The Elements of Drawing: John Ruskin's Teaching Collection at Oxford digitizes the drawings, engravings, and paintings that
John Ruskin collected (and created) for use in teaching drawing. The objects can be viewed separately or in their teaching order and context, with Ruskin's own catalog annotations. The site also suggests how modern art students can put the collection to use, with instructional video and a variety of drawing exercises. Ruskin also assembled another fine art collection for working-class viewers in Sheffield; you can see that collection at the
Museum of Sheffield, which also helps sponsor a digital reconstruction of the original museum building, the
St. George's Museum.
posted by thomas j wise
on Nov 14, 2011 -
5 comments
Edward Sorel: Nice Work If You Can Get It a 20-minute overview of his career as a cartoonist and illustrator, in which the artist goes through a lot of paper in the search for immediacy. Filmed by his son, with commentary by contemporaries Milton Glaser and Jules Feiffer.
posted by TimTypeZed
on Nov 13, 2011 -
4 comments
Doodle Or Die! A massively multiplayer Pictionary-style game. Your drawings are used as fuel for the next player's guesses, which are then used as suggestions for the next player's drawings, which are then used for the next player's guesses, and so on.
[more inside]
posted by Magnakai
on Sep 13, 2011 -
73 comments
Asciiflow will let you draw ASCII art with a mouse and skip a lot of painstaking space-bar-hitting.
posted by ignignokt
on Aug 5, 2011 -
51 comments
Funny Bones -- Anatomy of a Celebrity Caricature. Artist John Kascht looks for the unique character in Conan O'Brien's face and body. And hair. (Half-hour video)
posted by TimTypeZed
on Apr 26, 2011 -
10 comments
Two people involved in marathon, inspirational artistic efforts:
Six-year-old
Jack Henderson is offering to
draw anything in exchange for a donation to the Sick Kids hospital in Edinburgh, which treats his little brother Noah for bronchiolitis.
Meanwhile, artist
Patrick Joyce, aka The Incurable Optimist, is trying to paint 100 portraits before motor neurone disease (also known as ALS) robs him of his abilities, and, ultimately, his life.
Their works include, respectively,
A rubber duck riding a bike shooting lasers, and
Professor Stephen Hawking.
[more inside]
posted by penguin pie
on Mar 26, 2011 -
5 comments
"Gerhard and I spoke to each other over the course of a few hours on Boxing Day, December 26th, 2010. On each end of our respective phone lines we both had an intimidating stack of books — the almost five thousand pages that Sim and Gerhard created together over the course of those 20 years. We flipped through the books chronologically, with the idea of
discussing the evolution of Gerhard’s process and techniques, focusing on his development as an artist and a craftsman."
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Feb 24, 2011 -
36 comments
Stephen Biesty is an award-winning British illustrator famous for his bestselling "Incredible" series of engineering art books:
Incredible Cross-Sections,
Incredible Explosions,
Incredible Body, and
many more. A master draftsman, Biesty
does not use computers or even rulers in composing his intricate and imaginative drawings, relying on nothing more than pen and ink, watercolor, and a steady hand. Over the years, he's adapted his work to many other mediums, including
pop-up books,
educational games (
video),
interactive history sites, and
animation. You can view much of his work in
the zoomable galleries on his professional page, or click inside for a full listing of direct links to high-resolution, desktop-quality copies from his and other sites, including several with written commentary from collaborator
Richard Platt [site, .mp3 chat].
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Feb 4, 2011 -
24 comments
To celebrate its tenth birthday, popular site
DeviantART unveils
Muro, a gorgeous HTML5 drawing tool that handles multiple layers and a variety of artistic brushes. No account required.
posted by Rory Marinich
on Aug 10, 2010 -
25 comments
"I never know what to call myself really. I call myself a cartoonist because it's what I've wanted to do for as long as I can remember, it's what I always return to, and it's how I think. But I don't really work in that field. I think I'm an artist and a writer, or more appropriately, an artist who writes."
[more inside]
posted by oulipian
on Jul 31, 2010 -
5 comments
