Kristin Nohe is a junior Illustration Major/Book Arts Concentrator at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and I’m amazed at what she has come up with so far. Though she has a website, her blog serves as a portfolio-in-progress and it’s where you can find lots of new, fun work. Things like sketchbook spreads from her trip to California (can you imagine if she had gone for a trip around the world?) and also her fun, random hand-letterings has earned her a bookmark on my Google reader.

Though she has confessed to struggling with shifting her work from traditional methods (like painting) to digital techniques, watching her progress is truly inspiring. Her future is indeed shining bright!

If you haven’t heard already, Arrow to Arrow is a new online gallery and shop that sells beautiful, exclusive and limited edition prints by various artists. Jess sent me a link to a print called The Apples Of Youth and The Living Water by Sophie Alda that’s based on a Russian folklore of the same name, and now I’m in love.

Isn’t her work fabulous? Her style is wonderfully unique and very memorable as well. Her color choices, the way she renders people (critters too!) and the interplay of patterns in each illustration is top notch. See more at Sophie’s website!

YES! Just do it. Just start that project you’ve been meaning to. Perhaps it’s cleaning out a corner of your place for art making, or grabbing a pencil and start making scratches in that poor abandoned sketchbook. Get to it! If you need a reminder, this image is being sold as a print by the amazing Thereza Rowe. So turn off the internet (but please come back and visit us again) and just make a start!

By the way, for all my fellow word nerds out there art is about showing up and starting to make something tangible, and the word ART is in start. Oh yeaaaa!