Dark Horse Comics is publishing this webcomic adaptation of the H.G. Wells’ novel (not the recent movie), by Ian Edginton and an artist who goes by the name of D’Israeli. The art (particuarly the color) is wonderful. Dark horse publishes a new page on Fridays.

Edginton and D’Isreali also created Kingdom of the Wicked and Scarlet Traces, which is sort of a follow-up to War of the Worlds. Both of which are published in hardback editions by Dark Horse. Ths company wisely provides an 8-page online preview of each book. Click on the cover image of the books for the preview. Check out this page and this page (a double page spread) from Scarlet Traces.

Dylan Cole has done matte paintings for The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Lord of the Rings - Return of the King, Riddick, Daredevil and others. He is also a conceptual artist. He does some traditional painting but works mostly digitally. The “Matte Painting” section of his galleries contains some of his professional work (arranged by project), but the stuff I found most appealing was in the “Sketches” section.

The galleries, thankfully, have an intelligent click-through navigation that makes them easy to browse.

Steven Wiltshire was diagnosed as autistic at age 3, and at age 8 started to display an unusual talent for drawing. At 13 he was featured on a BBC program about autistic savants. In the years since then his work has been displayed in galleries and reproduced in several best-selling collections.

The galleries here consist mainly of architectural and landscape drawings. Images are a bit small but large enough to get a feeling for the work.

Part of the WellStyled.com web design workshop, the functionality of this color scheme generator is primarily aimed at web designers, but this is fascinating and fun for anyone who likes to immerse themselves in color and color relationships.

Click on the color wheel to choose a hue, choose a scheme (Contrast, Triad, Tetrad, etc) below that, and then click on the small rectangles in the color spaces to bring up a value/saturation picker. There are some other variations at the bottom of the main panel.

Any time you arrive at a scheme you like, click on “URL of this scheme” to bookmark the settings. There is even a dropdown menu for previewing how your scheme would look to people with varying types of colorblindness. For more info and instructions, see the Help page.

Comics artist Adam Hughes is justly noted for his ability to draw beautiful women, among other things. He has an ability to draw strong women characters with real faces, avoiding many of the common cliches of comic art portrayals of women. The galleries here consist largely of his cover art for Wonder Woman, Tomb Raider and Cat Woman. They are beautifully done and the gallery images often include the black and white ink drawings next to the finished color cover.

Don’t miss the “Sketches” section, tucked away behind the “Info” Link.

Tim Warnock does matte painting and concept art for movies and games. His gallery includes samples of both. Warnock has set aside his traditional materials and now works digitally.

Attention art materials snobs and wooden pencil purists: if you like pencil drawing but you’ve never tried drawing with drafting pencil (commonly called a leadholder), you’re missing out.

Not to be confused with a “mechanical pencil”, which dispenses a thin lead (.03 - .07mm) that doesn’t vary or require sharpening, a leadholder provides a beautiful, good sized (2mm) cylinder of graphite that can be pointed, chiseled, sanded or sharpened into any type of point you like. It’s like having a wooden pencil that shaves itself. They are a joy to draw with and are often favored by illustrators and comic book artists.

The site provides an introduction and history for leadholders and associated items like leadpointers (used, as you might expect, for sharpening), as well as a gallery of images for collectors and the curious.

The site no longer has links to purchase leadholders, but you can get them from any art supply store that carries drafting supplies. Look for a leadpointer to go along and pick out a box of 2mm leads in your favorite degree of hardness.

Arthur Mount is a California illustrator who does crisp, elegant vector illustrations for a variety of clients, editorial and commercial. He has an eye for pulling the the important essentials out of a face or landscape. Unlike a lot of minimalist illustrators, he manages to leave enough elements of shadows, texture and suggestions of modeling to provide real visual interest without sacrificing simplicity.

The site is nicely done in Flash, except that you have to know to click on the tiny link for “Illustration” on the left to get to the heart of the site: the galleries. Once that menu opens, choose from “People, Places or Things” to finally access the gallery interface.

Paintings and painted sketches of landscapes and cities in a beautiful, loose, painterly style. Browse through the Gallery but don’t miss some of the work tucked away on the home page and News page. My favorites are the gouache and watercolor sketches in the Maine and More Europe sections.

Tiemens also happens to be a front-rank concept artist, and was a concept design supervisor on the last two Star Wars films, among others. The Gallery includes a selection of his concept art.

He has also included some tools and techniques info on the FAQs page.

Mike Wieringo is a comic book artist most familiar for his work on Tellos and his well received run on Fantastic Four. His drawings have an easy confidence and playfullness of line that make them particularly appealing as pencil drawings. The site gallery has lots of his pencils, unfortunately reproduced kind of small. Fortunately, Mike has started a blog in which he often posts his drawings nice and big.