Tomasz Maronski is a Polish fantasy artist who started in traditional media, primarily oil, but after 10 years decided to move to digital painting.
Working primarily in Corel Photo-paint, Maronski creates richly textured fantasy landscapes, lush with fantastical forms that seem to take inspiration partly from biological sources and partly from Surrealist masters of textural suggestion like Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy.
Maronski often works with a restricted palette, casting the majority of the composition in a small color range, accented with sharply contrasting hues from the other side of the color wheel.
He also likes to play with light and shadow, often with dramatic shafts and beams of light giving his subjects a theatrical focus.
It seems Maronski no longer has a dedicated website, instead relying on galleries on sites like CG Society and deviantART as a substitute.
I can’t find an actual bio or working credits; so I’m unsure of the range of his clients or work, though he apparently had illustrated a number of book covers.
His work is featured in Masters of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art: A Collection of the Most Inspiring Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Gaming Illustrators in the World by Karen Haber.
Beautiful, very imaginative stuff. This is the kind of work that lures me out of my bias in favor of traditional media, gets me wondering what “paint programs” might be like.
The main thing you would need to try is a pressure sensitive tablet. The low-end Wacom Bamboo Connect comes with a copy of AutoDesk Sketchbook Express and lists for $80. Many artists, myself included, work in both traditional and digital media and consider digital simply another medium with its own characteristics.