Spend some time in your Reader poring over tags such as illustrated journaling, sketching, and Moleskine . . . if you dare. You risk surfacing hours later, awed by contour, renewed by hues, and sated by art.
Here’s just a small sample of artists we love who share their work on WordPress. Lose yourself in their blogs. The visuals — and the stories behind them — are well worth the risk.
Drawn In
Jean’s kept a journal since 1988 and teaches workshops on illustrated journaling and drawing the elements of nature. Indulge in some of her favorite journal pages.
A self-taught watercolorist, Jean Mackay immortalizes the ephemera of everyday life at Drawn In, where she shares pages from her illustrated journals. “I always aim to make my journal pages reflect something meaningful or interesting from my experiences,” she says. “As you can see from my sketches and paintings, most of my work is about nature, and I’ve long used art as a way to take a closer look at what’s around me. In recent years, I’ve also been drawn in by the way art can capture small moments of everyday life.”
The Great Affair
Candace Rose Rardon is a writer, sketch artist, and illustrator with a passion for telling stories about the world. Check out her full portfolio.
Sketching is a great way to document your life and at The Great Affair, Candace Rose Rardon combines wanderlust and watercolor to immortalize her memories. On her blog, Candace recounts the history of her destinations and the revelations they offer: “It had been a process, a slow journey of discovery, but even as I sat there on the edge of the Mediterranean, I knew my understanding of this region had finally moved beyond the shallows. Anna was right: ‘The deeper you go, the more you find.’”
Seeing.Thinking.Drawing
A member of Urban Sketchers Seattle, you can meet Francis in person at his upcoming drawing workshop in Seattle, Washington.
Francis D.K. Ching is a retired teacher and prolific artist. Not only does he document the world around him in evocative line drawings at Seeing.Thinking.Drawing, he reflects on how what he sees and hears informs his work. “In a recent issue of The New Yorker, John McPhee wrote an article entitled Omission: Choosing what to leave out.
In the essay McPhee references Ernest Hemingway’s Theory of Omission, which encourages writers to let the reader do the creating by leaving white spaces between chapters or segments of chapters, the unwritten thoughts to be articulated by the reader. McPhee advocates letting the reader have the experience and leaving judgment in the eye of the beholder. This idea of omission can also be applied to drawing as well.
Just as writing is a matter of selecting and stringing words together to create a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter, sketching is a matter of drawing a line, then another, and another, until one creates shapes and compositions that recall to the seeing eye the scene set before us. And what we omit from a drawing is just as important as what we include.”
Despite being retired, Francis gives drawing workshops around the world and luckily for us, he documents those travels with pen and ink.
Drawing the Street
Check out Ronnie’s pencil sketch of the Arnold Machin — the drawing that started it all — and learn about her artistic journey.
Ronnie Cruwys is a conservation architect-in-training based in Staffordshire, England. She captures the streets around her at Drawing the Street and examines the components of each beautiful watercolor composition at Drawing the Detail.
Ronnie’s foray into art began in 2012 with an assignment to sketch a building on a postcard and, in her own words, “Little did I know then where this was going to lead. When buildings are simplified as a drawing, their proportions, shape, and character are more visible. By seeing the street as a whole, it encourages us to look up, take stock of what we still have and perhaps cherish our buildings a little more.”
Can’t get enough art? Follow the artists featured here today on a handy Reader list. Read recent features on Fennabee, Mark Armstrong, Rob Turpin, and Danny Gregory, and peruse the Art and Architecture and Illustration categories here on Discover.
Reblogged this on Dancing with Mosquitoes and commented:
I think many of us always carry with us the latent desire to express through art. In our primes, we find crayons and brushes quite fascinating as they help us paint the world we see along with our imagination. This manifests as the different choice of colours we use, the contour of lines we draw and the subject we focus in the painting. Rarely do we realize that such impulses are borne out of the soul’s craving to absorb the subtlety of that experience. I am glad to find this post, which features the work of some very passionate artists, bloggers. Their beautiful artworks seem to rekindle that dormant spirit of painting that lurks within us waiting to come out! This post imparts an inspiration, profound and satisfying!
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My daughter was in 1st grade and had a teacher that went kind of nuts because my daughter chose to color a lot of things rainbow colors.
The design on the paper to be colored did not say, color brown or blue or any certain color. A child could choose any color.
Finally her teacher had to have a meeting with me about the colors.
Me being a artist, asked the teacher why she ( the teacher ) was so upset about the rainbow colors. She never told me.
I asked if they had to be certain colors. She said no.
So I told her, let my daughter color the paper any color she chooses then.
I have no idea why it upset the teacher so much.
To me, a rainbow shows a happy cheerful person. She loves all colors. Not one or two.
Children should be able to express themselves in art the way they feel. Art is a feeling to me.
It is different when you have sections that tell you what color that area should be.
Art serves many purposes.
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I would have loved to see someone coloring the paintings in rainbow colors.It gives a feeling that they transcend the conventions and think freely.Their thoughts are not bounded. The teacher should have appreciated that! Especially if she happened to be an art teacher! 🙂
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How beautiful! And Moleskine… only for the best.
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very well said! i feel the same 🙂
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I’m personally still new to engaging others in this WordPress medium as well as the Internet as a whole not — that I’m confused by it but rather people tend to dive into ignorant territory when they hide behind different social mediums and misconstrue what someone else may try to do or say. Anyway with that being said, piggybacking on the previous comment, art is tangible emotion: it evokes the best and worst out of us, it expresses what we cannot in other ways at times, and it is constantly consumed because art is a dynamic of the human psyche. Anyone who sketches, scribbles, or takes time to put forth a piece of work — personal or professional — I applaud because it’s creativity and we can’t give that up ever. It pleases me when anyone is utilizing their medium to express any form of art as long as it’s not hurting someone in the process, but by all means continue to create — we all have that inner eye in us, some just more dormant than others.
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I couldn’t agree more with “tangible emotion”. Love it!
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Great inspirations! The amount of sensational creativity in these blogs is simply unlimited! I love how art can be contagious and how the talents of these magnificent artists can radiate to inspire many more people worldwide through their blogs.
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I love this so much!
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Loved this blog entry. I have been telling myself for a long time to learn some sketching basics. This just may be the inspiration.
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Loving it.
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Really beautiful! I am going to share this with a friend who is in URBAN SKETCHES in NYC.
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I haven’t picked up my art supplies in a long time and this really makes me want to. Such an inspiration.
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Thank you for featuring Drawn In! What a nice surprise! WordPress has been a great way to connect with people around the world. I appreciate you helping to widen the circle! –Jean
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Love your work, @jeanmackayart! I got happily lost wandering through your blog’s posts.
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Informative and inspiring.
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Loved it!
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I loved it. Excellent sketch.
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Nice!
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Marvellous. Such work in progress and little paths of creativity or just searching observation gives me a milder approach to such artists. I would love to have a similar posting of compository musical ideas of great composers. Thanks for posting this.
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I wish I could draw.
I want to one day fill a load of journals with stories and short one shots and donate them to a charity shop so someone else can find them and see the worlds that I’ve seen.
Of course that only applies when I get all famous for writing and stuff otherwise it would look like pointless ramblings.
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I remember back when I was younger. My first husband had to have a hernia surgery and our car payment was supposed to be covered by things like that on the insurance we paid.
We being young, did not really know. So….
Our nice camero was repossessed by the lying bank. Along with my sketch book. I have never forgotten that day. I DO hope someone enjoyed my art. I had two. One was from school, most of my work was A’s.
I loved that one the most. I had a brillant art teacher that I will never forget. She made you use your mind as well as the eyes.
It was my passion. Still is, only hidden or waiting.
My husband seems to kill any sort of creativity I get.
I really do love the watercolor/ink one here of the sea and seawall.
And….I really love the thought-provoking words about the sea. Very profound. It is almost like sitting there seeing and smelling the salty sea air. It takes me there. Beautiful work!
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I used to make the same wish. I discovered Danny Gregory’s work about a decade ago reading The Creative License. I so highly recommend it if you’re game to give drawing a go. Danny does a great job of teaching readers to “see” as artists do. My artwork is by no means amazing, but I keep doing it, because I love getting lost in capturing something on paper. It’s meditative.
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I wish I could draw… 🙂
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Love the sketching!
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Nice work… You made them alive by presenting their work.
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Looking at sketchbooks basically just depresses me….
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Eccentric!
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Loved this article.
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Sometimes you need a little pick me up. And this was just that! So inspiring, definitely feeling like I need to re-visit my own sketchbook today.
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I think this painting would be more beautiful when coloured by oil colour.
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Need to start sketching again, probably been 20 years since I last picked up pencil to draw.
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Absolutely beautiful stuff!
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Lovely! This has given me inspiration to get my own sketchbooks fired up again! 🙂 The simplest sketches can be transformed into something beautiful!
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Enjoyed reading this, thank you.
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Beautiful sketches and article.
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Fascinating post! Thank you for sharing.
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That was so very vicious of you to dare me to go pouring into other blogs filled with tags of wonderful art, because I could not resist. There is some stunning, wonderful, almost inhuman looking work out there.
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I got happily lost searching in the Reader for blogs to feature. I could spend all day looking at the amazing things people are creating and sharing. So delighted to have lured you in. 🙂
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It could be rightly said that innovation is a fruit of inspiration. Art, be it in any form, is a language of expanding the human minds and thought potentials.
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I have always loved the combination of drawing/sketching and writing. It is so amazing to witness such talent that lurks within us all. Art is what unites us. Great art btw, thank you kindly for your post. Truly refreshing and inspirational. May all of us tickled by the art of whatever be blessed with unlimited abundance.
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Art is a great way of expression and hopefully someday I’ll be able express through art. I’m still learning.
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I envy the gift of sketching, I hope I could also create such beautiful piece! 🙂 Great work, I enjoyed this post. 🙂
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The sketches and water colors are beautiful! I think art in any form is a great way to appreciate life.
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It’s amazing. All of it.
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These are one of best sketches and paintings I have ever seen. Every single detail in “The interior of McMenamin’s bar at Anderson School” is outstanding! I definitely loved it. And the wordings in ” Illustrated History of Girona” are awesome! Loved the creativity.
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There’s such a wonderful energy in Mr. Ching’s line work. I had a wonderful time poring over his blog.
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Simply stunning.
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Hmmm, blessed fingers. I envy the gift of sketching — I wish I could.
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Oh My God, this type of art is beautiful. I love water colors 🙂
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