Artist’s Resource List

Welcome to the Artist’s Resource List from Artist’s Cheat Sheet on Substack! It’s a truckload of mostly free resources that I find useful. I hope you will, too!

This list is a free service! But you can become a paid subscriber to support Artist’s Cheat Sheet on Substack. Access every article, and join me for Office Hours (art-making and chatting together online; invites sent via email).

OK! Here’s the resources list (updated June 2025)—

Art lessons

  • Creature Art Teacher (Aaron Blaise) | Animation, drawing, painting | VIEW

  • Draftsmen Podcast | Advice for drawing, painting, learning | WATCH (see my favorite video clip below)

  • Draw a Box | Rigorous drawing exercises | VIEW

  • James Gurney’s YouTube | Observational sketching, color theory | VIEW

  • Paul Heaston | Pen and ink, urban sketching, perspective | VIEW

  • Proko | Figure drawing, art fundamentals, illustration arts | VIEW

  • Zoungy (that’s me!) | Drawing, painting, plein air workshops | VIEW

Reading material

  • Animation | Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston | VIEW (also see video below)

  • Art fundamentals | Free book scans from Vintage Inkwell Academy | VIEW

  • Color | Color and Light by James Gurney | BUY (autographed)

  • Composition | Picture This by Molly Bang | WATCH (video review)

  • Illustration | Famous Artists School PDFs | VIEW

  • Nature Journaling | Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling by John Muir Laws | BUY

  • Painting | Free pastel and gouache guides by Lena Rivo | VIEW

  • Perspective | Free Workshop Materials by Paul Heaston | VIEW

  • Sketching | The Artist’s Guide to Sketching by James Gurney and Thomas Kincade | READ the book review or BUY

Images

  • Dustin Blaise | Wildlife photos | VIEW

  • Window Swap | Live views from real windows | VIEW

  • Pexels | Free reference photos | VIEW

Audio

  • Incompetech | Royalty-free music | LISTEN

  • Pixabay | Royalty-free sound effects | LISTEN

Tools

  • 3D Anatomy Reference | Anatomy For Sculptors | VIEW

  • 3D Perspective Tool | Zolly from Proko | VIEW

  • iPad Screen Cover and Pencil Tip | Astropad’s Rock Paper Pencil | BUY*

  • Other Astropad Products | Luna Display, Darkboard, Drawing Easel | BUY*

* Do you sketch on iPad? I am an Astropad affiliate and will make a small commission on these products when you purchase through my links. I use Rock Paper Pencil (the screen cover), and I can vouch that it’s a good product!

Artists

There are so many artists I admire! This is just a sampling of ones I often mention in class, besides those who have been highlighted elsewhere.

  • Mary Blair (top left) was a mid-century designer and illustrator who was known for her bold use of shape, line, and color. After working as a concept artist and colorist for Walt Disney she went on to illustrate advertisements and children’s books, and later she designed the large Grand Canyon Concourse ceramic mural at the Contemporary Hotel at Walt Disney World as well as the “It’s a Small World” ride (see biographical video below).

  • Gil Robles (top center) creates stunning portraits of himself, friends, family, and others, using graphite, digital media, and most notably for me, gouache. Since gouache does not easily blend, his approach is to lay down thick bands of closely related, unblended colors.

  • Jerry Pinkney (top right)was an American illustrator from Philadelphia working in watercolor and pencil. He was a multiple-time winner of major illustration awards including the Caldecott Medal (for Lion and the Mouse, pictured above) and the Coretta Scott King Award.

  • Shari Blaukopf (bottom left) is a Montreal-based artist who co-founded Urban Sketchers Montreal and who is known for her watercolors and art instruction. I find her use of watercolors to be the perfect blend of spontaneity and control; colors are laid down with rich, vibrant, confident brushstrokes.

  • Ronnie Williford (bottom center) is another excellent watercolorist who uses fresh, vibrant colors laid down in bold, clean passages. Ronnie works in other media including intaglio printmaking, oils, charcoal, and character animation (he used to animate for Walt Disney Studios).

  • Andrew Wyeth (bottom right) was an American painter working in watercolors and egg tempera whose practice was strictly based in Pennsylvania during the winter months and Maine during the summer. He painted landscapes and portraits sometimes in a virtuoso technique, other times with carefully built-up brushwork, resulting in stark, desaturated, abstract compositions. Best known for his egg tempera painting Christina’s World.

  • Steven Reddy (not pictured) is an urban sketcher living in Seattle. His whimsical pen and watercolor sketches of street scenes, people, cafes, and pets take on an undulating, pillowy look as he ignores traditional rules of proportion and perspective, preferring instead to spontaneously account for every object within a scene.

  • Jeremy Miranda (not pictured) is a Maine-based painter who focuses on the effects of light in everyday scenes, for example a suburban yard at “the blue hour” with twinkle lights strung in a tree, or the warm glow of an interior lamp sitting on a side table.

Videos

A sampling of videos I think are particularly useful or inspiring:

Aaron Blaise pages through his beautiful sketchbooks and shares the emotional reason behind his sketching habit:

James Gurney has so many helpful videos about painting with gouache on his YouTube channel. Here’s one of them:

On the Draftsmen podcast, Marshall Vandruff shares a brilliant nugget of wisdom—how to pair your subject with a visual metaphor, resulting in unexpected and impactful results:

Dorian Iten reveals a simple trick that will make your graphite drawings leap off the page:

Lena Rivo, the amazing gouache-oils-pastel artist from Portugal, explains how to use blending medium to make your gouache paints dry more slowly:

Eyvind Earle demonstrates the delicate, layered approach he took when using gouache to paint the intricate backgrounds for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959):

Paul Heaston is one of my favorite sketch artists and an amazing pen and ink draftsman. Here he demonstrates his thinking behind different kinds of pen line work, hatching and other mark-making:

Aaron Blaise’s inspiring message about what to do when life keeps knocking you down—persist:

A profile on Mary Blair, an inspiring artist who worked for the Walt Disney Company as a designer for films and theme park attractions, and outside the company as an illustrator of books and advertisements. She is known for her modern use of bold shape, whimsical accents, and contrasting colors.

Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life is a documentary based on the classic book of the same name by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, who appear in the film. It was restored in 2025 by Borsu Highson Film Productions.

If you agree that this Artist’s Resource List is useful, and you have the means to support work like this, would you please become my next paid subscriber?