Stapleton Kearns is a landscape painter based in New England.

When I first encountered his work some years ago (it can take me a while to get to these posts, folks), I felt it had a nice feeling of being influenced by early 20th century American landscape painters like John Fabian Carlson and, to a lesser extent, Emile Gruppe — painters who, while not American Impressionists, carried forward their bright colors and immediate brushwork, along with a solid underpinning of realist tradition in draftsmanship and composition.

It was later, on reading his blog, that I found Kearns mention his admiration for another artist with whom I was only passingly familiar, Aldro Hibbard. In the process it led me to a better appreciation of Hibbard’s work (likely the subject of a future post — here is a search for Aldro Hibbard on Kearns’ blog).

Kearns studied in the studios of R.H. Ives Gammell, a painter who championed the traditions of academic and classical realism in the face of the wave of modernism that acted to suppress them in the early to mid 20th century. Gammell was himself a student of the great American painter Edmund Tarbell.

In addition to his own blog, Kearns contributes to the group blog, The Boston School of Painting, devoted to artists in that lineage.

Though certainly worth checking out, Kearns’ own website is unfortunately not the showcase for his work that it might be; the portfolio is somewhat awkwardly arranged and the images are frustratingly small (there are some larger ones on the Ella Walton Richardson Fine Art gallery site).

It’s unfortunate, in that Kearn’s paintings, in those few examples I’ve seen in higher resolution, have a wonderful surface quality, as well as details of color variation and paint handling that would make larger images rewarding.

Even in the smaller images, however, you can see his strong sense of composition, economy of notation, harmonious application of color and dedication to capturing the light of his scene on location.

Though his website feels like it hasn’t received much attention for a while, Kearns’ blog is another story, and has evidently received much of his attention over several years. It is nothing short of a treasure trove.

Not only can you find some of his work reproduced larger (by searching for the label “my paintings“), you will also find a wealth of other topics accessible by the labels toward the bottom of the right hand column for topics like “art technique”, “art history”, “color”, “painting outside” and many others; as well as by simply looking back through his posts.

Kearns, both as a teacher of workshops and classes and through the blog, is handing down much of what he has learned from the lineage of his training, his interest in art history and his own experience as a painter. There is even a feature called “Ask Stape” (which is essentially an email contact), in which he writes or appends posts in response to reader questions.

The combination of personal experience, articles on artists from history and musings on aspects of art and painting like color, composition, materials and other topics puts me in mind of James Gurney’s remarkable blog, Gurney Journey (which I have written about previously).

Here, for example, is a terrific Kearns post in which he talks about dealing with summer greens and “smuggling red”.

When looking through the blog I find myself constantly making bookmarks and going off on searches related to topics or artist names he brings, up, some familiar, some new and some, like Hibbard, marginally familiar but to which I have not paid enough attention.

The latest of these has given me renewed awareness and enthusiastic appreciation of the work of Edward Seago, a brilliant English painter who will undoubtedly be the subject of a post in the near future (here is a search for Edward Seago on Kearn’s blog).

I find it particularly rewarding to use the blog’s search feature (upper left), searching, for example, for terms like “color palette“.

There is such a backlog of fascinating information on Kearns’ blog (not to mention strong opinions and amusing snarkiness from “Stape”, as he is called) that I’ll do something rarely called for in a post about an individual artist, and issue my Time Sink Warning. Enjoy.

View of the Hague from the Delft Canal by Cornelis Springer, and study for the same.

In the Rijksmuseum; original pages here and here.

In many ways, I like the wonderfully painterly study more than the finished painting, though both are beautiful.

Anna and Elena Balbusso are illustrators based in Milan, Italy.

They are twins and create their work as a team. There is a page on their website devoted to their working process.

Both studied at the Academy of Fine Arts “Brera” of Milan, and the University of Milan. Their work has appeared in numerous publications in Italy, France, the UK, Korea and the U.S. They have received recognition from the Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts, American Illustration Applied Arts, Print, and other publications and artists organizations.

The portfolios on their website are organized by “Graphic Style”, “Painterly Style” and “Children’s Books”. Within each category you will find both a variety of approaches and repeated stylistic elements.

Their work shows a firm grounding in the traditions of European art history as well as a sharply modern design sensibility, and the two are skillfully blended into a visually captivating whole.

I particularly admire their use of contrastingly muted and vibrantly rich colors, and the wonderful textural quality of their “painterly” style, as well as the strong design evident in all of their compositions.

You can find additional galleries of their illustrations on Shannon Associates, the iSpot, Behance and on Tor.com, which is where I found their work by way of Irene Gallo.

Their illustration accompanies the new story Men Who Wish to Drown by Elizabeth Fama on the Tor website.

There is also a selection of their illustrations for The Handmaid’s Tale on The Guardian.

You can find additional resources on their links page.

California Spring by Albert Bierstadt.

On Google Art Project, click image for zoom controls.

Original is in de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Björn Hurri is a concept artist working in the gaming industry, He has worked for companies like NCsoft, Catalyst Game Labs and SEGA and is currently the Lead Artist for Opus Artz, a production design agency based in London.

When I wrote about his work back in 2008, I highlighted his fun and, at the time, lightly sketched illustrations for steam punk versions of characters from Star Wars.

Since then, Hurri has expanded the project into a longer series of more finished illustrations (image above, top), with more elaborate interpretations of the characters.

His other work for gaming projects ranges from historical through science fiction subjects, and frequently displays Hurri’s skill at conveying texture and atmosphere.

I particularly enjoy his playful take on John Bauer’s wonderful big-nosed trolls (above, bottom).

Though his website is currently unavailable, you can find a portfolio of his work, along with some relevant information about the artist, on CGHub.

Hurri is also a contributor to the Gorilla Artfare group blog.

Still Life with a Pewter Flagon and Two Ming Bowls, Jan Jansz Treck.

Faded, but still beautiful.

The bowls are an odd color because the artist used a type of smalt (cobalt glass) blue that was not lightfast.

In the National Gallery, London. Use fullscreen and zoom icons to right of the image.

Vincent Rhafael Aseo is an illustrator and designer based in Makati, Phillippines.

After graduating from the Asia Pacific College school of Multimedia Arts, he worked with companies like BoNa Coffee Company, Sujivana, Onyx Web Wizards, Bohemian Trading Co and Freespeech Publications, and is currently taking on freelance assignments.

Aseo works in vector illustration, creating pieces that are alternately simple and complex, colorful and almost monochromatic.

He often incorporates design elements into his illustrations, with both natural and abstract forms providing both background and foreground additions, but always with a strong primary focus and skillful path for the eye.

He uses adjoining areas of subtle gradation within his vector shapes to both suggest form and give a crisp graphic feeling to his portraits and other faces.

In addition to his website, Aseo has a blog and several other web presentations of his work. I’ve listed several below, but you will find additional pages linked from his site.

Though figure drawing classes and open studio sessions are frequently available at art schools and artist organizations in larger metropolitan areas (see my post on the Directory of Figure Drawing Sessions), it’s not always easy or convenient to find a class nearby.

In 2007 I wrote an article about online or on disc substitutes for figure drawing sessions, Poser, Pose Maniacs and Virtual Pose.

I recently appended the article to bring it up to date, and added reference to the Figure & Gesture Drawing Tool, a website that provides figure drawing reference in the way of timed photographs.

In many of the figure drawing classes and sessions I’ve attended over the years, it’s common practice to start with shorter poses (sometimes called “croquis”, from a French word meaning “sketch”), from which gestural drawings are made, capturing the movement and gesture of the pose rather than detail. From there, classes usually move to longer poses, of different lengths for different intentions in the degree of finish the artists are trying to achieve.

In an attempt to simulate this, the Figure & Gesture Drawing Tool allows you to choose a pose interval, from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. after which the page automatically replaces the photo with another pose. You can also advance or step back manually, or use a pause button to choose your own timing. You can also choose clothed or nude models, male or female, or a mix.

There is also a choice for a “class”, that starts with shorter poses, moves to longer ones and includes breaks.

Though some of the poses are a little oddball (having been supplemented lately with turn of the century cheesecake postcards), and the photos aren’t as consistent or high quality as a dedicated commercial product like Virtual Pose might provide, some of them are quite good, and Figure & Gesture Drawing Tool is free, supported by donations to help defray the cost of bandwidth.

There is also a secondary feature, an Animal Drawing Training Tool.

Figure & Gesture Drawing Tool is provided and maintained by Kim of Piexlovely, a web design firm in Portland, Oregon.

[Addendum: I've learned of another online artist's pose resource — The Croquis Cafe, which serves up weekly videos of pose sessions consisting of one, two and five minute poses. You can also view the archives of previous sessions. The Croquis Cafe is provided by On Air Video, a video production company that features a line of arts and crafts instructional videos.]