Wish 'Lines and Colours' a Happy 10th Birthday

There are a very few art blogs which I have followed consistently in the last 10 years. One of them is Charley Parker's fantastic 'Lines and Colors'. It's a really class act!

The header for the Lines and Colors art blog - note the quotes!

There are very few people on the Internet who write with enthusiasm and real knowledge about an enormous variety of artists and illustrators past and present.

Charley writes about illustration from the 19th to the 21st centuries and art history generally with authority - and amazing links.  He really knows his stuff.

The only other blogger who comes close to him in terms of the contribution to art education is James Gurney (Gurney Journey) - but James tends to write shorter posts and to have a more practical oriented blog - awesome as it is.  They complement each other very well.

The Lines and Colors archive - accessed via the timeline archives in the left hand column in desk-top view - is truly amazing. Very little of it is time-specific (except when he is writing about exhibitions) so you can delve through the months and years of the last decade and come up with masses of material to inspire and educate.  Or alternatively focus on his categories (also in the left hand column) and learn about Drawing or Pen & Ink or Vision and Optics or Watercolor and Gouache or Webcomics etc.

I know I've found out about masses of artists for the first time on Charley's blog.

This is why he does it

When I was 10 or so, I came across some paperback reprints of the EC Mad comics from the 1950’s. These irreverent, hilarious comics, written by comic genius Harvey Kurtzman and maniacally drawn by Wally Wood, Will Elder and Jack Davis, popped the top off my impressionable little brain, and both my eyes and my world got significantly wider. (Those early Mad comics were outrageous, subversive and outside the mainstream in a way that’s hard to describe now. They were the visual equivalent to early Rock n’ Roll. See my post on Wally Wood.)


It was my first delicious “Wow, there’s a whole other world out there I didn’t know about!” moment (and what made me want to draw comics).


Moments like that have happened again as I’ve been dazzled by the discovery of new artists or genres that have sparked my imagination: mid ’60s Marvel superhero comics, late ’60s underground comics, the classic illustrators and pen-and ink artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (particularly the Brandywine school), old master drawings, Dada, Surrealism, Impressionist painting, early 1900’s newspaper comics, 19th century academic painting, European comics, Chinese ink painting, Japanese Anime, digital concept art… – every one a revelation and a new world.


It’s my delight in that feeling of wide-eyed discovery that has prompted me to create Lines and Colors in August of 2005.


I’m not a critic. In fact, I may be more of an anti-critic. I’m only writing about things I like. It’s my hope that I can introduce you to some visual art gems that you may not be aware of, or perhaps tell you something you didn’t know about someone or something you’re already familiar with. (And maybe you can do the same for me.)

I hope, if he isn't already, that he's on the curriculum reading list for every illustration course.

I just wish he'd do a post about how he does that with the images! ;)

If you can spare a moment and have ever appreciated his work, can I suggest you leave him a comment today.
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I'm celebrating the 10th birthday of Making A Mark at the end of the year. I guess I'm going to have to decide which date I'm going for - the birth or when I went public and revealed I was blogging!