The essence of drawing is the line exploring space.
- Andy Goldsworthy
Anything can be any color at any time depending on what color everything else is at the time.
- Keith Crown
 

 

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Ming Fan

Posted by Charley Parker at 8:06 am

Ming Fan (fanming)
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.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Torstein Nordstrand

Posted by Charley Parker at 9:39 am

Torstein Nordstrand
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.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Ed Binkley (update)

Posted by Charley Parker at 9:50 am

Ed Binkley
It’s been a while since I checked in on fantasy and concept artist Ed Binkley, so I thought I’d pull back the deep forest undergrowth and see what’s happening under the leaves.

The good news is that Binkley has posted additional images to his blog and his Holy-Men and Monsters gallery.

Binkley’s wonderfully textural evocations of fantasy subjects may carry echoes of Golden Age illustrators like Arthur Rackham and Victorian faerie artists like Richard Dadd and John Anster Fitzgerald, and perhaps a touch of contemporaries like Jean-Baptiste Monge, but Binkley is, if you’ll excuse the expression, in his own world.

I consistently admire his ability to balance intricate detail with atmospheric open passages, as well as his striking use of value and texture contrasts to lead the eye and suggest layers of depth.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Victor Nizovtsev

Posted by Charley Parker at 8:55 am

Victor Nizovtsev
Victor Nizovtsev was born in Russia and studied at the Ilia Repin Collge for Art in Chisinau, Moldavia and the Vera Muhina University for Industrial Arts in St. Petersburg. He now lives in the U.S. in Maryland.

His paintings have some of the narrative character of Golden Age children’s book illustration, and draw on influences from Art Nouveau, Symbolist and other 19th century painters (in particular John Singer Sargent’s Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose), but have a contemporary feel.

His subjects include repeated dream-like themes of mermaids, floating lanterns, colorful jesters, playing card kings and queens, storybook villages and playful children. These are arranged in seemingly narrative compositions and portrayed in vibrant color with wonderful elements of texture, at times reminiscent of Gustav Klimt’s decorative textural areas.

I haven’t been able to find a dedicated site or blog for Nizovtsev, but his work is represented by at least two galleries, and there are several mentions of his work on other blogs and art sites.

The McBride Gallery in Anapolis, MD, seems to be his primary gallery, offering both originals and giclee prints, and including some bio information on their site. There are several pages of images (though some links are broken).

His work is reproduced larger elsewhere, however, such at Tutt’ Art and Inspirations. I’ve listed what other sources I could find below.

[Suggestion courtesy of Tim Poorman]

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

David Wyatt (update)

Posted by Charley Parker at 11:02 am

David Wyatt
David Wyatt is a UK based illustrator working primarily in the fantasy genre for children’s books.

Since I wrote about him in 2009, Wyatt has a new website and a new blog, along with, of course, lots of delightful new material online.

In many of his feature illustrations, done in watercolor, Wyatt has a richly detailed style, but manages to maintain a loose sketch-like quality that I find particularly appealing. He also nicely controls his colors, wonderfully capturing the feeling of moss lined glens and ancient stones.

He also has a texturally detailed pen and ink style, that appears to draw influence from pen and ink greats like Franklin Booth and Joseph Clement Coll (with perhaps a bit of Berni Wrightson, who drew from the same well). Wyatt also has a spare, direct chiaroscuro ink style that nicely suits interior book pages, and a pencil style that ranges from intricate to more direct.

His website has gallery sections for book covers, picture books, pen and ink and pencil. On his blog you will find additional art, works in progress, and articles on other topics of interest. In addition he maintains a gallery on deviantART, and an Etsy shop where you can find prints, cards and original artwork.

Wyatt is also the author/artist of the online graphic story SunSound (above, third from bottom).

For more, see my previous post on David Wyatt.

Posted in: Sc-fi and Fantasy   |   1 Comment »

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Sam Burley

Posted by Charley Parker at 1:48 pm

Sam Burley
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.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney at NHIA

Posted by Charley Parker at 8:41 am

Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney at NHIA
Long time readers of Lines and Colors will know that James Gurney is one of my favorite contemporary illustrators, as well as being a superb landscape painter and the author of several books on art technique.

Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney is an exhibition that opens today at the New Hampshire Institute of Art and features work from his iconic series of beautiful adventure picture books.

In them, Gurney brings a sensibility of 19th century Gilded Age painting to the contemporary fascination with dinosaurs, and the results are quite wonderful.

Two of the titles from the series have recently been reissued in deluxe editions: Dinotopia: The World Beneath 20th Anniversary Edition and Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time 20th Anniversary Edition.

Though I haven’t seen this particular exhibition, I had the pleasure of seeing a similar exhibition in Delaware in 2010.

Even if you haven’t a taste for the subject, or for fantastical art in general, Gurney is first and foremost a terrific painter, and seeing his work in person is a treat.

Though the Institute unfortunately hasn’t posted a gallery of work from the show on their site, you can see more of Gurney’s work from Dinotopia on the official Dinotopia website, as well as Gurney’s website and his always fascinating blog, Gurney Journey.

As part of the Institute’s Distinguished American Artists Discussing Art series, Gurney will be delivering a lecture tonight, February 20, 2013 at 7:00 pm titled Worldbuilding: How to Developa Fantasy Universe. Tickets are $20 and available online.

The opening for the exhibition is at 5:00 pm tonight. The opening and the exhibit are free to the public.

Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney will be on view at the NHIA until March 13, 2013.

Monday, February 4, 2013

New improved blog list (well, updated anyway)

Posted by Charley Parker at 4:40 pm

From the Lines and Colors blogroll: John Macdonald Aiken, Ivan Generalic, Duane Keiser, Hans Versfelt , William J Aylward, Bob Eggleton, Kazu Kibuishi, Jacob Stålhamma, Elanor Kish, Mark Hess
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.

 
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