Illustration

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Art Illustration

Mysterious Anthropomorphic Illustrations of Dogs, Foxes, and Deer by Jenna Barton

American designer and illustrator Jenna Barton combines watercolor and digital processing to create mysterious anthropomorphic scenes of dogs, foxes, deer, and other four-legged beings. These eerily rendered creatures often have blank glowing eyes which suggest the animal is possessed or hiding a deep inner world.

Barton is based in Utah, which translates into her work through broad sweeping pastures and farmland illuminated by twilight. These settings add to the heightened tension presented in the animals’ demeanor, while providing a fitting background for her editorial illustrations, album art, game artwork and custom tattoos. You can buy select prints through her online store, and view more of her animal-based illustrations on Instagram and Tumblr.

Illustration

Delicate Inked Lines Form Fluffy Black Cats in Illustrations by Kamwei Fong

Using only black ink, Malaysian illustrator Kamwei Fong has created a menagerie of playful black cats. Despite their contextual isolation and uniform style, each of Fong’s cats display unique personalities: some are fluffed and puffed into self-contained balls; others look with curiosity or wariness at fish that dangle or waves that crash from the animals’ own tails. The artist builds each feline form using innumerable short thin lines, varying the density of the marks to create volume as well as a palpable sense of furriness.

Fong has been working as an illustrator since 2010, under the moniker Bo & Friends, and in addition to his cat character, which he calls The Furry Thing, he dreams up similarly charming monkeys, goldfish, puppies, and other animals in his line-driven black ink drawings. Fong sells signed print editions of his animal illustrations in his Etsy shop, and also partners with Galerie Club Sensible in Paris. You can see more of his work on Instagram and Facebook.

Illustration

Clever Sketches by Christoph Niemann Turn Everyday Scenes into Humorous Moments

Illustrator Christoph Niemann (previously) plays with scale and context to create small scenes using ink and everyday materials. In his object-focused works, a few deft brushstrokes turn a pair of socks into the head and torso of a dinosaur, and a pressed paintbrush flares into a dancer’s swinging skirt. Other sketches are based on photographs, usually of the streets of New York City where the artist lives. For the past few years, he has shared these illustrations each Sunday via Instagram. Niemann also sells prints of his series of Sunday Sketches, along with original drawings, in his online store. He has also published a book, Sunday Sketching.

Intro sequence to “Abstract”. I drew this on the car window while driving with the film crew from the New Yorker offices to the Flatiron Building and then just hit “record”.

A post shared by Christoph Niemann (@abstractsunday) on Mar 2, 2017 at 6:29am PST

Art Illustration

Wondrously Detailed Paintings by Alice Lin Show the Complex Relationship Between Self and Surroundings

Illustrator Alice Lin uses watercolor and pigment on rice paper and silk to create intricately detailed worlds. Human and animal figures are enveloped in pastel-toned bursts of swirling flowers, mushrooms, oceans, and rock formations. Despite their storybook-like quality, many of Lin’s works are fairly large, with some spanning more than three feet wide.

In an interview with Wow x Wow, Lin describes the intention behind her work: “It’s about exploring the internal and external, about the relationships between the two; self and surroundings; human beings and the world… Our body is a container, connected to the outside world and our breath, blood, thoughts, feelings, emotions, dreams, etc. are the content; through this content we are able to experience life, and we are able to learn about art, the world or ourselves.”

The Beijing-based artist shares her work on Behance, and you can also follow her on Instagram.

Art Illustration

New Mesmerizing Oil and Graphite Portraits That Peer Into the Subject’s Inner Mind by Miles Johnston

London-based illustrator Miles Johnston (previously) produces graphite drawings and oil paintings that examine the inner thoughts of his female subjects. His piece Withdraw literally presents a woman’s face retracting into her own head, her wide-eyed stare sinking deep into her skull. Another, Dualism, shows a woman crouched on top of a chasm in the earth, a similar fault line continuing through her body.

Johnston will exhibit these works and more at an upcoming solo at Last Rites Gallery, a gallery known for showcasing surreal and macabre works in New York City. His show will run from March 31 to April 21, 2018. You can see more of his drawings, paintings, and prints on his Instagram.

Illustration

Vintage Postage Stamps Inspire Fanciful Storybook Scenes Painted by Illustrator Diana Sudyka

Chicago-based Illustrator Diana Sudyka uses vintage stamps from Europe as the starting point for fanciful paintings created using gouache, ink, and watercolor. These miniature engravings of portraits, architecture, and ships  become fully formed figures and landscapes that merge with trees and flowers and convene with animals. Many of the artist’s paintings include phrases of hand-painted text that add an additional narrative element to the works.

Sudyka tells Colossal that she begins each new piece by selecting a stamp, but without a specific idea of the painting that will emerge from it. “I let the stamp inform the subject matter and color palette. It’s a very intuitive process. The stamp is really just a stepping off point to get my imagination going.”

Working mainly as a children’s book illustrator, Sudyka creates her stamp paintings primarily as relaxing interludes between client projects. She explains to Colossal that her background is as a fine artist, specializing in intaglio printmaking, and her history with stamps goes back to her days as an undergraduate when she was inspired by collage artist Joseph Cornell, and picked up some vintage stamps at a coin collecting shop in her college town. Sudyka offers prints of many of her paintings on her website, and she also shares her work on Instagram.

Illustration

Stippled Black and White Illustrations of Star-Packed Galaxies by Petra Kostova

Copenhagen-based graphic designer and illustrator Petra Kostova of Pet & Dot creates dazzling galaxies composed of millions of stippled dots. To produce her concentrated star systems and cloudy nebulas she uses technical pens (either rOtring Rapidograph or Isograph) to draw on black and white paper. Due to the limitations of her color scheme, each work is completely formed through the intensity of her chosen dots—a meditative process which can often take her several weeks or months to complete.

Kostova also produces handmade prints created by a technique called Photogravure, which accurately reproduces her stippled detail. You can find these, and her original drawings, on her website and Instagram.