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Illustration Friday Editor and Creative Director Thomas James shares his process for generating ideas for illustration projects. Send us your own process here.

Happy Illustration Friday, fellow creators!

We’re ready to announce this week’s topic, but first please enjoy the wonderful illustration above by Karl James Mountford, our Pick of the Week for last week’s topic of GARDEN. Thanks to everyone who participated with drawings, paintings, sculptures, and more. We love seeing it all!

You can see a gallery of ALL the entries here.

And of course, you can now participate in this week’s topic:

NATURE

Here’s how:

Step 1: Illustrate your interpretation of the current week’s topic (always viewable on the homepage).

Step 2: Post your image onto your blog / flickr / facebook, etc.

Step 3: Come back to Illustration Friday and submit your illustration (see big “Submit your illustration” button on the homepage).

Step 4: Your illustration will then be added to the public Gallery where it will be viewable along with everyone else’s from the IF community!

Also be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to our weekly email newsletter to keep up with our exciting community updates!

HAPPY ILLUSTRATING!

It’s Illustration Friday again!

We’re ready to announce this week’s topic, but first please enjoy the wonderful illustration above by Veronica Grech, our Pick of the Week for last week’s topic of GARDEN. Thanks to everyone who participated with drawings, paintings, sculptures, and more. We love seeing it all!

You can see a gallery of ALL the entries here.

And of course, you can now participate in this week’s topic:

TREASURE

Here’s how:

Step 1: Illustrate your interpretation of the current week’s topic (always viewable on the homepage).

Step 2: Post your image onto your blog / flickr / facebook, etc.

Step 3: Come back to Illustration Friday and submit your illustration (see big “Submit your illustration” button on the homepage).

Step 4: Your illustration will then be added to the public Gallery where it will be viewable along with everyone else’s from the IF community!

Also be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to our weekly email newsletter to keep up with our exciting community updates!

HAPPY ILLUSTRATING!

Hello friends!

As part of our ongoing efforts to celebrate all the fine folks who help to keep the Illustration Friday fires burning, we’d like to take a moment to highlight one of our key contributors, Natalie Magnuson! She does an outstanding job of helping members of the IF community share their art with the world, while also helping to keep us all inspired to create!

Natalie Magnuson is an illustrator and product designer relocated in the Southwest. She received her BFA in Illustration from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and has many years of experience designing for the giftware and specialty market. Her freelance work includes editorial and children’s book illustration. Find out more about Natalie on her website.

In preparation for her awesome upcoming online workshop Building a Freelance Illustration Business, Illustrator Salli Swindell decided to reach out and get some thoughts from other artists. The question was “What’s one piece of advice you would share with other illustrators?” This is testament to the fact that Salli is doing her best to make the workshop as useful and helpful as possible, and she has graciously shared the results with Illustration Friday!

Meet 20 artists below and read what they have to say! Also be sure to check out Salli’s educational and inspiring online workshop: Building a Freelance Illustration Business here.

Coming soon: Part 2 – Advice from art directors.

Thanks to Salli Swindell and all the artists who shared their thoughts. Be sure to check out Salli’s upcoming 3-Day online workshop: Building a Freelance Illustration Business.

It’s Illustration Friday again!

We’re ready to announce this week’s topic, but first please enjoy the wonderful illustration above by Jessica Warrick, our Pick of the Week for last week’s topic of SHARP. Thanks to everyone who participated with drawings, paintings, sculptures, and more. We love seeing it all!

You can see a gallery of ALL the entries here.

And of course, you can now participate in this week’s topic:

GARDEN

Here’s how:

Step 1: Illustrate your interpretation of the current week’s topic (always viewable on the homepage).

Step 2: Post your image onto your blog / flickr / facebook, etc.

Step 3: Come back to Illustration Friday and submit your illustration (see big “Submit your illustration” button on the homepage).

Step 4: Your illustration will then be added to the public Gallery where it will be viewable along with everyone else’s from the IF community!

Also be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to our weekly email newsletter to keep up with our exciting community updates!

HAPPY ILLUSTRATING!

Hello Illustration Friday friends!

As part of our ongoing efforts to celebrate all the fine folks who help to keep you inspired and keep the IF fires burning, we’d like to take a moment to highlight one of our key contributors, Chloe Baldwin!

Chloe is a freelance illustrator and designer who makes up one half of the collective, Buttercrumble. She is currently studying a degree in Graphic and Communication Design at The University of Leeds. When she is not drawing, she can be found baking or trawling vintage shops and loves all things quirky and sweet. Her work is inspired by mid-century design, folk art and anything cute.

Chloe also happens to be an Illustration Friday Editor, helping to curate our blog with a steady stream creative inspiration.

Thanks Chloe!

A few of Chloe’s recent posts:

Illustrator Clare Owen

Illustrator Submission :: Lizzy Stewart

Illustration Alice Pattullo

Hi Illustration Friday community!

So many people play a role in keeping this site updated with inspiration to fuel your creativity, and we’d like to take a moment to highlight one of them today: Andy Yates.

You may be familiar with Andy’s incredibly popular Comics Illustrator of the Week Series (here’s the latest installment). We are so grateful that he helps us round out our content with comic art while giving much deserved attention to the artists involved.

Andy is a freelance illustrator, and animator. In 2013, he received his BS in Media Arts & Animation from the Art Institute of California – Orange County, and has worked creating 2d assets for the casual games industry, as well as working on various independent animation/illustration projects.

He spends his free-time consuming a plethora of good, and bad(but, oh so good..) TV, comics, movies, Cheez-its, Skittles, beer, and the occasional couch pretzel, after removing any hair of course. He writes about comics, and interviews the artists behind them on his website comicstavern.com. You can learn more about Andy, and see his art on his tumblr: plumdill.tumblr.com.

Illustration by Thomas James

Hey illustrators!

Illustration Friday has been going strong for over 10 years as a vibrant online community of artists of all style and skill, and most of that is thanks to all of you!

Whether it’s your first visit or you’ve been participating in our weekly art challenges for any number of years, you’re part of the community thread that binds it all together in a rich and colorful tapestry of friendship. When being an artist can be such a lonely hobby or career, comfort can be taken in the company of like-minded folks. It has always been that way and Illustration Friday has always focused on finding the best ways to engage the community.

What we’ve really been finding effective in nurturing our vast international network of friends is our official Facebook Page because it allows us the space to dig in to more in-depth conversations about the industry of illustration, the hobby of drawing, and the joy of shared inspiration. With more than 120,000 artists joining in, it makes for a well-rounded gathering for sure! We’re going to be spending a lot more time and energy between this website and our official page to provide the richest experience to everyone, so we invite you to join us both here and there.

Hi all,

Just a quick update now that the new site is launched, and people are getting a chance to use the new structure a bit more.

Overall, people are loving the way the new I-Fri works! I’ve gotten several emails praising the update and applauding how easy it is to browse and submit images. (Not submitting images from iPads, though. We’re looking to the iOS 6 update to make file uploads a reality.) Those “easy peasy” comments make sense–pretty much all the changes were made in hopes of making it simpler for visitors to look through all the fabulous illustrations. I have to admit that I myself can’t stop scrolling, admiring, scrolling, admiring, clicking, oohing and ahh-ing at what our artists are posting.

One unexpected downside of the new design is a direct result of that ease of use: Now that visitors can see all this art on the main Illustration Friday site, they might* be less likely to click through and visit the artist’s personal blog or portfolio site to see more.

*I say “might” because I think this raises an interesting dilemma. if you’re an artist who created a work, would you rather have people be forced to click in order to view it fully, or give them a peek and cross your fingers that they’ll decide to investigate further? I’m picturing a physical art gallery displaying *my* work, and trying to think how I’d answer if the curator gave me a choice between having a painting displayed in the front window or given its own room in the back of the gallery, which people would only see if they came inside… Hmm.

Not that it’s particularly tricky for people to take that next step… Of course they can still see a piece they love, clickety click and be whisked off to the artist’s site to comment, rave, “favorite” or do whatever it is we all do when we find something particularly inspiring.

My hope, I guess, is that more of us will do just that: If you instantaneously swoon over something, say so! One click on the image takes you right to the artist’s page, where you can browse though more of their work and comment to your heart’s content. I hate to imagine our artists losing out on valuable feedback or words of encouragement as a consequence of this new look.

In phase 2 of this update, I’d love to incorporate a way to make commenting even one step simpler and add a comments function right here on the site. Suffice it to say, that’s a pretty involved bit of programming, and beyond what I could pull off (or afford!) this time around. If you have thoughts or preferences about this idea, please feel free to let me know.

So, to wrap up, I thank everyone for their understanding about this change, and appreciate all the feedback on the new Illustration Friday. To my eyes, and echoing what I’ve heard in a lot of the emails I’m getting, it’s working beautifully toward the goal of being what I always envisioned it being: A “participatory art exhibit” where people from all over the world can come and see the great illustrations that our talented artists create. It’s so inspiring to see that happening every week.

*One more thing: If you’re finding yourself getting nostalgic for the old I-Fri, and in particular the thumbnail feature that teased viewers with just a small section of your work, rather than displaying the whole thing, fear not! There’s no rule saying you can’t post just a thumbnail in the gallery, and trust that intrigued viewers will click on through to your personal site to see the whole thing. It might make illustrationfriday.com look a little less gallery-like, with tantalizing crops of paintings and drawings interspersed with the full compositions, but I think I’m okay with that. Especially if it makes the site more rewarding for our artists.

Thanks for reading, and

Happy creating,

Penelope Dullaghan

Hi all,

Just a quick update now that the new site is launched, and people are getting a chance to use the new structure a bit more.

Overall, people are loving the way the new I-Fri works! I’ve gotten several emails praising the update and applauding how easy it is to browse and submit images. (Not submitting images from iPads, though. We’re looking to the iOS 6 update to make file uploads a reality.) Those “easy peasy” comments make sense–pretty much all the changes were made in hopes of making it simpler for visitors to look through all the fabulous illustrations. I have to admit that I myself can’t stop scrolling, admiring, scrolling, admiring, clicking, oohing and ahh-ing at what our artists are posting.

One unexpected downside of the new design is a direct result of that ease of use: Now that visitors can see all this art on the main Illustration Friday site, they might* be less likely to click through and visit the artist’s personal blog or portfolio site to see more.

*I say “might” because I think this raises an interesting dilemma. if you’re an artist who created a work, would you rather have people be forced to click in order to view it fully, or give them a peek and cross your fingers that they’ll decide to investigate further? I’m picturing a physical art gallery displaying *my* work, and trying to think how I’d answer if the curator gave me a choice between having a painting displayed in the front window or given its own room in the back of the gallery, which people would only see if they came inside… Hmm.

Not that it’s particularly tricky for people to take that next step… Of course they can still see a piece they love, clickety click and be whisked off to the artist’s site to comment, rave, “favorite” or do whatever it is we all do when we find something particularly inspiring.

My hope, I guess, is that more of us will do just that: If you instantaneously swoon over something, say so! One click on the image takes you right to the artist’s page, where you can browse though more of their work and comment to your heart’s content. I hate to imagine our artists losing out on valuable feedback or words of encouragement as a consequence of this new look.

In phase 2 of this update, I’d love to incorporate a way to make commenting even one step simpler and add a comments function right here on the site. Suffice it to say, that’s a pretty involved bit of programming, and beyond what I could pull off (or afford!) this time around. If you have thoughts or preferences about this idea, please feel free to let me know.

So, to wrap up, I thank everyone for their understanding about this change, and appreciate all the feedback on the new Illustration Friday. To my eyes, and echoing what I’ve heard in a lot of the emails I’m getting, it’s working beautifully toward the goal of being what I always envisioned it being: A “participatory art exhibit” where people from all over the world can come and see the great illustrations that our talented artists create. It’s so inspiring to see that happening every week.

*One more thing: If you’re finding yourself getting nostalgic for the old I-Fri, and in particular the thumbnail feature that teased viewers with just a small section of your work, rather than displaying the whole thing, fear not! There’s no rule saying you can’t post just a thumbnail in the gallery, and trust that intrigued viewers will click on through to your personal site to see the whole thing. It might make illustrationfriday.com look a little less gallery-like, with tantalizing crops of paintings and drawings interspersed with the full compositions, but I think I’m okay with that. Especially if it makes the site more rewarding for our artists.

Thanks for reading, and

Happy creating,

Penelope Dullaghan

Hi all,

It looks like we’re still having some issues with our mailing list. Hopefully we’ll get it cleared up soon.

In any case, the new topic is “Forward” suggested by Becky Caldwell (http://www.becomingbeck.com/).

Happy drawing!

-penelope

Share/Bookmark

We have no excuses for the extended outage. We do have an upgraded forum ready for your loquaciousness, and with all previous posts intact.

The forum is running a default bluish-kinda theme for a bit, while we construct a polished IFri look’n'feel for the new software version.

Your old username and password should work. Welcome back.

Discuss.

http://illustrationfriday.com/forum/

The week before little Veda was due to arrive, Penny and I were discussing the fun stuff we’d like to do on Illustration Friday, plus the necessary upgrades that have been in the works for some time. A few hours later, she gave me a sparkling set of Photoshop files containing a new layout for the site, with all the new features we’d just been chatting about in place and the colors just radiant.

She said “I’ve been able to see it in my head for awhile.”

I love bringing Penelope’s web visions to life!

So, the IF Forums are temporarily read-only while we move everything to the new software and get ready to unveil the new IF. You can definitely still post entries and suggest topics (this week’s topic is “Intricate“, which had only been suggested a few days ago - I got a thrill when I saw it in the list. This should be fun!) and the new site will have even better tools for showing your stuff.

Meanwhile, in daily acts of inspiration, this pic from Camilla Engman’s Flickr has been up on my screen since it was posted. I want to reach through the monitor, beep their noses, and touch the shiniest button at the bottom:

circles

Originally uploaded by Camilla Engman

Penelope’s baby has arrived, and her husband Colin introduces us to little Veda over at Penelope’s blog. Congratulations, Penelope and Colin!!

…but better than never.

If you’re using a Mac, you might like the quick and simple Illustration Friday Dashboard Widget the folks over at Utopian.net Labs whipped up as a bit of fun for IF’ers.

The Illustration Friday widget will keep you posted on each week’s exhibition, showing the 30 most recent entries hot off the IFri presses, with links to each author’s own post of their image, and of course ways to click on to the main IFri site.

You can grab the Mac-only widget right here. (We’ll do versions for iGoogle and possibly for Vista, should demand arise.)

To install the Illustration Friday Mac Dashboard Widget:

1. Download the zipped widget file: ifridashbd.zip (252KB)
2. Double-click the ifridashbd.zip file saved on your computer (if you’re using Safari, step #2 may be done for you automatically)
3. Double-click the “Illustration Friday” dashboard widget icon that is expanded from the zip file to install it in your dashboard.

If you’re looking for a better way to follow the weekly topic announcements than the primitive mailing list, hop over to Twitter and follow Illoannounce, the newly-officially-endorsed-unoffical Illustration Friday twitterer.

Artful Blogging, a magazine by Stampington&Company, interviewed me about Illustration Friday for their Spring 08 issue! This magazine is chock full of good things to inspire, so pick up a copy if you see one.

The interview features quite a few IF participants including:

Anita Mejia

Jeremy Holmes

Liz Fulgham

Timothy Tsun

Adam Levine

Karin Uusikorpi

Mike R. Baker

Nancy Bea Miller

Diana Koehne

Irisz Agocs

Ben Hatke

Maria Grupp

and Amy Stadelmann

Yay guys!

Liz Lawley:
saw Twitter becoming a conversation like IM away messages that didn’t require a response, could

happen over a period of time
students building a typology of Twitter users
these kinds of communicating presence
Linda Stone sees these tools de-emphasizing your relationships
Liz sees them as strengthening ties
communicating day-to-day lif - the patterns, the nuances of it – is difficult to do across

distances

Panel on “interesting implementations of presence

Matt Biddulph - Dopplr (http://dopplr.com/)

Much more about potential presence than something like Twitter
“absence of notification” – you’re going where she lives but she won’t be there
all they do is take where you tell them you will be
the important thing about travel is memory – the side artifacts of your presence in a place
the idea of URLs as important resources
if you put a trip on Dopplr, there is no URL you can use outside of Dopplr for it, but that is

going to change
heuristics for who travels a lot to a certain place
exploring expertise through the social graph; helping people help each other
showing you someone who knows about where you’re going instead of saying “we’ve started a forum

about your trip and invited this person to join it”
looking at the fuzzy edges
Jyfi Engestrom - http://www.zengestrom.com/blog/2007/08/what-makes-a-go.html
what would happen if you fuzzed up the edges of your trip
can optimize travel and figure out which is the best day to go if you know who will be there when

(earlier than you, later than you, during your trip – if you go a few days early, you’ll see these

people)
geographical fuzziness (how far you can travel from where you will be) = “coincidences”
how do we create natural-feeling interfaces to make these things fuzzy?
The documentation and real artifacts that you put out there from your trip
can easily hit the Flickr photos or Twits for a trip
can you take this data set and compare it against another one without having to do the geotagging

(which most people don’t get around to)
working on a Facebook app that puts your Dopplr updates into your minified
What has changed in the world of the people who matter to you? – not just their status
how can social software avoid lying to your friends about your presence?

Tom Coates – Yahoo
“Geopresence & Fire Eagle” – It’s where you’re at
Communicating your state to other people
90% of Twitter’s traffic comes from APIs
connected data sources – “an aggregated web of connected data sources and services”
data that actively looks for opportunities to recombine itself
letting these data sources “see” you and potentially hook into you
not so much as me making myself visible, but also making myself comprehensible to software as well
becomes a foundation to build on, rather than a goal between two people
Fire eagle tries to express this - http://fireeagle.research.yahoo.com/
what if the web just updated your location ambiently in the background?
how you could use fire eagle to manifest your presence:
1 – twitter maps
2 – phone app that would communicate ambient location of friends so you could look for a group
Geotragging all user content
app on mobile phone would SMS your location to tell you useful things around you
“proximizer” – boss status/presence (how far away she is)
desktop widgets showing pictures of people and their status/location
ambient sense of where your family is
Unexpected uses of this information and what could go wrong
1 – revealing too much information and not knowing you’re doing it
2 –how to trust whom
3 - specific circumstances when you may want to hide
Slide of how you could authorize Flickr to use your fire eagle data and how much they could have

access to
App would check in periodically to make sure you still want to share information at the level

you’re at
Could specify a neighborhood instead of a specific location (like your home)

Gilad Lotan – Presence: intimacy and immediacy in mediated spaces (http://giladlotan.com/)
Love, power, tribute, culture, architecture, religion
Connection and how it informs in mediated spaces:
- tangible: importance of the tangible online and how we can enhance it
- intimacy: the ability and choice to be close, loving, and vulnerable (eg, imPulse – heartbeat

sharing devices, something you don’t share with anyone other than your loved ones or doctor)
- immediacy: having a meaningful conversation, the more synchronous it is, the more attention it

requires; asynchronous lets you connect with many friends at once but is superficial; wanted

deeper meaning in deeper relationships, less on the screen, more complete experience so went to

Jerusalem; intimate connection to the Wall in Jerusalem at Kotel (webcams) but people rarely do

that
- culture & context: we’re all used to cultural norms all around us; when you take a certain norm

or an object and place it outside of its cultural context, you get a much stronger sense of it;

took real missiles that fell in the Gaza Strip and re-enacted scenes on open streets (art exhibit)
Ubi.ach – takes email away from the screen; a ubiquitous doll (pronounced u-beeyatch, heh) that

uses email filters
Tibetan prayer wheels – took the concept and let them react to world news – as you turned these

“news wheels,” images from current news would randomly appear

danah boyd
publics not just as civic spaces but where collections of people come together, often with people

you don’t normally interact with
we validate who we are and make sense of the world around us, differentiate ourselves, in the

presence of others
“always on intimate communities” – spaces created via mobile phones
(davidtr on irc: “attention cannot be forced, but surely distractions can be minimized”
You have a way to express yourself through what your friends say about you, meant to be witnessed

by others (eg, you know others will look at the wall on facebook- showcases your relationships)
Public displays of teenage dating – you talk about having sex long before having it; progressions
who is the intended audience of these performances? Peer group
teens create these images to create presence online and be together when they can’t be
constant construction of profiles as presence
animated visual cues, two pictures merged together, written for the display to people around them
when a breakup occurs, you delete somebody (the only time you do this)
presence and investment disappears when you delete them – comments disappear (except on Facebook)
When we conceptualize presence, it’s people sharing place and time
uncoupling location but keeping time together; can be doing the same thing in different places at

the same time
asynchronously being together
how do we think about technologies that inspire these things
Presence as etching into artifacts
actually see time as part of it
Why does presence matter to people? What is necessary for presence? Shared space, shared time?
What role does persistence or ephemerality play in the construction of presence? Synchronicity,

asynchronicity, semi-synchronicity?
Is time bending synchronicity?
How are people creating presence out of tools that aren’t made for that?