jeremy was rounding up a band to play a series of shows for the May Balls at the end of term, and our mutual friend Mike set us up. We got along nicely: I introduced him to Toots and the Maytals; he introduced me to Kate Bush. J’s songs were straightforward pop songs with a lot of chord changes and complex vocals. Our band consisted of a good bloke named Bob on guitars, two interchangeable drummers who looked about 12 years of age, and a pudgy, pathological liar named Dan on bass. (Dan claimed to have lost his virginity to two 18-year-old lesbians.) Once, we found an old Roland Jupiter-4 synthesizer in the Churchill College practice room–it weighed about 40 pounds and made wild, orgasmically phat sounds until it crapped out on us. We had a punk song where I jumped into the audience banging a cowbell. At one of the May Balls we drank beer until 6 a.m. and took turns riding a mechanical bull. At a time when when I had almost abandoned playing music, it was an escape that I desperately needed.

A year and a half later, across the pond, I got an e-mail from Jeremy: “Long time no hear from. how are you. i am about to sign my record deal. fame and fortune.” I checked out his new stuff on his website, and was pretty blown away: those straightforward pop songs were still pretty straightforward, but the band had been replaced with a backdrop of cut-up drums and Bjork-like arrangements. Not to mention, J. had a fantastic animated video done for his new single, “I Believe In The Way You Move.” Turns out his new EP is coming out in England in a few weeks, and is getting a pretty good amount of buzz.

But Jeremy isn’t the only amiable spector from my Cambridge days that is having good success: my buddy Dave Mitchell has just had an article published as the lead in the DUKE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE & INTERNATIONAL LAW. He slaved over this opus in Cambridge many a night that could’ve been spent in the pub. Dave’s not only an academic, he’s also an All-American cross country runner who has a great chance at the Rhodes. Dave was in Cleveland this weekend, and Meg and I met him and his girlfriend Michelle in Coventry, where he presented me with a signed off-pressing of the article.

The moral is this: keep in touch with the people you’ve known–they might be headed for great things.