Inspired Monday: history in pen and ink

There was a time when I used to read the whole newspaper, but I've since switched over to just reading the Arts and Life sections.  You see more fun stories there anyway...there's only so many fatal car crashes and stabbings and whatnot you can read about before you need a break. (Or, in the case of my local paper, articles about the U of A Wildcats basketball.)

However, sometimes you come across fun articles in the Arts section about things like this!

This is the work of a Tucson artist named Danny Martin, the subject of this week's Inspired Monday.

I read this article several weeks ago and have been wanting to do this post ever since, because this stuff is really cool.  This artist has made it his goal to capture Tucson's historic buildings and our architectural oddities, of which there are many...

The Hut!  Formerly a mini golf hole, now a bar, because this is Tucson and we do weird things like that.

Lots of cities these days are changing rapidly, and old buildings are getting torn down, so part of the Tucson Sketchbook Project is capturing these things before they're gone, which is a really great idea and a fun artistic challenge.  I kinda wish I'd done that in Sarasota when I lived there...the downtown area is almost unrecognizable to me now, and so many of my favorite hangouts are gone.  

Tucson, luckily, seems to like being a dusty old west town, and people tend to preserve cool old buildings.  But at the same time, the U of A is also trying to grow its student population and so there have been TONS of student apartment buildings popping up everywhere, which really does change the landscape dramatically, even compared to what it was like when I moved back here four years ago.

I also just really love the art style here.  The texture he achieves with the pen and ink is somehow suited to Tucson and our dusty, gritty, adobe-and-brick landscape.

You can see more at Danny Martin's website.  In the meantime, let this inspire you to go out into your town and capture its quirks in your art!