Mystery Artist

So, through the magic of StumbleUpon I found this painting. It's tugging hard at the ole' heartstrings, lemme tell you. Trouble is, I can't work out who it is. It wasn't listed in the filename, nor could I access the parent directory to look for clues. Do you know who the artist is? 'Cos I'd love to find out.

Covered - Blog Feature

Covered is an awesome idea for a blog - classic comic-book covers 'reimagined' by artists.

Stefano Brandetti, Original cover by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer; DC 1972. 

Josh Burggraf,Original cover by Gil Kane; DC 1969. 

Asteroids

I can't figure who did this, but they're an absolute champ.

Drawing Autism

Drawing Autism is a printed collection of drawing by artists with various degrees of autism. This might sound gimmicky, or like some sort of weird insanity art-voyeurism. Instead it gives an insight into the way pathological obsessiveness can mingle with creativity. The results are sometimes really good. 

 

Wil C. Kerner, Pals (collage), age 12

"What was the inspiration for this piece? [answered by grandmother]

The key in understanding Pals is the brown rimmed off-white donkey ear. Four facial expressions depict the bad boys turning into donkeys in the movie Pinocchio: purple-faced Pinocchio is stunned by his new ear and considering what to do; it's too late for the horrified yellow face; the green trapezoid is oblivious to his pending fate; the blue head is looking away hoping he's not included."

 

Emily L. Williams, They Take Away Your Razors, Your Shoelaces, & Your Belt

David Barth, Vogels [Birds], age 10

Autumn Whitehurst

I've seen Autumn Whitehurst's illustration around the place, but it wasn't until I saw one of her pieces used as an illustration for a New Yorker short story recently that I looked her up. That's the first pic below. The cheesiness of it is just truly the greatest thing I've ever seen- it's like Klimt meets soft-porn. Wait. Nevermind.

Aubrey Longley-Cook

Hyper-achieving handy-crafter Aubrey Longley-Cook creates animations by stitching each frame. Pure insanity, but definitely entertaining.

 

And the back for good measure:

Alon Chou

More illustration, this time by Alon Chou. There's really only a couple of things on his site, but I love the expression and fantastic feeling of motion in this (click for big):

Kazuki Takamatsu

Kazuki Takamatsu is responsible for these bizarre conceptual works. They're done in gouache to mimic 3D renders. Of semi-hentai.

Il Lee

Classy ball-point pen drawings by Il Lee.

Sinix's Youtube Channel

Sinix is a concept artist previously employed by EA, FuZion and various other studios. Apart from being a very capable illustrator and a lovable character he has also provided free of charge this YouTube Channel. It has some awesome tutorials, giving a really clear insight into the way he creates vivacity in a painting. The portrait painting series is definitely worth a watch, and is filled with broadly useful information. Anyone who's tried to paint a lively and interesting skin-tone knows it's no easy task- in this series Sinix explains his own very effective method.

Thomas Woodruff

I'm fair crying with joy over these delightfuly freakish paintings by Thomas Woodruff. Click for big.

Shea Hembrey

Today I'm giving myself leave to feature Shea Hembrey's Incredible 1 Man Biennial. Hey, there's a few paintings in it, right?

Hembrey says he dreamed of running his own international biennial, but decided it was too much work to actually ask international artists. So he made the whole thing himself. He wrote the hilarious back-stories of 100 artists and then actually made an artwork for every single one, in a different style. Check the video for his talk at TED, I think it's totally charming and hilarious.

Khang Le

This blog has kind of a wave pattern, I think, 'cos my interest kind of oscillates between really technical illustration and pure ab-ex. I guess we've reached it again, the concept art day. Environment concept is usually one of my least-favourite things to browse. It has a tendency to be really samey- like a Legend of Zelda game there's always the lava-level. Khang Le takes the usual suspects- space cities, enchanted forests etc.- and somehow freshens them up. Kudos.

Alex Stodolnik

Some fun digital illustration by Alex Stodolnik (Red Bear Dead) on the worlds most creative, awesome and difficult to navigate portfolio website. Be not afraid, eventually you will find something. Maybe not what you were after, but something good anyway.

Allison Freeman

Awesome paintings of banal stuff by Allison Freeman. Ever wanted a life-size oil painting of a classifieds page? I know I have.

Pixelovely Figure Drawing Tool

Bit of a different feature today, this is a fantastic gadget for artists too lazy to head to the local figure drawing class. Eg. Me. You can set it to flash naked people at you in interesting poses for 30s-10m, or you can even take a 'class', where, like in real life, the time ramps up slowly from short to long poses.

Awesome thing. It's got some decent quality photos as well. This shouldn't be a substitute for drawing real people, but if you're a busy beaver who still wants to build skillz this can help a lot.

Drawing Tool, click here!

protip: F11 for fullscreen.

Dennis Hollingsworth

Dennis Hollingsworth's paintings are this wonderful combination of completely un-painterly techniques. I'm talking masking, ruled lines and weird sculptural little hedgehog balls. This is all added to a spot-on sense of composition and colour. Love it.

Cam Floyd

Proving that hipster illustration is still alive and kicking, here's Cam Floyd. Where are the triangles? Where are the deer?

Look, I actually really like these. I just wish I'd seen them about ten years ago when my enjoyment wouldn't have been slightly poisoned by habituation. Looking at stringy lines and Sesame Street colours now makes me feel like I've eaten just two or three too many donuts, but I'm going back for another one anyway, and damn the vomity night ahead.

Jonathan Zawada

These are some interesting works from Jonathan Zawada's painting show last year in Los Angeles. The landscapes " were derived from graph data (displayed as printed mirrors on accompanying plinths), modeled in 3D and then oil paintings created from those 3D renders." Well alright, you win a prize for complicated process! I think these actually stand up really well just as paintings, though. The colours are fabulous and remind me of old Asimov's magazine covers.

Ben Grasso

Ben Grasso paints buildings on the point of spontaneously disassembling. Or maybe they're assembling, is the glass half full?

Chen Haiyang

I visited White Rabbit Gallery and was really pleased to find this repository of great contemporary Chinese art in the wilds near Central Station. Some of my favourites in the current exhibition were Chen Haiyang's gorgeous paintings on wood. These are something like reverse wood-block prints, where the block itself is the artwork. It's hard to tell in the picture but all the highlights are actually chiseled out, as if the thing is about to be used to actually stamp a page in the traditional way.
This initial conception is belied by rich, impressionist sweeps of colour and intricate painted details. These made me very happy. If you live in Sydney, definitely take the time to check out White Rabbit in it's entirety, there was a lot there worth seeing.