By Darryl Ayo
You read the same blogs day in and day out. You follow the same webcomics for months and years on end. You need an injection of fresh inspiration; a change in diet. Here’s a sizable meal of Tumblr blogs that might get your brain open.
Pixel art
Pick Soul: No duh, these images don’t usually originate from the source where I found them. Them’s the breaks, dudes. I will do what I can, but for now, just keep in mind that I’m compiling a list of resources to stimulate the imagination. Pick-Soul is a nice collection of pixel art. The above animation came from Kawaii Pixel, but I cannot tell you if that person created it or found it, based on the blog’s broken-English “about” blurb.
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Next up, we have my favorite pixel art blog on Tumblr and by extension, the entire internet: Noirlac. When Kevin Wins, The Planet Loses! This blog has a very human feel; Noirlac tends to update in the early morning with batches of images and animated GIFs at a time.
I love Noirlac.
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LULU INTERNET: This is a person who makes her own pixel art and animated GIFs. It’s hard to tell (because they rarely tell us) when most pixel blogs are posting their own original art or art from obscure video games.
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And meet Mr. OkTotally, another original pixelist.
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FuckYeahLo-Fi: A tribute to lo-fi pixel art.
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Pixels and Bits: another pixel art blog.
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JNKBoy: more video game pixels.
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Graffiti
Graffiti is a terrific genre of Tumblr blog because these blogs usuallycover more ground than their names would lead you to believe. Nominally about graffiti, these bloggers often post images from illustrators, gallery artists, models, daily life and so on. I used to follow Little Flyers until he began posting images of mutilated bodies. Now I’m really into HardToBuff, 1-800-Graff, TheStoneGarden, SquidKid, GraffQuotes, SprayBeast, DeeDoubleYouOkay and Graffitoy.
GraffQuotes is obviously the best graffiti blog for me. Not because of breadth, but because it focuses on the often unseen but often touted aspect of graffiti, which is direct, street communication. These are messages from whoever made them to whoever might see them. This is the most romantic vision of graffiti, but unfortunately, we don’t see it so much. Except in bathrooms. Those places can get interesting!
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Fashion
When I talk about “fashion,” I’m not thinking about runway models, but the kind of stuff that I see on Tumblr.
Black Fashion, the best.
This is practical, aspirational and inspirational. This blog and others like it make the word “fashion” mean something.
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Architecture
They say that environmental drawing often suffers in comics. That’s because cartoonists (like a great many people) are conditioned to look at “people,” not “stuff.” So jump start your brain battery with some exciting architecture-focused blogs.
Of course, we’re going to start with “The Architecture Blog,” because where else would you start on this subject?
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My Ideal Home is another architecture blog. Interior design and architecture. High-end, ultra modern stuff like “The Architecture Blog” above.
This isn’t anything practical unless you’re drawing a comic about very wealthy cosmopolitan urbanites, but I don’t follow these blogs for direct reference, but more to inspire me to think outside of my immediate box. I basically live in a box. That walk-in closet above looks like it could fit most of my apartment.
I’m not finished yet–look at this weird thing below. Do people really live like this?! I can only imagine so.
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Interior design and architecture are basically married. Obviously, with what I posted above, the lines are already blurred in this post. Sorry, I’m not focused enough to make clear distinctions. Check this bad boy out though:
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Interiors-Porn: another high-end interior design blog.
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Probably the best architecture for me, personally is Urban Greens. It visually explores the relationship of plants and buildings, particularly plants added by people to buildings. This is one of my very favorite blogs, flat out. It ranges from the typical sight of trees in cities to urban gardening/rooftop farming, to fine art installation pieces to even weirder oddities. Totally spectacular theme.
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Archiphile: a blog about architecture.
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The Archtivist: a blog about architecture.
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Drawing Architecture: architectural drawing as well as fine art drawing based on architectural ideas.
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Strange and beautiful
One fascinating blog for a chaotic person like me is Things Organized Neatly. Perhaps a bit of an inspirational blog for my personal life, this blog also provides the artist with a lot of relatively clean images of objects that can be used as direct reference.
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A blog that I do not understand, but follow anyway: GameStorm. A collection of notes and sketches for video games.
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Film
This is a blog about the halfway mark of various films. Halfway Cinema.
Superman II.
Good Will Hunting.
Code 46.
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.
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Here’s a blog of screenshots with the subtitles on, so that you can see what the dialog is. FilmSubs.
-Scott Pilgrim
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Little Plastic Things: GIFs and stuff like that.
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Food
I follow a bunch of food blogs that are very appetizing close-up photos of food. Yum.
Here is ffoodd:
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The Boyfriend Replacement: the name obviously plays off of a stereotype, but ugh, this stuff is so delicious looking. Mmfmmm (sound of my mouth stuffed with food)
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All aboard for the Candy Express! It’s the candy train, have your tickets ready!
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Food For Fatties. Belly rumbling.
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Adventure Time
My favorite cartoon/favorite TV show has an official Tumblr blog.
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Comics
If you drop the last panel off of a Charles Schulz’ Peanuts, you get 3eanuts. And it is mean.
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Anime
The only anime blog that I follow is Anime Food GIFs. Wow, anime sure focuses on eating a lot! The blog’s tagline is “The food in anime will always be better than the food in real life.”
I completely agree:
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Geneva Hodgson
comixcube.com 
You have no idea how hard that Urban Greenery tumblr is making my heart pound. Yarg!!
Somewhat related: I think you might like this dude: http://www.bladediary.com/
He’s a Toronto street artist. He does a lot of different sorts of stuff (posters and tags and installations and stencils and etc etc etc). His main beef is with illegal advertising, and goes about subverting it in some really creative and beautiful ways (my favorite is this: http://www.bladediary.com/poster-pocket-plants-celosias-brooklyn/ , closely followed by this http://www.bladediary.com/stained-glass-postpixelators-hold/), but he also does some stuff with addressing Native issues, and makes nerdy video game references, and builds birdhouses and windchimes and all sorts of interactive art. His site’s kind of a pain to navigate, just because he’s done SO MUCH and you can only see a post at a time, but here’s an ancient lj post I wrote about him if you want a further taste: http://pbandjessi.livejournal.com/6988.html
This is a very good. Thanks, bro! Here are some tumblrs that I’ve been following for reference:
http://blog.flight001.com/ – Plenty of locales around the world. Lots of different architecture in real life situations.
http://ahomeforhank.tumblr.com/ – A very nice interiors blog.
http://gretchenjonesnyc.tumblr.com/ – Lots of great imagery and fashion stuff maintained by Project Runway winner Gretchen Jones (shoulda been Mondo!)
An awesome collection of images from around the web. I subscribed to the Gamestorm one also – I think there’s a lot cartoonists can learn from video game design (or any of these other areas).
Awesome post. I love looking at vintage pics for inspiration. One of my favs: http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com
THE BEST (like i said on twitter and tumblr, but had to offer some love here)
here’s some of the ones i like best too, we’ll share:
http://otakugangsta.com/
http://fuckyeahurbantribes.tumblr.com/
http://ohyeahmorigirl.tumblr.com/
http://cyberpunknoise.tumblr.com/
http://sweethomestyle.tumblr.com/
http://littleforestgirls.tumblr.com/
http://astralrejection.tumblr.com/