Vernacular Drawings is a sumptuous, full-color, cloth bound coffee table book collecting the drawings of award-winning cartoonist Seth.
A broad range of subject matter is covered here, from portraits of early jazz greats and scenes of burlesque shows to an oddly intriguing gallery of successful insurance salesmen circa 1947. Nothing is out of place in Vernacular Drawings: there are portraits of R. Crumb and Django Reinhardt and an image of a glorious 1920's ballroom scene is followed by a dilapidated, circa 2000 industrial building. A bold portrait of a North American Indian is preceded by another of a Spanish matador. Seth's illustrations have been seen by millions throughout North America in publications such as The New York Times, Forbes, and The Washington Post, and he is best known as a cartoonist from his series Palooka-Ville and his award-winning book, It's A Good Life, If You Don't Weaken. Available exclusively in this cloth-bound edition, Vernacular Drawings is Seth's first "non-comics" collection, a lavish, full-color art book that will appeal to aesthetes everywhere.

Seth is the cartoonist behind the comic-book series Palookaville, which started in the stone age as a pamphlet and is now a semi-annual hardcover. His comics have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Best American Comics, and McSweeney’s Quarterly. His illustrations have appeared in numerous publications including the cover of the New Yorker, The Walrus, and Canadian Notes & Queries. He is the subject of a recent documentary from the National Film Board of Canada, Seth’s Dominion. Seth lives in Guelph, Ontario, with his wife Tania and their two cats in an old house he has named “Inkwell’s End.”

Seth's profile page

Seth's artwork envelops you like a sweet fog." - Boston Phoenix

"Enormous, lusciously produced. . . a definite asset to any book collection." - Quill & Quire

"Opening this oversized volume - heavy, somewhat bulky, covered with thick gray linen, embossed and stamped - feels nostalgic in itself. . . Most of the illustrations in this sketchbook are purely anonymous people and places. seth has used them to create his own alternate reality: an oddly beautiful, wistful world, perfectly preserved, cobbled from our collective pasts." - Detroit Metro Times
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