I’ve been ogling instagram, blogs, pinterest, tumblr and anything else lately that oozes inspiration. I know a lot of people who can look at anything creative and find instant stimulation to create something themselves. I’m not so easily motivated, sadly. Some days, yes, but more often than not, I’m terribly picky. Scouring the internet to find that new artist that will provoke me to jump out of my seat and holler “Good grief somebody pass me a damn sketchbook!” The strange thing is, the artist’s work might be right up my alley, but as many know, it’s not the content, but the presentation that counts. I’ve said before that I am more interested in a photo of an open moleskine with some sketches in it than I am interested in a cropped scan of the actual sketches in it. For some reason, I LOVE seeing the workspace, the progress, the behind the scenes, pencils scattered around a drawing on a dirty old desk, that sorta thing. Show me your sketchbook, not your finished cropped and polished prints.

 One of my favourite artists to follow is Anna Rusakova. She’s a brilliant illustrator, with an adorable style, drawing trinkets, odd bunnies and other cute things that make you giggle. However, being the genius she is with her beautiful works, what draws me more than anything to her work is her execution and presentation. Essentially, her images are photographs taken of her moleskines & sketchbooks laid open to a certain spread. More often than not her pen is somewhere in the photo. I love it! It makes me want to grab my moleskine and immediately begin doodling.

Like I said, she is a wonderful artist and it’s not like the actual work she does has nothing to do with my fascination, because it does. Her layouts with numerous trinkets filling the page and then writing on the opposite page accompanied by several doodles.. love! I had a few of her illustrations saved on my computer for 3 or 4 years without knowing who the artist was, however, since I’ve learned her name and more works, I am a faithful follower.

 Show me more artists like her and I will follow them as well. It may also have something to do with my unreasonable obsession with moleskines, but anything that makes me want to create is okay in my book. And besides, I’m not the only irrational moleskine fanatic. We’re practically a breed. Seriously. But that’s a whole other matter I’ll write about some other day.