Artist Series - Day 5: Colin Stimpson

Ok, maybe someone not ALL of you will know already :)

I love Colin's stuff.  I discovered him in my 2nd year of art school, and I'm a huge fan of his work, both the Disney vis-dev stuff and his children's books.

http://www.colinstimpson.com/

Artist Series - Day 4: John Bauer

John Bauer is one of my favorite illustrators from the "Golden Era" of 20th century illustration.  He's probably best known for trolls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bauer_(illustrator)

I love the old-school pen and watercolour look.  It was basically all I tried to do for my first couple of years in art school, when, of course, my draftsmanship was nowhere near good enough to pull it off.  I actually wouldn't mind revisiting the style, either traditionally, or using photoshop.

Artist Series - Day 3: Brian Froud

Ok, I almost feel weird posting Brian Froud's artwork - basically every single artist friend I have will already know who he is, so I don't know how much I really need to share this...

On the other hand, he is one of my earliest influences.  Most people know he worked on a book called "Faeries", but many of you may not know that there was a cartoon based on that book.  In 1981, when I was five, I saw that cartoon at my grandparents' house, and it had a profound impact on me.  In 1982, I saw "The Dark Crystal", and between the two events, you can trace a lot of my love of fae, both the cute and the dark, squishy evil ones.

Obviously, Froud has a website:  http://www.worldoffroud.com/

You can find the old Faeries cartoon on youtube:  Faeries (Brian Froud animated special) Part one of three


Even though it's pretty much redundant, some of Froud's work that I love:

Finally, I am happy to say that I will be attending Illustration Master Class this summer, and Brian is going to be one of the instructors.  You have NO IDEA how psyched I am.

Artist Series - Day 2: Hasui Kawase

Ok, day two!  I'm going with someone dead this time...I'm still working through how I want to organize these posts (if at all), and I'm not sure if I'm going to focus on current working artists or just those that I love and use for inspiration.

Kawase definitely falls into my "inspiration" category.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasui_Kawase

I found Kawase while searching for reference for a vis-dev project I'm working on with some friends, where we re-interpret the Japanese fairy tale "The Snow Maiden", or "Yuki Onna".  He is currently probably my favorite artist that I am looking at.

His use of colour, shape and size relationships is, IMHO, amazing.

I could spend days taking these images apart to see what he did, and the choices he made.  I hope you look into his work and are equally enthralled.

New Year, Starting my artists posts.

Two weeks ago, I mentioned I was thinking of starting an "artist a day" series.  I'm starting.  It may move to tumblr or a specialized blog, but for now, I'm still on vacation and using a computer that was new before most of my friends finished high school, so we're keeping it simple.

Eric Velhagen:
http://ericvelhagen.carbonmade.com/

I met Eric at IlluxCon two years ago, and to this day, I have had few crits, if any, that I gained as much from as talking to him for 20 minutes. 

Please, do yourself a favor and check out his entire site.  If you ever get a chance to speak with him in person, do so, show him your work, and I think you'll come away wiser...actually, you'll probably come away realizing you were always wiser, which is the true mark of a great teacher.

Wakfu extension.

Ok, I admit it, I haven't been pushing myself as much as I should on my plate extensions...so this one I actually added elements instead of just finishing out existing objects.

Selfie

Self portrait, about 45 minutes.