Drawing the UK countryside

I've added two new illustrated blogs to my blogroll. Both the authors/artists focus on drawing aspects of the countryside around where they live.

The first is Wild West Yorkshire - which is Richard Bell's Drawing Journal. It's well worth while trawling through the archives of this very well established journal.

I particularly like the format of this journal and the type of entries Richard writes and illustrates which are absolutely fascinating. You are hereby duly warned - do not visit unless you have a bit of time on your hands as it's difficult to stop reading. Unfortunately his journal doesn't appear to have any sort of feed arrangement so it must be physically visited to see any updates.

The second is Julie Oakley's One Mile from Home - which is Julie's new combined blog about her "exercise with drawing" challenge which aims to reduce that well known affliction known as 'blogger's bum'. As she says in her main blog Julie's pictures

Over the last year I’ve found blogging wonderful as a motivator to be creative. However there’s a bit of a problem with it – there’s an awful lot of sitting – which leads to that syndrome – blogger’s bum. I’ve discovered that I’m the perfect weight – however only for someone 6' 3" tall.

Julie is an established blogger but this is a new blog and she needs lots of feedback and encouragement. She states her challenge as follows

Walk a minimum of one mile from home. Record where you’ve been with a drawing, sculpture, photo or painting and then walk back. Every day for a year.

Which means that, if she can keep going, we're going to see an awful lot of the countryside around Julie's home in Hertfordshire. I love the way she includes a small map of her route with her image as well a short narrative of what happened en route. She's also using a variety of media to produce her daily image.

Julie has extended an invite to others to accept the same challenge and join her blogroll - and it's expanding by the day - so by visiting this blog you can see what others are also doing with their daily challenge.

There's nothing like giving yourself a daily blog to make sure you commit to it - or alternatively demonstrate, in a rather public way, your failure to keep your commitment. It's been sad to see other people give up on their daily commitment adfter a short while - although very understandable, as a daily commitment to produce art is quite something! I hope Julie keeps going - it should make for an interesting journal. She's got me thinking about her invitation to join her! I'm not sure I'm up to a daily challenge due to other commitments but I'm certainly going to start doing a drawing when out walking. Maybe I'll practice first?

Technorati tags: art , art journal , artist weblogs , art blogs , drawing , illustration , illustrated blogs , painting