Today's recommendations all have to do with blogging and the creative process:

Stephanie Levy's Artists Who Blog features interviews with artists discussing their work and the process of blogging. Most of the artists here are women, and most come from the illustration and design fields -- such as Camilla Engman, whose charming drawing of bear women is above. (Camilla's own blog is here.) I find it quite interesting to read people's thoughts about why they blog...a question that I (a normally quiet/private person who nonetheless blogs) often ponder myself....

Jude Hill's Spirit Cloth: Quilting a Story  is a blog that I know some of you follow already, but I wanted mention it for those who haven't yet come across it. My friend & colleague Midori Snyder (an excellent blogger herself) first lead me to Spirit Cloth -- and despite the fact that I'm not a quilter, and can barely sew well enough to stitch a button back on (unlike Midori), I find it engrossing, addictive, and a continual source of inspiration. Spirit Cloth is a meditation on the process of making art and of living an artist's life -- expressed sometimes through the medium of words, and sometimes by letting images, shapes, textures, colors, and qualities of sun- and moonlight tell the tale. This is a prime example of how blogging can be an art form in itself...and Jude makes it look effortless.

       Studio photograph from Jude Hill's Spirit Cloth blog.

Another good blog that I'm sure most of you already know but which nonetheless deserves a mention in any discussion of "blogging as a fine art" is Rima Staines' The Hermitage. Rima's latest posts, for example, look at the art-making process behind her creation of a cover for a new story collection by Catherynne Valente, and for works recently published in Marvels and Tales, a prestigious U.S. journal of fairy tale scholarship (pictured below). Rima lives down the street here in my village, so I also appreciate her posts on life in Devon and the magic of the countryside, and the ways they influence her as an artist.

A few other folks who document and explore the process of art-making on their blogs: Danielle Barlow (Notes from the Rookery) here in Devon, Clive Hicks-Jenkins (Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog) and Jackie Morris (Drawing a Line in Time) in Wales, Karen Davis (Moonlight and Hares) in the Wiltshire countryside, Erzabet YellowBoy (Erzaveria), a fellow American ex-pat living in the UK, Viviane Schwartz (Letters from Schwartzville) in London, Nomi (Air and Parchment) in Oxford, Jen Parrish (Parrish Relics) in Boston [and oh, how I love Jen's new pup, who reminds me of Tilly!], Aria Nadii (Wild Muse Notes) in Boston [those are her magical shelves below], Valerie Claff (Ravenwood Forest) in western Massachusetts, Charles Vess (News from Green Man Press) in rural Virginia, Ulla Norup Milbrath (Ullabenulla) in northern California, and Christina Cairns (A Mermaid in the Attic) in western Australia, by the sea.

If you've got good artists'-creative-process blogs to add to this list, please do so in the Comments!

                            Aria Nadii's studio shelves, from her Wild Muse Notes blog.