Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Night, 1835, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
I just returned from a week long trip to the DC area to visit three of my favorite people in the world.
During this trip, I had the opportunity to spend a day at the National Gallery of Art, and see some paintings by my favorite painter, JMW Turner. I say with complete seriousness that it was a beautiful, transcendent, life-changing experience.
Illustration by Aadi Salman
Haven’t posted a feature about another artist in a while, so I went digging through my bookmarks and pulled out Aadi Salman. Who is awesome.
I first saw his work in the trade paperback of Silent Hill: Dying Inside. I was completely blown away by his dense, rich, fully painted pages- I have never seen comics approached that way before, nor since. The amount of attention he lavishes onto every panel clearly outshines what you can find in entire issues by other artists. (You can see examples of his work for Silent Hill: Dying Inside on his older site.)
His standalone illustrations are great as well (as you can see). His loose brush strokes are just so energetic and fun to explore, especially with the variety of brushes he employs. I’m also really drawn to his colors- often crazy and bright but they totally work. His color pallettes in Dying Inside were spot on, too- murky bluegreens with the main character standing out in a pop of redorange.
Ok, I’m definitely going to go drool over my copy now. You should go drool over his art at his site, or check out his blog.
Honestly? Not really the weirdest thing Ursula Vernon has painted.
There’s a lot of weird crap on the internet, I think we all know that. It’s rare that one ever actually gets any sort of explanation for any of it. However, I do know where this thing came from- it was actually created by one of my favorite artists: Ursula Vernon.
I first ran into her work on that old behemoth of art sites, DeviantART. More than anything else, I was just delighted at how silly it was. (Still is!) This woman comes up with some ridiculously goofy ideas, and her descriptions are often just as funny as her illustrations. It becomes evident right away that she’s an author as well as an artist- to date she’s created a children’s book (Nurk), a children’s graphic novel (Dragonbreath, sequel on the way), and a hell of an ongoing wombat-epic webcomic (Digger)- and even a straight-up 2 volume novel (Black Dogs).
On top of that, her artwork covers a lot of ground, a lot of media, and a lot of styles. She even does some Serious Art. She’s always experimenting, which is really inspiring. I can’t even begin to cover all the amazing stuff she’s done, so do yourself a favor and check out her art site, Red Wombat Studio.
I'm Liz Nugent, a 20 year old illustration major at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. Also, I'm a nerd. This blog will contain my sketches, works in progress and final pieces, as well as features on my favorite artists, my thoughts about arty and/or geeky things, and whatever else I want to write about.
