Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

In this video artist Tommy Kane combines video diary with travel sketchbook as we follow him through the streets of Beirut, Lebanon to watch him draw.

Check out Leigh Walton’s Tintin sketchbook Flickr set. Lots of great Tintins. And Haddocks. And Snowys.

Spanish cartoonist Juan Berrio (previously on Drawn!) has started a sketchbook for overheard snippets of conversations. He’s sharing the images via a blog called cuaderno de frases encontradas, which I clumsily computer-translated as notebook of found phrases.

I don’t speak Spanish, so I can’t fully appreciate the actual context of the sketchbook, but I think you’ll agree that drawings and bold, confident inking like this is universal:

Here’s a fun video of Juan making a sort of diorama of an apartment building out of a Moleskine notebook:

Gadgeteers, sci fi fans, and sketchbook lovers alert!

There’s a huge database of the drawings and notebooks of Karl Hans Janke. The text is in German, but thanks to the always wonderful blog BiblioOdyssey, we have information in English too. Apparently Janke was considered schizophrenic and so spent his life in a hospital, and he occupied himself with inventing stuff. Janke wanted his work to be shared. He wrote,

I ask you to keep the images and albums with the numerous drawings and models that I created for you humans.

How have I not posted Jamie Sutton (aka: Hobo Divine) here yet? You’ll love his many sketchbook posts and his animation.

I’ve always admired folks who take their pads, pencils, brushes and paint outdoors and document the world around them. I keep meaning to do this, but I love the comfort of my studio too much, and I’m very self-concsious when it comes to strangers watching me try and sketch from real life (one of the benefits of drawing goofy cartoons is that I don’t often hear comments like, “Hey! That doesn’t look like a midget pirate!”, ‘cuz like, just what is a midget pirate supposed to look like?)

Lately I’ve been enjoying the outdoor illustration work of artist Wilfred Wong, who bravely takes his drawing utensils out into the city of Toronto, and creates beautiful scenes from all over the city – the St. Lawrence Market, Baldwin Street, Old City Hall, Harbourfront, the Dufferin Mall, and well, basically any place that strikes his fancy.

Loving the peek into the sketchbooks of Aurélie Neyret over at her blog. Keeping digging back into past blog posts to see some of her comic work, and lots of digital painting process work as well.

Oh man, how did I not know that Italian cartoonist Gipi has a blog? Granted, it’s in Italian (natch) so I can’t read it, but it’s worth skimming through the various pages for the nice big scans of his comics, sketchbook pages, and bee-yoo-teeful watercolours.

Gipi’s comics, including Garage Band and Notes for a War Story (both translated into English), are among my favourites. His work gifts the reader with a sense of place and atmosphere unlike any other cartoonist’s work.

Zach Worton, whose graphic novel The Klondike will be published by Drawn & Quarterly later this year has finally joined the Online Revolution and joined Flickr.

You can also see his sketches on his blog, Ballad of a Cross-Hatch Junky and his journal comics at Flash Citrus. And you can follow his cranky tweets on Twitter.

Ian Frazier’s enormous two-part travelogue of his 2001 trip across Siberia is not to be missed. It’s in the current and previous issues (August 3rd and 10th) of the New Yorker. The site has a selection of his sketches from the journey.

The Hallowed Seam: PR3 – the new beautifully-bound James Jean sketchbook – drops tomorrow (July 29).

I’ve seen an advance PDF of the book and it’s gorgeous. More of the same flowing ballpoint pen sketches that we saw in the previous two volumes but this book has a lot more paints, colour and model-sketches as in the images below.

Update: Note from the publisher: The shipping date on Amazon was incorrect, “the book actually won’t be out until Sept/Oct 2009. It should be getting placed on the ship right about now.”

Also of interest:
Preview of Kindling: 12 Removable Prints by James Jean

Jillian Tamaki offers up some fine advice on keeping a sketchbook:

Your personal work (sketchbook) and jobs (projects) are not separate. Your sketchbook work should be experimental and free and represent what truly interests YOU. Discoveries made in your sketchbook can and should find their way into your paid work.

More on her site: Thoughts on a sketchbook.

Previously: Where do you get your ideas?