Peter de Séve, a terrific illustrator, New Yorker cover artist and character designer for animated feature films, who I wrote about back in 2006, has a new children’s book (Hooray!), a new blog (double Hooray!) and is the subject of a new monograph (triple Hooray!).

The children’s book is The Duchess of Whimsey, written by his wife, Randall de Séve, the blog is called A Sketchy Past, the Art of Peter de Séve, and the monograph is titled the same, A Sketchy Past, the Art of Peter de Séve (look for the link to download a beautiful PDF preview of the book under the images in the right hand column; Amazon link here).

More Hoorays: there is an audio interview with De Séve on Sidebar (look for “Click Here” link at bottom of post), a video interview (conducted by Bobby Chiu) on Imaginism Studios; and word has it that there is a tutorial DVD in the works at Massive Black (no direct info yet).

There is also a nice selection of original art for sale on the Arludik Gallery. The site is unfortunately in frames so I can give you a direct link. Click on his image at top left an follow through the work, drawings first, then color works.

De Séve has a sharp, lively style, springy with confident draftsmanship and sparkling with whimsey. He wields it with aplomb across the range of his endeavors. He deftly captures light, movement, expression and energy in his pen and watercolor pieces, and somehow makes it look easy. His solid background in traditional drawing technique serves him well in his imaginative expressions of wild characters and delightfully loopy animals.

The new book, which I haven’t had the chance to pick up yet, has over 200 pages of full color art, and promises to be a first class treat.

Hooray!

I came across illustrator and animation concept artist Nate Wragg from his participation in the Terrible Yellow Eyes project, and was delighted with his work.

Wragg is a member of Pixar Studios, and worked on the cartoon Pursuit. He also was an illustrator for the children’s book Too Many Cooks (Ratatouille), as well as being the author/illustrator of several other books, which you can find listed and linked on the right column of his blog.

The blog has posts about his illustrations, commissioned art and work in progress. He also has prints and art for sale on his own site and on Gallery Nucleus.

Wragg works, at least in some pieces, in acrylic, gouache and paper collage. His wonderfully snappy, angular style shows the pedigree of his work in animation; as does his knack for creating lively, offbeat characters. There is an interview on the Character Design blog.

Wragg also uses a controlled palette to great advantage, with many pieces that are are almost monochromatic or duotone, in which a few carefully chosen color passages make the entire image pop.

California artist Bill Perkins helped co-found the Plein-air Artists of California in 1983, and has been a member of the Plein-air Painters of America since 1985.

Perkins is a recognized teacher. He has taught at the Art Center College of Design and Associates in Art and is currently an instructor at Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art.

I wrote about Perkins in 2007, when I emphasized his career as a concept artist and art director for companies like Walt Disney Feature Animation, Warner Brothers, Dreamworks, ILM, and 9th Ray Studios.

Perkins has a production design studio called High Street Studio. Unfortunately, there is not a site devoted to his plein-air painting. His Bill Perkins Studio site hasn’t been updated since June of 2008. There is an article about both aspects of his career on Articles & Texticles.

Perkins will be giving a one and two day “Plein Air Painting Workshop with Models” in the Pasadena area on September 19th & 20th, 2009.

According to Thomas Brillante, who is apparently helping to co-ordinate the event, “This workshop covers plein air techniques with focusing on changing light and capturing light. There will be lots of demos through out the day and personal instruction.”

The workshop will be limited to about 12-14 artists a day. Contact information is on the flyer posted here.

When I first wrote about Matt Gaser back in 2007, I remember being impressed, but when I recently revisited his site I was knocked out.

Gaser is a concept artist and art director for the film industry, though his previous work includes art for gaming companies. He has worked for companies like Electronic Arts and Sega Studios, and is now with Lucasfilm Animation.

His credits include projects like Demonstone: Forgotten Realms, Eragon, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and a new project called Blue Mars.

Since my previous article, Gaser has completely redone and expanded his web site, and has been maintaining a blog.

Gaser works digitally, painting his images in Photoshop, but the term I keep wanting to apply to his approach is “painterly”; though not in the sense of working in a manner that emulates traditional brush strokes, (as is possible in digital painting); Gaser paints in a way that is fundamentally digital, with strokes of color (often translucent) that are quite unlike traditional brushstrokes in many ways. I use the word “painterly” in the sense that the strokes of color are visible components of the painting. They impart texture and surface variation that contribute to the character of the image in a way analogous to paint strokes on canvas.

Gaser’s loose, but highly accurate application of color, and his wonderfully developed sense of color and value relationships, give his concept paintings, which are basically meant as a guide for filmmakers and game designers in composing the final animated images, a degree of visual interest that makes them stand on their own.

He has a nice balance of quickly noted passages, often in the form of atmospheric backgrounds, with just the right touches of detail, harder edges and sharp contrasts. It gives his images a feeling of dimensionality and compositional strength that I find particularly appealing.

In addition to selections of professional work, his is new web site includes sections of personal work, plein air painting, sketches, doodles and sculpture. Be sure to note that most of the galleries have multiple pages, accessed by numbered links at bottom right.

The Projects section promises that work from his most recent projects, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Blue Mars will be added soon. I’m looking forward to that, but in the meantime, you can find some work from the Blue Mars project (image above, middle) on his blog.

Also on the blog, you will find mention of another recent project, an as yet unpublished book called In the Between, illustrated by Gaser and written by his mother, Sandy Gaser.

Concept artist and illustrator Winona Nelson attended the Conceptart.org Atelier, and currently works for Planet Moon Studios.

She previously worked for Flagship Studios in Hellgate London and has done work for Wizards of the Coast, Platinum Studios and others.

In addition to her concept art, character and object design and illustration, Nelson also does some comics work.

Her web site has example from various categories, but particularly of interest is the “Fine Art” section which includes some very nice figure drawings, cast drawings and portraits, including the self-portrait above, lower left.

Nelson also maintains a blog on which she posts sketches, finished paintings and works in progress; and discusses her ongoing and upcoming projects.

[Via Marc Taro Holmes (see my post on Marc Taro Holmes)]

I first wrote about conceptual illustrator James Clyne back in 2005, and then again in 2006 when he formed a collaborative studio with concept designer Feng Zhu as Gamma Ray Studios, which is no longer in operation.

Since then, Clyne has extended his resume and added to his online project gallery with concept art for feature films like The Poseidon Adventure, X-Men 3: The Last Stand, Star Trek (image above, top, with detail, middle) and an underrated and undercirculated science fiction film called The Fountain (above, bottom).

Clyne’s atmospheric, detailed and and imaginative concept images start with traditional media, markers and pens, rendered on vellum, and then move into digital applications like Photoshop for final renderings as digital paintings.

There are 5 instructional DVD’s on the Gnomon Workshop in which Clyne details his techniques. As I also mentioned in a previous post, Clyne was an instructor for the Gnomon Workshop: Live! 2008 event. I think he is scheduled to be part of this year’s Gnomon Workshop Live!: 2009 event, which takes place in Hollywood on June 27 and 28, 2009, but I haven’t been able to confirm that yet.

The io9 site has recently featured some additional galleries of Clyne’s work, with his designs for Star Trek, and several more general articles, including a collection of his Sweeping Vistas .

I came across the work of Mark Taro Holmes when I was struck by these two watercolor sketches on the Urban Sketchers blog. They were from his participation in the recent Sketchcrawl in San Francisco (see my posts on a previous Sketchcrawl, and here).

I then looked him up and found his sketch blog, SKETCHtaro, which has a wonderful array of his sketches, largely in watercolor or pen and ink, of both landscapes and figures.

His figure drawings have an engaging looseness, within the framework of accomplished draftsmanship. He has an unusual approach, sometimes drawing the figure in line, but multi-colored watercolor line, applied in brushstrokes that vary in weight and translucency as well as color .

His black ink drawings are frequently concerned with shadow and the play of light across architectural details.

Holmes is professionally a gaming concept artist and art director. According to his short bio on ConceptArt.org, he is currently the Studio Art Director at Ensemble Studios, and and has worked on gaming titles like Neverwinter Nights and The Lord of the Rings Online. MobyGames lists some of his other credits here. [Correction: Holmes has moved on from Ensemble and is now doing concept art for the film industry. See this post's comments.]

Mark Covell is a concept artist, storyboard artist and character designer as well as an illustrator. His illustration clients include Playboy Magazine, Universal Studios, Mercer mayer, Harper Festival, Simon and Schuster, and Lillyfield Press.

His web site has sections devoted to illustration and storyboards as well as concept art, characters and environments. Covell has done concept design for companies like Vivendi Universal Games and Genuine Games.

Covell’s style ranges from softly atmospheric, to sharply rendered to whimsically sketchy. There is also a section of nicely direct life studies on the site.

Covell’s professional work can be seen in the upcoming Volume 16 of the Spectrum collection of contemporary fantastic art. You can see some of his work at the Copro Nason Gallery (via Artnet).

Covell also maintains a blog in which he posts about his work in progress (which includes his recently born son).

In what is probably a nod to their dominant demographic, Smashing Apps, a blog/webzine devoted to online resources for designers and web developers, named the article collecting these Photoshop tutorials “17 Mind-Blowing Digital Painting Tutorials Of Beautiful Girls“.

That being said, it’s still a collection of useful Photoshop digital painting techniques of potential interest to many concept artists, illustrators and comics artists, with a variety of styles and approaches, from anime and traditional comics to more realistic and fully rendered images.

Most are brief, but they cover various stages of sketching and rendering, discuss brushes, layer compositing, brush modes and other aspects of digital rendering.

(Image above, left to right:
David Munoz Velazquez, John Kearney, Melanie Delon (see my post about Melanie Delon)
Jim Zubkavich, Marta Dahlig, Shilin Huang
Artgerm, Artgerm, Yu Cheng Hong)

Chris J. Anderson is a concept artist and illustrator working in both the film and video game industries.

He was working with NCsoft, but beyond that I have no information as neither his web site or his blog have any biographical or client history information. (There a link on the web site for a future client list, but it’s not active yet.)

His site is divided between environments, which is evidently his area of specialty, and props & vehicles, characters, illustrations and other sketches and studies.

There is also no information about process; though it looks to me like much of it is digital painting, with perhaps some watercolor or gouache pieces and traditional drawing materials in the sketches.

[Via io9]