Unbound Creativity: Art Blogs on WordPress.com

From painting and photography to performance art, the art scene on WordPress.com is thriving. Practitioners of every imaginable art form are inspiring visitors with their creativity, using striking themes and neat features like custom galleries to showcase their work. Ready for infinite gallery hopping (no walking shoes necessary)? Here are a few places to start exploring.

rabirius

Straddling the line between photography, digital art, and collage, this collection of manipulated photos forces us to look at familiar objects and landscapes with a fresh eye. A swimming polar bear, a layered urban panorama: at once disorienting and fascinating, it’s hard to to resist these images.

rabirius, Coloured Chameleon

Ryu, a minimalist theme with a generous, full-width image post format, is perfect for putting these large images center stage. It even automatically adjusts the background color on image posts to match the palette of the image itself: it’s like having a bespoke framer at your service.

From Adèle d’Alleray‘s photography blog

On the hunt for more boundary-bending photography? You should check out Brandon Halley‘s work, featuring surreal, filtered images, or Adèle d’Alleray‘s gallery, which uses the Hatch theme’s sleek grid look to showcase her masterfully composed snapshots.

anitamillerart

Working in oil painting, artist Anita C. Miller breathes new life into a traditional medium, infusing her landscape and still life work with bold colors and even bolder textures. She occasionally invites her visitors to witness her work process, showing not only finished work but also the sketches and photos on which the paintings rely.

Anita C. Miller, wild wetland 6 x 6, and reference photo

The Truly Minimal theme allows the artist to foreground the natural splendor of the prairie with little visual distraction. The ample white space lets her commentary and images coexist in harmony, without competing for the visitor’s attention.

If you’re thirsty for another behind-the-scenes look at the creative process, you should also visit Drawing the MotMot, the blog of an Oklahoma-based nature lover featuring sketches, photos, and commentary about her work, on top of the drawings themselves.

TOKIDOKI

Street art is notoriously difficult to curate and archive: you can’t take down a wall whenever you see a cutting-edge mural, after all. Enter TOKIDOKI, a globetrotting traveler and avid photographer, who documents the textures of urban landscapes from Mexico City to Beirut. Stencil art, stickers, tags, posters: the blog channels the raw energy of the city with loving attention to detail.

Mickey Mouse Resiste, photo by TOKIDOKI

With an unfussy look, long streams of images, and an easy-to-navigate sidebar, TOKIDOKI uses Forever — a theme primarily geared toward wedding sites — to emulate a stroll through streets waiting to be discovered.

For another international take on street art blogging, don’t miss the aptly named graffiti, a blog by a Sweden-based graffiti photographer.

Subatomic Tourism

Veteran art lovers and novices alike will pause with wonder at the innovative, engaging work over at Subatomic Tourism. Here, the artist/blogger places small figurines in unexpected locations, from parks to museums, and takes their photograph, using our everyday world as if it were a theater set designed for inanimate miniatures. The result is at once humorous and unsettling.

An Evening by the Harbour

The sparse Twenty Ten theme, with little more than a custom header and a lightly populated sidebar, amplifies the eerie effect: we start to question, after spending some time on this blog, whether it’s possible the figurines really have taken over.

Onward, Upwards, and Sideways

Envelope-pushing art projects are abundant on WordPress.com, with artists working in every imaginable medium (or several). A cross between performance art and photography, The Wet Shaving Conceptual Artist is a blog where animation artist and author Todd Van Buskirk posts a daily photo of his shaving paraphernalia, elevating a daily routine into aesthetic ritual.

Shave of the Day, September 13, 2013

Equally fascinated by the mystery hidden under the surface of the everyday, Art Macabre Drawing Salons documents the regular gatherings of a London drawing group that finds its inspiration in sources as varied as medical art, anatomy, burlesque, and taxidermy.

From the Amazing Anatomies event at Art Macabre Drawing Salons

Environmental art is alive and well, too, with artists like Katie Jo Anderson and her phone booth projects, or Peter Ward and his adventures in and out of the wilderness, which he reconstructs in his blog, expressions of an intimate ecology.

achieving balance, northam, by Peter Ward (2013)

Thinking outside the (display) box

While many art blogs are maintained by artists presenting their work, others dip their feet in the water, too, offering their own unique perspective on the question of artistic creation.

Educators and art historians will find numerous tips and leads in Art History Teaching Resources, from lecture ideas to sample assignments. Lovers of classical art flock to The Best Artists for reflections on works by Old Masters like Michelangelo and Bruegel. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a painter’s muse? Claudia, a professional artist’s model, shares her experiences on Museworthy, turning the tables on the usual direction of the artistic gaze.

An artist’s model snaps a picture of the artist painting her.

Or, for another unorthodox take on art, why not spend some time with some of the world’s most noteworthy forgeries, in Lost in the Louvre, featuring Famous Fake Fridays? Check out the Reader and dig into the our endless vaults: whatever medium, period, or style you’re interested in, you’re bound to stumble on some incredible finds.

If you’re interested in keeping up with what’s abuzz in the community — from a collection of top reads to publishing news and bloggers in the spotlight — subscribe to WordPress.com Weekend Reads, which we’ll deliver right to your inbox.

You might also enjoy these posts:

• A Look at Painters with Portfolios
• Illustrators on WordPress.com
• Themes for art bloggers

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