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Ulp. I guess blogging is dead. Artist John Martz just announced he’s ending his art blog, Drawn which was one of the most influential art blogs of the last 10 years or so. Martz started it in 2005 linking to tons of creator websites, and art pieces over the years. But as he notes, 2013 is not 2005:

In a 2013-era Internet that allows artists to share their work easier than ever and to a bigger audience than ever, and for anyone to start a Tumblr or a Pinterest account to collect and curate their own inspirations and influences, a 2005-era link blog like Drawn grows increasingly irrelevant. It starts to look more and more like the dinosaur it is. Drawn quietly switched to Tumblr in 2010, amid unrealized plans to do something new with the site unrelated to blogging, as a reaction to its competition from sites like Tumblr itself. But in those eight years since Drawn launched, it’s not just the Internet landscape that has shifted and evolved.

My personal life and priorities are not what they were when I was twenty-four, hammering away at the keyboard at my day job, hoping my boss wouldn’t notice. Drawn encouraged me to be a better artist, and my association with the site put my name out there in ways that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. I owe my career as an illustrator to Drawn — a career that now offers, ironically, little free time with which to maintain a site like Drawn.


On a more positive note, Martz is pursuing his own artistic career, with the extremely smart looking Destination X just out from Nobrow.

People grow and change and good things happen.

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