Some people can’t see a place without wanting to sketch it out on paper. The Urban Sketchers, a group of artists founded by Gabriel Campanario, share their visions of the world on their Flickr group and on the blog. The loose affiliations of the artists create a site where pen-and-ink drawings of Madrid will sit comfortably next to watercolor drawings of rural America. Their manifesto states that all of the drawings are made on-site as a truthful representation of what they see. The group recently released a magazine on the self-publishing site Issuu.com, and the first issue is all about cars in cities around the world.  The idiosyncrasies of the artists, with their various styles, media, and subjects, make the issue a beautiful and compelling read.

Source: The Urban Sketchers 

New Yorkers are notoriously provincial, or so the stereotype goes. Here are two charming projects that attempt to explain the devotion:

Jason Polan asked people to name their favorite thing about New York, then did his best to draw each one. Esopus published the results of the collaboration in its latest issue. The sketches capture the city’s quiet, day-to-day movements, celebrating the humble things—from pigeons to a row of discarded chewing gum—that make New York a great place to live. 

Fred Argoff publishes a zine called Brooklyn! (not available online). Argoff posesses an encyclopedic knowledge of his favorite borough, and his zine proffers seemingly endless reasons to love it. Recent issues have featured guides to Brooklyn slang, the history of a famous local rollercoaster, and a great collection of aerial photos.

You don’t have to like New York—or even know it—to enjoy the drawings or the zine. The hometown love is infectious. It’ll leave you composing local paeans of your own.

Source: Esopus, Brooklyn! (for more info, write Fred Argoff at Penthouse L, 1170 Ocean Pkwy., Brooklyn, NY 11230-4060)

During World War I, a British soldier known only by his initials, JM, kept detailed visual journals of his life in the trenches of France and Belgium. The journals are filled with picturesque battlefield watercolors and wartime carnage but can also sport a bitter humor. One image, captioned “A battle in Flanders as pictured by the daily papers,” shows us a well-organized battle. The next, “Not pictured by the daily papers,” gives us a heap of dead bodies against a washed-out, smoky backdrop. The entire sketchbooks have been digitized by the Canadian University of Victoria’s libraries for us to peer through, giving an unprecedented visceral look into a bloody chapter of history.

—Brendan Mackie