Pop Goes the Artist!

It’s hitting crunch time at school (exams start on Monday), so it’s time for a cop-out links post.  Hard-hitting social commentary will just have to wait until later.

• Part of the problem I have with trying to sketch every day is that I run out of things to draw–or at least, I feel like I do.  After all, I spend most of my time in the same tiny dorm room, surrounded by the same objects that have surrounded me since freshman year.  Times like those, I turn to lists of sketching challenges like this one from Flickr’s Everyday Matters group.  Sometimes it takes outside prompting to look at a familiar object in a different light.
• This isn’t exactly art-related, but I think it will come in handy when/if I ever set up an Etsy shop for my crafty projects as well as my art.  The photography blog Strobist posted instructions for making an effective “photo studio” for under $10.
• I love retro, pop-art stuff, particularly old advertising and illustrations.  This photoset on Flickr includes more than 500 matchbox labels, mostly from Eastern Europe in the 50s and 60s.  There are some really cute ones.
• Along those same lines, here’s a collection of really over-the-top romance and “good girl” comic book covers, featuring some fantastic, super-pulpy illustrations.  As a bonus, the cover copy is frequently hilarious.  (A little more poking around on the same site reveals a gallery of superhero and war comics as well as some crime and horror comics.  Gold!)
• Spam subject lines are almost always hilarious.  They’re even better made into funky hand-lettered artwork.  Here’s the photoset on Flickr and here’s where you can buy prints.  Too bad I just spent too much money buying prints on Etsy…
• I occasionally dabble in book arts, but I have a full-time obsession with beautiful paper, notebooks, pens, etc.  PaperStudio.com sells beautiful paper as well as other tools and supplies for all your bookbinding, collage-making, obsessively admiring needs.  I particularly love the chiyogami Japanese paper.

That’s all for now.  I really should work on making flashcards for my art history final.  Those Gothic cathedrals are beautiful, but they do all look awfully similar to each other.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Quotes & Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.