I’m investigating other illustrators blogs right now and this post on escape from illustration island was a big help in finding quality blogs to check out. It’s probably just because it’s an alphabetical listing, but Ape on the moon was the first blog that they listed. It’s an absolute treasure trove of the highest quality stuff, mostly really good commercial vector illustrations on the day I checked it out. Watch out for your bandwidth though, there are a lot of posts right there on the front page and each one is good quality (i.e. big), it’s probably best to check out this resource on your employer’s Internet connection.
Illustration Friday is of course on the list, and anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time will know that I try not to miss their weekly art challenge. I’m really quite pleased with how my Illustration Friday entry for this week turned out.
Next on the list was Illustrophile, which looks intimidatingly professional to me, as though it is by graphic designers for graphic designers. There is some nice illustration here, but I didn’t linger for long.
Illustrationmundo, the next on the list on the other hand says anyone can join, right there on the front page, much more inviting. I must admit I didn’t join though, I couldn’t work out what was in it for me. Would my work appear in the blog, or would I just get an inbox full o’ stuff. I’ll do some more research later and try to find out, or perhaps not, who knows?
Drawn! Was also on the list, but I must admit I find it a little dull, Illustration news foe illustration news’ sake. It’s not as if that much that’s interesting happens in the illustration world. It’s not economics, or politics. But I guess if you are actually in the business…
The next blog on the list Today’s Inspiration looks more like a history blog than an illustration blog to me. It’s about 50s illustrators and illustrations. It didn’t particularly appeal to me, and it is another one where the first page just keeps loading and loading as post after post, each with more than one illustration in, it is added to the bottom of the page.
Zerotoillo didn’t load properly for me, but then I am using Firefox on Ubuntu, so my system is a little nonstandard, but not that non-standard. That said, it was just a few text bars in the wrong place and bad header warning, the blog was perfectly readable, and all the illustrations were there, so that didn’t spoil my enjoyment. And it is an enjoyable blog, with long interviews and posts that give an insight into the author’s life and experiences. There are some very nice illustrations here too.
Lines and Colours was also represented in the list of illustration sites I found, and there are certainly some very nice illustrations there.
Signature Illustrations is a very nice collection, there is a lot of inspiration here and the page loads up really quickly, even though there are hundreds of illustrations on it.
The next one on the list was a nice change, most of the previous links were commercial images but Character Design is more animation and storyboard orientated. It has the sort of illustrations you see at the end of Dream Works movies. There are some really vibrant and amusing illustrations. Monsters and pop-culture stuff. It was my favourite of the list, apart of course from Illustration Friday.
The Little Chimp Society looks really useful, you can post news about what is happening in your illustration career, apparently, if only I was better at getting on with stuff like that.
The commenters on the post left a lot of nice kinks too, like Drawger, with lots of illustrations, and an interesting layout.
