Okay so I may have mentioned before this artist I really like these days, Sophie Blackall, an Australian who’s now based in New York City. Her blog first caught my eye; it’s been covered by the New York Times, and is really just pretty awesome — this is the link you should click on in this post, if you click anywhere. In it, she takes Missed Connections ads from the NY craigslist and NY locals, and illustrates them. They’re almost always amazing, although to be honest her most most recent one wasn’t my favourite. (The above image is hers.) She also sells prints of her work.

But her not-in-that-project illustrations are great, too; I like her style quite a lot, and just find myself pleased with her work in general. There’s a pretty short list of current artists who I (a) know about and (b) really like, and she’s definitely on it. I’m not sure who else is on there, these days. Anthony Goicolea, for sure. Hmmm. There are more, if I could only think of names. Still, I wish I knew more about the current art world. Rachel, oh my sister, educate me.

Anyway, what this may make you think of, if you ever saw it, is Patrick Moberg’s missed connection sensation, NY Girl of My Dreams.com, where he very carefully described some girl he met, and wanted to see again. Which worked. The story as I understand it is that they did meet, and actually dated for a time, but things didn’t work out. (Google corroborates this.) I also really like Moberg’s work. A lot of the artists I like fall between art and cartoon (see, for example, my friend Blake Suárez‘s work), which is perhaps an unnecessary distinction.

For example, I think of the following as comics — and maybe they are. But I’d say the art’s great, too:

• Recombinant Records (Stuart McMillen)
• Dustin Harbin’s work
• Anders Loves Maria is definitely a comic, and the art improved over the years (I’m linking to the first one), and I didn’t always love it, but I think Rene Engström is a fantastic artist.
• A Lesson is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible has long been on hiatus, but it’s fantastic and worth reading through all of the archives
• A similar thing could be said for the Perry Bible Fellowship, a hilarious comic. This one’s also the only one of these I’ve listed for which I own a book.
• Rebecca Clements’ KinokoFry is hard to spell, but beautiful.
• I love the art of Johnny Wander. It’s a diary comic, and they’re not good at doing complete stories, but it’s a lot of fun every time they put one out.

There’s a list at the left of comics that I read. These are all on it.