I've had so many tasks lately, piled on the various work surfaces, that I haven't been able to do some house keeping chores on my blog. One of which is updating my list of websites and blogs in the left hand column.
I took a moment to do that today so that I could check it off on my to-do list. I also made a change to the list. The descriptions below the blog titles were getting longer and longer so now only the link appears. This seems to be standard on other sites and I know if you click and view you'll discover something of interest quickly, so it frees up more space for me to add more to my list.
Some of the sites I added today have been talked about already on my blog, but I've got a couple that I don't think I've mentioned before.
Here in no particular order are some comments about these newly added items.
Barron Storey, keeps journals that are filled with intense pen and ink drawings that densely cover the page spreads. Click on his enlarged views to get a look at what is going on.
Loretta Marvel is an on-line friend who writes a wonderful column on the creative life for "Cloth•Paper•Scissors." Her blog Pomegranates and Paper, covers art making and life and her adventures with her family and all the wonderful things she notices when she is out and about. She's the type of person you want to go into town with and "check things out."
John's Sketchblog is the blog of an architect living in Bucharest, Romania. He puts up sketchbook pages which capture the architecture of Europe, and every so often some photos. He has an amazing facility to capture the character of a building and there is much to inspire you here. I also like his experimental vein. He timed himself drawing in blowing snow at 0 degrees celsius and found you had two minutes (between fingers being cold, cartridge ink flow time, and paper getting damp from the snow) to sketch. These are handy things to know!
Katherine Tyrrell's great art information blog, Making a Mark, covers a variety of art media and art news always in a readable and thorough way. An example of her thoroughness can be seen in her recent (March 13) post on "What is Watercolor," where she looks at how the various watercolor societies define their "product." All useful information if you are interested in understanding the medium, the contemporary practitioner's definition of it, and want to exhibit your own works. There's always something newsworthy going on here.
I've talked about Jason Das, Pete Scully, Ken and Roberta Avidor, and The Pen Addict on my site before and if you haven't visited their sites you should do that right now. If you have visited them, go back and be inspired some more by the great sketches on the art sites and great info on The Pen Addict site. I found Das and Scully through the Urban Sketchers blog, another great place to be inspired by artists sketching out in the world. I'm fortunate to be friends with Ken and Roberta. When work and life permit we actually all get to sketch out together.
So there is plenty of eye-candy to view this weekend if you have a moment between your own sketching adventures. And do be sure to have a sketching adventure this weekend, even if it is only a few minutes. Me? I have to go attack the rest of those piles, and then I get to sketch.
