Do more art book reviews
Let me start with a short history on how the blog suddenly took the art-book-reviews route.
You guys might have noticed that I've accumulated quite a number of art book reviews so far. In fact, I've only started doing art book reviews more seriously in August 2008. As far as I can remember, my first review is actually The Complete Calvin and Hobbes in 2007.
In August 2008, I came across halcyon realms, a blog by Vong yonghow — Singaporean too! I was searching for some Inoue Takehiko stuff or something. Then I saw a review of The Art of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. I thought that was pretty helpful and exceptionally cool. That's when I took out my art books and started reviewing them.
Since I work in a newspaper art department, I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by other artists, among them are two other art book collectors, Kelvin Chan and Jonrob. Jonrob collects comics, design and art books. Kelvin collects toys and art books. Here's a hilarious quote from Kelvin I found on his 10 Dec 08 Deviantart journal entry:
I'm nuts over 'em to a point of needing medical attention.
I think the word is ADDICTED.
So some of the books you see on the blogs are provided by them. Those are the ones with a thanks and link back to their blogs at the end of the reviews.
And then there are those that I borrow from the library. The library is great for finding interesting older out-of-print books.
In 2009, I hope to review more art books. That's dependent on my wallet actually. I'm not particularly rich so I buy mainly CG movie art books — think Pixar and the likes.
Highlight more art blogs
I'll try to post more links to blogs of artists in the art books reviews.
Additionally, I'll also highlight more cool art blogs. I've seen plenty of great ones from my blog followers' blog list. I always check out my follower's blogs and their links.
San Diego Comic Con 2009
I might be heading down to Comic Con 2009 at San Diego in July. It's mainly to take a holiday and if possible, cover the event at the same time. If this actually materializes, it's going to be fantastic.
The air tickets are still insanely expensive. Aren't they suppose to fall with the oil prices?
Draw more
I've been slacking off from drawing last year. I shall draw more cartoons and stuff this year. Can't put those instructional books I bought to waste!
Get more readers
Hopefully, this should play by itself with more content coming up.
Currently there are 300 visitors per day on my blog with 41 Blogger followers. That's really amazing compared to negligible last year, which I won't even bother to check the stats.
It will be great if you guys and gals post a link back to the art book list on your blogs. It should be helpful for your readers too.
+ more sexy pictures of girls!
ReplyDeleteHi Parka! I started visiting your blog around mid-Oct'08 but never thanked you for all these reviews.
ReplyDelete"I thought that was pretty helpful and exceptionally cool. That's when I took out my art books and started reviewing them."
I think you'd be happy to know that that's how I felt when I first visited your blog and since then I'm planning on doing more book reviews in my blog - yours are my inspiration now :).
I started doing reviews in 2007 but the books I (short)review are about game design/development and it's not in a regular basis (and it's written in Portuguese). Knowing how helpful this can be (your reviews helped me to decide what artbooks I should buy first), I'll try to follow your example and review more books.
All the best!
No one appreciates that your blog took a turn in this direction more than me. I was actually thinking of doing this kind of thing on my own blog as well. But then you came along...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, keep up the good work in 2009!
After you started reviewing art books on a daily basis, it inspired me to do it too. I then thought it over and stopped since you're doing it better than I am. I'd rather lend you my books for you to review than having two separate blogs that do the same thing.
ReplyDeleteVong over at Halcyon Realms is great. He sells art books that are particularly hard to get.
Thanks for the review of "Making A Mark" on Blogged!
ReplyDelete:] Thanks for the all the neat artbook reviews that you have done, there's just so many I want to get but I simply have no place to store them in my rented room here in Tokyo.
ReplyDeleteHappy new year by the way !