No Plastic Seeves

I had a welcome break from my day job today (one of the absolutely maravalous things about not having a full time contract), and I began researching artist promo mailers. I came across the website NoPlasticSleeves, which is a site devoted to artist promotional materials. It is mainly photographer and designer based, however includes some great visuals and ideas that is presented in a much more appealing format than many other sites that will pop up if you do a search for such a topic.

They featured the artist Jesus Galiana's promo piece: Here is screen shot of part of his image.

He is an illustrator and hand typographer based out of Madrid. He has some really great hand-done typography and some pen work that makes me happy.
Check him out here:
http://j-galiana.com/tag/pen-drawing/

Meathaus-Website

I Came across the website Meathaus, and like the selection of work I see so far. The Meathaus website describes itself as:
"A loosely defined collective of friends and associates contributing to irregular comics and art anthologies and an art-blog-website with a special emphasis on drawing, sketchbooks and comics."
Naturally this would be something that would interest me. There are interesting postings on artists, their work and selections ranging from art, animation, comics, photography, design, and other categories. There is a particular flavour to the selections. If it were music I would define it as indie, but it is art...so I'm not sure what word comes to mind-perhaps part of the appeal and what makes it feel fresh to me is the drawings are more masculine(which is a change from much of the work I come across on Etsy and many other design/decor blogs). Check it our for yourselves and let me know what you think of it.
http://meathaus.com/
Screen shot from the meathaus website.

Webternet

I am currently in a big blog phase where I am checking out several new blogs a day, and finding many other illustration/creative websites that have caught my fancy. Many of them found in some form through illustration Friday illustrators, links or just the one-blog-led-to-another-blog kind of internet searching.

Here are some blogs this week that I didn't really have time to read in full, but some scans of what was posted made me want to investigate further:

http://sweetsweetlife.typepad.com/

http://giam.typepad.com/100_years_of_illustration/

http://www.illustrationmundo.com/wp/

http://undergroundartschool.typepad.com/underground-art-school/

http://goflyingtrtl.blogspot.com/
http://elsita.typepad.com/elsita/blank_book_experience/

And there are others, I may add to this list if I am able to remember the ones I forgot to bookmark. They're worth taking a gander at anyways.

"A Journey Round My Skull"-Recommended Blog

I found the blog "A Journey Round my Skull" which is absolutely full of images from lost, forgotten, vintage, and retro books published throughout the 20th century. There are so many great illustrations, book covers and purely interesting images that are posted by Will who in the subtitle of his blog claims an "unhealthy book fetishism from a reader, collector, and amateur historian of forgotten literature."
There are almost too many images on this blog that are endearing, charming, and interesting that I'm not even sure what to look at first. There is a fantastic post about Salvador Bartolozzi's Pinnochio from a Spanish book published in the 1920s, complete with some fabulous scanned images from the book with is where the above image is from. If you have any appreciation for illustration and graphic design you won't be disapointed in this blog.
http://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com

Daytrotter Website

I thought I'd share with everyone a site that I love for music. www.Daytrotter.com.
Daytrotter gets great musical artists, gets them to record some of their songs, and then shares it with viewers via free downloads and radio. As Daytrotter states:
"We are going to contribute to the musical landscape, not just toss it around like a used book or a stolen pick-up line. We’re going to give you something that you truly have never heard. We are not giving you songs from someone you love’s record album, thereby stealing from someone you love. We’re giving you exclusive, re-worked, alternate versions of old songs and unreleased tracks by some of your favorite bands and by a lot of your next favorite bands."
Their site is easily navigated, provides great write-ups on bands and musicians, as well everything is illustrated portrait-style in a loose ink and marker/paint form by artist Ryan Flynn (examples are shown above).