Hi readers! Are you an artist or blogger? Do you sell your works online? Do represent some incredible artists?
Brown Paper Bag has started a “link back” program — a way of connecting with other blogs, artists, and friends. It’s simple — link Brown Paper Bag on your website and I will gladly link you back! You can find out more here.
If you have a graphic, we can also trade:
For the record, I don’t use sketchbooks effectively as I should. Mine tend to be filled with scribbles, non sequiturs, and aren’t very experimental. The best sketchbooks help artists to refine their style, and make it a safe place to “mess up” and try new things. For this Thursday’s round up, I’ve included some sketchbooks that I really enjoy. I can only image what the rest of these books look like.
The Sketchbook Project is like “a concert tour but with sketchbooks”, and available to everyone. Participants sign up and choose a theme to their book and use it as a basis for imagery. From there, each individual fills the book with drawings, collages, painting, writing, etc. until the project deadline. After it’s been sent it to the good folks at the Art House Co-op, all of the sketchbooks tour the United States until they are put in permanent collection of the Brooklyn Art Library. If you are interested, you have until October 31st of this year to sign up and choose your theme!
From top to bottom, in order: Andrea Posada // Jesse Draxler // Lizzy Stewart // Lili Scratchy // Tyler Parker
Image via Elizabeth Graeber.
Hey there, people in my neck of the woods — you Marylander, Virginians, and DCites — what plans do you have this Saturday? The Sketch Crawl DC is taking place in the nation’s capital from 11am to 6pm. Hosted by Elizabeth Graeber, it’s a day where you can explore the city by drawing. It’s also FREE, and a great way to meet fellow artists!
More information can be found on Elizabeth’s website. There’s an opportunity to post to the Sketch Crawl DC Flicker Group after all is said and done.
Grab your pens and pencils! See you at the Monument!
Barcelona-based artist Zosen works together and by himself. Pairing up with fellow artist Claudia Font, he is one part of Animal Bandido, who focuses on clothing that promotes personal style and local economy.
It’s really easy to get lost in all of the unique projects that Zosen is apart of. While all different, he has a distinct aesthetic influenced by skate culture and the punk movement.
Tofu Lines had me entranced. It is Zosen’s complex world represented by an smattering of color and shapes, heroes and villains. Characters are reminiscent of food and other inanimate objects, but Zosen has given them an incredible amount of energy. What I really love about Tofu Lines is that it’s translated into street art. It works perfectly for the urban environment and holds it own in a place that is full of people and generally unpredictable. What a great treat it would be see these while walking around my neighborhood.
All images via his website.
While I try to feature work that’s made all around the world, sometimes it’s nice to feature work and events that are local to where I am. Innovate Love is a silent art auction to benefit the Baltimore Love Project, a non-profit organization committed to connecting communities and people throughout the city. Baltimore is a city easily divided, so it’s great that this project, working through murals to close the gap.
The event takes place this Saturday, May 22nd at Silo Point (an old grain elevator!)
Whitney Sherman is an artist/illustrator/educator whose Innovate Love print steals the show, a beautiful mixture of pattern, line work that is both soft and crisp, detailed up close yet a beautiful shape once you pull back from the piece.
While there are variety of works featured in the show, here are some others that I enjoy. All images via Innovate Love.
Fupete is an Italian artist and illustrator whose work dons not only the gallery, but billboards, print design, and products (likes shoes!).
Fupete’s work is expressive and raw, and sometimes out of control. He incorporates dripping paint, choppy mark-making, and solemn faces to give his work feeling. I often get the sense of chaos with his work. The figures exist in this environment, but I am undecided if that’s where they want to be.
I really love the billboards Fupete has participated in, as well as his murals. They are a bit more structured than his paintings, but they still incorporate bold, striking color and unique character design.
All images via his Flickr.
When Chicago-based artist Dee Clements sent me some of her work, I was immediately drawn to the details of her colorful abstractions. Her work is really something that should be viewed intimately, as the small details are what I really like about her work.
Dee’s gives some explanation on her work:
I never really know what I have painted until the piece is finished. I am interested in painting landscapes and abstracting them. My paintings are essentially emotional responses to the world I observe. I find inspiration from everything, a piece of trash on the street, the way the tree’s have grown in around the lagoon in the park by my house, how the cracks in the sidewalk meander from weather and weight and time. I believe that there is poetry in the mundane and I try to to show the beauty of the everyday in my paintings.
Meanders is a great way to describe the images she produces. The seem to travel, as if each element is part of a journey. It’s an exciting part to Dee’s work.
You can check out more of Dee’s work at her blog. She also runs The Paper Crane, which features artists, has interviews, as well as studio visits.
During my senior year of college, a friend and I were walking home when we passed by a wooden structure with a beautiful drawing wheat pasted on top of it. Having never seen it before, we studied it (entranced by its beauty!) for a while then went on our way. It was later removed from the wood, but bits of the image still clung to surface as a reminder.
A few months later I spotted a drawing in a similar style and did a bit of poking around. I found out the artist went by the name Gaia, and he was a student at my college (a few years younger), and had already made a splash in the New York street art scene.
I enjoy a lot of street art, with some of my favorite being from Gaia (Andrew Pisacane). The style is simply beautiful — the arrangement of of the lines and how effortless it all looks. The imagery is also quietly forlorn, as if some of the subjects are trapped onto the surfaces for which they were applied. On the street, their size and detail are visually very striking.
Sadly, everything I’ve captured of his has since been removed. I did, however, snap a quick photo whenever I saw one up. All images are from my iPhone and point and shoot!
(Sorry for the blurriness — it was so cold that day!)
If you can’t tell from my selections lately, I am really a fan of shapes. I really love geometric shapes and the design that artists and illustrators have been making with them. Jesse Brown is an artist that I have recently discovered via Mint and really enjoy not only his drawings, but his community work (murals) as well.
The nice thing about Jesse’s drawings is his ability to blend hard a soft. He makes geometric and precise images so malleable looking with the use of line weight and ink washes. This also relates to his hand-drawn typography. Fonts usually have such a hard edge on them — not the case in Jesse’s design!
I have a soft spot in my heart for mural and community projects, so I really enjoy looking at what he’s done in the community. The two images I’ve included this entry are in a school yard. Both relate to school in different ways — symbols you’d associate with being in class and words that you might hear while being in the classroom.
All images via his website.
