Alex Heberling

I’ll preface this by admitting that I read a lot of blogs.  I mean, a lot of blogs.  I don’t watch TV, save for The Office, and I don’t read many books, so much of my entertainment comes from the internet.  Being an artist, good artistic and creative resources are very valuable to me, so I wanted to make a blog entry about the artsy stuff I read online.

BoingBoing: In its own words, it’s a directory of wonderful things.  BB is full of interesting people who find interesting things all over the internet, and they often post about art.  Through them, I’ve found such interesting artists as Terry Border and Eric Poulton.

Animation Backgrounds:  A blog dedicated to reconstructing the painted backdrops from animated features.

Ethan Persoff:  The main draw of Persoff’s site, for me, is Comics With Problems.  CWP is a series of vintage comics that were made to address social and political problems that just seem terribly kitschy today.  One of my favorites is the communism comic.

Heather Castles is a freelance illustrator, and often posts bits of whatever she’s working on.  Her work has been seen in several childrens books and on greeting cards.

Freelance Switch:  Probably the best freelancing blog out there.  This has been a very useful resource for me since I’ll soon be at a point where I’ll need to think about starting an actual business out of what I do, and there are literally hundreds of articles written by experienced freelancers for other freelancers.

Creattica Daily is a side project of Freelance Switch, and is geared towards creative types.  They often post free fonts and news items.

Frugal For Life:  It’s never too early to start shaving down your spending.  It’ll be especially important if I go the route of freelancing, so FFL is a very good resource for that.

Wise Bread is also a great resource for “living large on a small budget”.  They post helpful articles about frugality, personal finance, and lifehacking.

Advanced Style is a blog documenting older folks with great threads.

As Found:  According to the site, its motto is “JPEG till we die.”  The maintainers will post images that they find that have any sort of visual harmony or interest, and often put together online gallery shows of images of a specific type.

Faces in Places:  Exactly how it sounds.  The humanoid faces that pop up in ordinary places.

Knuckle Tatoos:  KT is dedicated exclusively to tattoos on the fingers and knuckles.  The choices people make in their self-expression are fascinating.

So those are just some of the interesting and inspirational blogs I read.