Go, look at these...

(All images in this post are the copyright of their respective creators.)

From time to time, I do find something online which excites and inspires me and is well worth looking at. I've already gone on at length about Scrap Princess' amazing Monster Manual Sewn From Pants, which is exactly that and more and I am still smitten with. Here, take a look at her basilisk...

And here's another good one. If you've got a copy of my book Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page then go ahead and read the Acknowledgements. I'll wait.

Okay, in those Acknowledgements you may have seen me thank Shawn Cheng, calling him "the best artist I know." I'm serious. The man is so gifted it's kind of sickening. Anyway, Shawn's got his first fine arts gallery show coming up in February at a gallery in Minneapolis. As soon as I know the name I'll post it. The show opens on Friday February 17th. Shawn's been keeping an incredible blog called, appropriately enough Shawn's Studio Log diligently tracking the progress of the massive and incredibly complex paintings he's working on. You should really be visiting early and often, so take a look at this painting of Shawn's entitled "Ball Game" and you'll be convinced...

Now, according to Christine Mannix, somehow my project inspired her to start a blog. I find that highly suspect since she was a gifted artist long before she ever knew I existed, but it is cause for celebration nonetheless. Christine has a long history of creating things, and what's fascinating about her blog "A" for idea, "C" for execution is the way that she is unearthing all of these projects and objects from her past and revisiting them in the context of her current creativity. She has some penetrating insights about the entire creative process as well, and this is one blog I enjoy reading as much as looking at. Christine does primarily three dimensional, textile and object based art which has been difficult for me to wrap my head around, but it is always a draw for me. Here is one of her pieces entitled "Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't"...

And finally, another artist and blogger who wrote some kind things about me, Elizabeth Bauman is just today embarking on a project to create one illustration for each page of J.R.R. Tolkien's book The Hobbit, which fascinates me. Her style is so markedly different from Tolkien's and from anything I've ever seen applied to The Hobbit so this should be an intriguing and unique look at the novel. Here is a painting of Elizabeth's entitled "Capturing the stars before they faded to memory"...

I'm looking forward to following along with this.