Lines and Colors: Two Decades of Celebrating Exceptional Art Online

Lines and Colors is one of the longest-running and most respected art blogs on the internet, operated by Charley Parker since 2005. For more than twenty years, Parker has published regular posts celebrating exceptional draughtsmanship, illustration, concept art, comics, and fine art, building an archive that functions as both a discovery resource and a visual education in what great drawing and painting actually looks like. In an era of algorithmic feeds and short-form content, Lines and Colors represents something increasingly rare: a single knowledgeable person sharing genuine enthusiasm for art with depth, consistency, and curatorial intelligence.

The blog's title captures its essential focus. Lines and colors are the fundamental elements of visual art, and Parker's interest is in how artists use these elements with skill, intention, and expressive power. The coverage spans an extraordinary range: historical illustrators from the golden age of American illustration, contemporary concept artists working in the entertainment industry, European comics artists whose work is largely unknown to English-speaking audiences, fine art painters whose technical mastery deserves wider recognition, and everything in between.

What Lines and Colors Covers

The scope of Lines and Colors is one of its most distinctive qualities. Parker does not restrict himself to a single genre, period, or style. A typical week of posts might include a profile of a nineteenth-century illustrator whose work has been largely forgotten, a showcase of a contemporary concept artist's portfolio, a review of a new art book, coverage of an ongoing exhibition, and a post celebrating the work of a comics artist whose draughtsmanship Parker finds particularly compelling.

Illustration is perhaps the strongest area of coverage, reflecting Parker's background as a professional illustrator. The blog has introduced many readers to the great American illustrators of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, J.C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell, and dozens of others whose work defined the visual culture of their era. These posts are not merely appreciative. They are analytical, identifying the specific qualities of drawing, composition, and storytelling that make the work exceptional and explaining why it matters for contemporary artists to understand this tradition.

Concept art coverage is extensive and reflects Parker's genuine engagement with the entertainment industry's visual development tradition. The blog has covered the work of concept artists at major studios, independent artists working in the concept art style, and the broader field of visual development for film, games, and animation. This coverage has helped many readers discover concept art as a serious artistic discipline rather than merely a commercial service.

Comics and graphic novels receive substantial coverage, with particular attention to European comics traditions that are underrepresented in English-language art media. Parker's coverage of French, Belgian, Italian, and Spanish comics artists has introduced many readers to work they would not otherwise have encountered, and his analytical approach to comics art treats it with the same seriousness as any other visual art form.

Fine art coverage ranges from old masters to contemporary painters, with a consistent focus on technical mastery and visual intelligence rather than art market status or critical fashion. Parker's fine art posts often highlight artists who are not widely known in the contemporary art world but whose work demonstrates exceptional skill and vision.

The Archive as Resource

One of the most valuable aspects of Lines and Colors is its archive. With more than twenty years of posts covering thousands of artists, the blog functions as an extraordinary discovery resource. Artists who are looking for inspiration, historical context, or simply want to see what exceptional draughtsmanship looks like across different traditions and periods can spend hours exploring the archive and consistently find work that is new to them and genuinely impressive.

The archive is searchable and organised by category, making it possible to explore specific areas of interest systematically. Looking for exceptional watercolour painters? There are dozens of posts. Interested in the history of American illustration? The archive covers it comprehensively. Want to discover European comics artists? Lines and Colors is one of the best English-language resources for this.

The depth of the archive also means that the blog functions as a kind of visual education in art history and contemporary practice. Reading through posts over time builds a genuine understanding of the traditions, influences, and connections that link different artists and periods, providing the kind of contextual knowledge that formal art education aims to develop.

Charley Parker as a Curator

What makes Lines and Colors valuable is not just the breadth of coverage but the quality of Parker's curatorial judgment. He has spent decades looking at art carefully and developing a refined sense of what makes drawing and painting work at the highest level. His posts reflect this developed eye: he does not simply share images he finds attractive but explains specifically what he finds compelling about the work and why it deserves attention.

This analytical approach is particularly valuable for artists who are developing their own visual judgment. Reading Parker's posts over time provides a model for how to look at art critically and constructively, identifying the specific qualities that make work successful and understanding how those qualities are achieved. This kind of developed critical eye is one of the most important and least teachable aspects of artistic development, and exposure to Parker's thinking is one of the most efficient ways to develop it.

Parker is also genuinely enthusiastic, and his enthusiasm is infectious. His posts convey genuine excitement about the work he is covering, and this enthusiasm communicates itself to readers, making the experience of reading the blog feel like a conversation with a knowledgeable friend who has just discovered something wonderful and wants to share it.

Consistency Over Two Decades

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Lines and Colors is its consistency. Parker has been publishing several posts per week since 2005, maintaining the same quality of curation and analysis throughout. In the history of art blogging, very few individuals have sustained this level of output and quality over such a long period.

This consistency has created something genuinely valuable: a reliable, trusted source of art discovery and analysis that readers can return to regularly, confident that they will find something worth their attention. In an internet landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that prioritise engagement over quality, Lines and Colors represents a different model: a single person's sustained, intelligent attention to art, shared generously with anyone who wants to benefit from it.

The Bottom Line

Lines and Colors is one of the most valuable art resources on the internet for artists who want to develop their visual education, discover exceptional work across traditions and periods, and benefit from two decades of intelligent, enthusiastic curation. Whether you are a professional illustrator looking for historical context, a concept artist seeking inspiration, or simply an art lover who wants to see what exceptional drawing and painting looks like, Lines and Colors is one of the first bookmarks any serious artist should add to their browser.