creative inspiration

I dearly love my art magazines. But great quality does not come cheap, and when you add overseas postage, the cost of a year's subscription to a good publication can shoot it far out of my price range. So my rules are (1) no more than one subscription per year, and (2) never subscribe to the same magazine two years in a row.

Over the years, I've subscribed to magazines about Nature, magazines about world literature, and magazines about creative cookery. But my long-term favorites are Gekkan Etegami (Etegami Monthly), published by the Japan Etegami Society, and UPPERCASE: "a magazine for the creative and curious," published four times a year from Canada.

For the past few years, I've been going back and forth between the last two. I've posted quite a bit about Gekkan Etegami on this blog, so my regular readers should be familiar with it by now. I don't think I've mentioned UPPERCASE before, but take my word for it, it is jam-jam-jam-packed with fascinating articles and great photos by and about successful artists and crafters from all over the world. I don't think there's an inch of wasted space in the whole magazine. Plus it's made with really thick paper and rich inks, and has the most wonderful inky smell when you open it up.

Now then, this is the time of year when I start wondering what I will subscribe to next. Should I go back to the magazine I subscribed to the year before last? (good choice) Or should I take the opportunity to discover something completely new? (great choice!) So I thought: why don't I ask my readers if they have a favorite magazine? Maybe it will be just the discovery that I am looking for. If you have a recommendation, please comment below, preferably with a link to a website that will give me detailed information. Thanks bunches!