I was sorry to learn today that Drawn, one of the bright go-to points on the web for regular shots of cartooning and illustration inspiration, has ended its run after 8 years.

Started in early 2005 by cartoonist and illustrator John Martz, and eventually drawing on a collaborative rooster of artists, Drawn was always finding and showcasing bright talents and wonderful work by a large number of creators.

Along with Cartoon Brew, 100 Years of Illustration, Boing Boing and a few others, Drawn! (at the time with an exclamation point in the title) was one of the models on which I based the format of Lines and Colors when I launched it in August of 2005.

Though the scope and intention of the two blogs were different, I always thought of Martz and the Drawn crew as kindred spirits in the presentation of inspirational posts about art and artists.

Martz has written a farewell post, Drawn 2005-2013, on his personal blog explaining the decision.

I obviously disagree with his sentiment in regard to the continued relevancy of art blogs (grin), but I understand his decision.

The current archives are still available at the original address of http://blog.drawn.ca. Martz indicates that they will eventually be moved to an archive address.

I will be among many who will miss Drawn as an ongoing blog, but I want to emphasize that the archived pages are not to be overlooked as a source of continued exploration and inspiration.

Thanks to John and the other Drawn contributors for many years of enjoyment!

(Image above: Drawn! front page as it appeared on the one year anniversary of its launch.)

“Cartoon Kevin” is a project by Kevin McShane in which he has over a period of two years drawn cartoon self portraits in the style of 100 different animation artists, from Winsor McCay to this year’s fascinating Disney short, Paperman (my post here).

When viewing the images, hover for the style, click for the larger version.

[Via Cartoon Brew]

Stephen Gilpin is a Kansas based illustrator whose clients include Harper Collins, Random House, Simon and Schuster, Scholastic and the Wall Street Journal.

He has a fresh, crisp, cartoon illustration style well suited to his work in children’s book illustration.

He strikes a nice balance between rendering and flatter areas of color, while keeping the jaunty feeling of his lively linework.

You can see Gilpin’s work on his blog and the Flickr stream that serves as his portfolio, as well as his “Billy the Squid” Etsy store.

The best sampling of his work, however, is the portfolio on the site of his artists’ rep, Shannon Associates.

I’ve written before about the superb series of Superman cartoons done in the 1940′s by the studios of Max and Dave Fleischer.

These are beautiful examples of hand drawn animation, essentially film noir adventure stories with great design, rendering and animation; and, as far as I’m concerned, the best film adaptation of the character ever.

The cartoons are in the public domain and have been available on the Internet Archive and YouTube for some time in various versions, but they have been remastered from the original negatives by Warner Brothers and recently released on their YouTube channel for all to enjoy.

All nine of the original series are linked below.

Super!

[Links and announcement via Cartoon Brew]

[Please note: the images above are just screen captures, not embedded videos. Use the links below.]

ACME Product Catalog, a Flickr set by Dystopos.

[Via MetaFilter]

Franz Jüttner was a German illustrator, cartoonist and caricaturist about whom there seems to be little available information on the net (at least that I can find without knowledge of the German language).

Unfortunately there are not may images either, but the ones that are available, primarily his illustrations from a well regarded German edition of Snow White are wonderful.

You can also find a few references to his editorial work.

Writing for Symbiartic, a blog devoted to scientific art on Scientific American that he co-authors with Kalliopi Monoyios, Glendon Mellow recently asked several science related artists to comment on the question How Do Artists Protect Their Work Online?

Mellow asked me to participate, which I did in my role as the author/artist of Dinosaur Cartoons (also here).

I chose to talk about the issue of preventing people from downloading or otherwise accessing your images online (you can’t).

Read the entire article here.

Here are a few short videos (on YouTube) in which the ever brilliant Chuck Jones shows how he draws some of his iconic characters: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Pepe le Pew, Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner.

“…learn how to draw a carrot, then you can hook a rabbit onto it.”

“Depending on what our budget is, we can use three or two whiskers.”

[Via Kottke]