Andrew Bosley is a concept artist and illustrator currently working with Red Storm Entertainment in North Carolina.

I first encountered Bosley back in 2007, when he had just graduated from the Illustration program at San Jose state University, and was kind enough to write and share with us a blog he had posted called A Little Bit of J.C. Leyendecker Greatness (my post here) in which he had scanned and posted 30 some Leyendecker covers and made them available to illustration lovers everywhere.

At the time, Bosley was just beginning to post his own work, but not much was available. Since then, I’m happy to say, Bosley has not only continued his blog, but has put up a website with a portfolio of his work, which is just a delight.

A mixture of professional and personal projects, the portfolio showcases Bosley’s stylistic range, from rendered cartoony illustration to retro fantasy to straight ahead concept characters and environments. All of them, though, demonstrate a comfortable and unforced approach to composition, color and execution.

His cover illustration for the new novel by Mike Resnick, The Doctor and the Dinosaur, (above, second from bottom) makes me want to pick up the story just to see if it carries the same paleo-steampunk feeling as the cover.

In addition to his site and blog, there is a portfolio of Bosley’s work on Concept Art World.

There is also an interesting additional feature on Bosley’s website — The Brainstormer. This is a codified version of a tried and true creativity jumpstarting process usually practiced by desperate artists and writers in the dead of night with scribbled lists of words on scraps of paper.

Bosley, with help from John Mitchell, created a wheel based version done in Flash for the website, in which three lists of words can be randomly or systematically aligned against one another, forming three word juxtapositions to spark creative imagery.

Better yet, there is now a Brainstormer iPhone/iPad app (above, bottom), created with the help of Joel Davis (article here) that takes the concept to another level, and offers additional add-on wheels of subjects specifically for characters, world building and imaginary animals.

Ming Fan (or “fanming” as he is sometimes credited) is a Chinese concept artist and illustrator based in Shanghai.

He specializes in environments — fantastical imaginary landscapes and cityscapes. He renders them in lavish detail, often creating compositions in which there is a primary focal point along with two or more secondary areas of interest that, if isolated, would make interesting compositions within themselves.

He never loses the coherent overall focus, however, and accentuates the powerful sense of scale in his images with a command of both linear and atmospheric perspective, as well as a knack for creating multiple planes of content at various distances from the observer.

His own website/blog is in Chinese, and unfortunately plays music and ads at you when you enter, so it’s easier to view his work in his CGHub gallery.

Once you click through a thumbnail to a bigger image, click again for the larger image in a pop-up. Once in the enlargement, you can click through other images with side arrows.

It’s good that he has provided larger images, as much of the delight in his work is in the imaginative details, texture, and the feeling of sweeping scale that he brings to his subjects.

Rather than show a greater number of example images above, I’ve chosen four and included a detail crop from each.

Torstein Nordstrand is an illustrator and concept artist based in the Bergen area of Norway.

His clients include St Martin’s Press, Random House, Wizards of the Coast, Upper Deck, White Wolf Publishing, Cappelen Forlag and Gyldendal Norsk Forlag.

There are portfolios of his work on his own website, the Shannon Associates site and on CGHub.

When viewing the images on either of the latter two, be sure to click on the intermediate size images to view the larger versions, as much of the appeal of his use of texture and scale are much better appreciated in large images.

Nordstrand’s primary subjects range through fantasy, horror and science fiction themes, often with different treatments within the genres.

He has a particular fascination with the visual effects of intense light sources scattered by atmosphere, flaring and dissolving at the edges, often framing his subjects in dramatic semi-vignette.

Nordstrand also makes interesting use of patterns in the sprays of light that sometimes surround his figures, as well as nicely suggested patterns on cloth and other materials.

Nordstrand works primarily digitally, painting in applications like Photoshop and Painter, as well as some ZBrush and 3ds max modeling.

Mike Bear is a concept artist, illustrator and comics artist. His clients include Rockstar Games, Hasbro, Devil’s Due Publishing, Royal Elastics, Lolapps, Inc., Popcap, and EA.

Bear’s sketchblog includes some examples of his professional work but more often works in progress, personal flights of fancy, sketches, life drawings, and other graphic meanderings — a visual grab bag that includes lots of fun stuff.

Bear also has another blog, Techno Vikings, devoted to a personal project, and contributes to the group blogs, Pop Sketch and The Plein Air Cheaters. In addition, he has a gallery on deviantART.

[Via Neatorama]

Per Haagensen is a Norwegian concept artist and illustrator based in Oslo.

He appears to work primarily digitally in Photoshop. Other than that, I know little. His own website is not yet launched, and there isn’t much background information on the site of his artists’ rep, Shannon Associates or on his CG SOciety portfolio.

There are, however, a good number of images that display his forceful, representationally detailed style, in which lighting, color and mood are accompanied by a subtle range of textures.

When looking through his portfolio on the Shannon Associates site, be aware that you can click on the large image at right for an even larger image in a pop-up.

I particularly enjoyed his modernized take on Raphael’s School of Athens (image above, bottom).

Sam Burley is an illustrator who was formerly an matte painter; beyond that, his website offers little information.

His work shows his matt painting history, with beautifully realized landscapes and environments, but he also populates them with dynamic and wonderfully rendered creatures.

Fortunately, Burley provides good size images on his site, as his work shows to best advantage when you can appreciate his application of texture and the sweeping scale of many of his compositions.

He uses a controlled limited palette within each composition, using color contrasts for drama as well as compositional movement.

You can also find a gallery of his work on deviantART and another on Tor.com, which is where I encountered his work.

If you dig back a bit through his blog, you will find works in progress and posts about his working process.

Jake Parker (no relation to your correspondent) is an illustrator, comics artist and visual development artist based in Utah.

His visual development credits include work on Rio, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Horton Hears a Who and Titan A.E.

He is familiar to many as the author and artist of the Missile Mouse all ages comics. He work has also been featured in collections like Flight Comics and Nuthin’ But Mech.

Parker has a nicely adaptive range of style approaches — simple when appropriate, more rendered when needed —s that suit his various projects well. On his website you can find a portfolio of his work in character design, comics, children’s picture books and visual development.

His blog includes informal sketches, preliminary versions and works in progress as well as finished pieces not in the portfolio. You can also find additional images and original art in his Store.

In the left hand column of this blog, about halfway down, under the long lists of categories and the longer list of archives, is a list of links under the heading “Relevant Blogs”.

This has long been ignored, both unduly so by myself, and perhaps rightly so by those who have clicked on many of the links only to find they were out of date, broken or otherwise less than useful.

In response to a little recent pestering by a couple of readers (to whom my thanks go out for bringing it up into my field of attention), I squeezed out some time over the past few weeks to weed out the dead links, blogs that have not been updated for a year or more and less interesting destinations that were left over from years ago when the pickings were slimmer.

I’ve also included a number of fresh new destinations, to which I will continue to add.

The list is divided into generalized categories of blogs (which I may also eventually refine a bit) that hopefully make it a little easier to browse.

It may not look like much — it’s just a list of links — but as I’ve tried to demonstrate with a few examples above, there are treasures to be found.

Images above, from the blog list categories:

“Art, Painting & Sketch”: John Macdonald Aiken from Underpaintings and Ivan Generalic from Art Inconnu

“Painting a Day”: Duane Keiser

“Other Painting Blogs”: Hans Versfelt

“Illustration”: William J Aylward from 100 Years of Illustration and Design

“Sci-Fi & Fantasy”: Bob Eggleton

“Comics & Cartoons”: Kazu Kibuishi

“Animation & Concept”: Jacob Stålhammar from Animation Blog and Peggy Chung from Concept Art World

“Paleo & Scientific”: Elanor Kish from Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs

“Tools & Techniques”: Mark Hess from The Tools Artists Use

Considering that many of these blogs are in themselves both extensive resources and jumping off points for even more great sources of art, I’ll issue my Major Timesink Warning should you choose to jump down any or all of these rabbit holes.

Enjoy.