Book Review: CFSL.NET: Café Salé (CFSL) Artbook 03
This review is applicable for the other volumes of Café Salé art books.
Café Salé or CFSL is a web portal created for the French art community in 2002. It has over tens of thousands of members from different backgrounds, skill sets and interests. There are professionals as well as undiscovered talent. More than a hundred artists have put together their illustrations in this 304-page paperback.
There are three main categories: scenes, characters and miscellaneous. The variety of artistic style is amazing. We have sci-fi background paintings, comic-style art, sketches, fan art, loads of characters in different settings, worlds, and many more. Most of the illustrations are digitally created, not that it affects anything. All are printed gloriously on low gloss paper, making every page a pleasure to look at.
At the end is the index of artists featured, along with their contact information and website. I've contemplated typing out their websites here but there are just too much. You can check out their artist galleries at Café Salé.
This is an illustration annual comparable in standard to those put out by Spectrum, Digital Art Masters and Ballistic Publishing. It makes you wish that there are more online art communities coming up with art books like this.
This book is beautiful and inspirational. Most highly recommended.
You can check out the other books from the series with this tag: cfsl
Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books for review.
If you're getting all volumes, you should try Amazon France to save on shipping since they have all the books. If you're getting just one, you can try any other online retailers. Abebooks.co.uk has links to more online retailers.
You can find this book at:
Amazon.ca | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de | Abebook.co.uk
Comments
All of the volumes of
All of the volumes of CSFL.net have looked very nice, as do a good portion of the books from Ankama publishing, but I've passed on them for the same reason that I've passed on Ballistic Publishings books in the past, and that's been the cost of shipping usually doubles the price of the book. The artwork looks fantastic, it really does, but it's not enough to encourage me to buy a book that costs so much. I'll likely have to wait until someone is selling them at a significant discount before I could pick any of the volumes up.
@CA3 Yup, they are more
@CA3
Yup, they are more pricey. But in this case, they are even better value for money than the Ballistic Publishing books — which I only own one.
You should check out the artist galleries at Café Salé while you wait.