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Dilophosaurus- oil marker on canvas 2011

Ceratopsian- graphite 2009

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Cool Story Bro- mixed media on canvas 2011

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Girl 15- mixed media on canvas 2009

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Girl 23- mixed media on canvas 2010

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Luchador De la Fey- graphite and watercolor 2009

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Raptor Icon- graphite and watercolor 2012

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Aeneam Pugnam- mixed media on canvas panel 2012

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Skullio- spray paint on canvas 2010

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Edmontoswimmer- graphite 2009

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Xray – Mixed media triptych on canvas 2011

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Untitled Muse- graphite and watercolor 2008

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My name is Randy Bishop. I’m currently still in school studying illustration. I would REALLY like to work in the entertainment industry as a character designer for animated films. I would also really like creating book covers. That would be fantastic!

I usually start an illustration with a drawing which I scan in and then paint digitally. I’ve tried several different methods for creating art, but this is my favorite. I’m still in school, but I’m definitely on the lookout for ANY potential jobs or clients.

You can visit my blog at randybishopart.blogspot.com or email me at rdalebishop@gmail.com for any information.

Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy my stuff!

Vincent

TMNT

Pride and Prejudice

Norton and the Minotaur

Hellboy in Meso America

Happy Halloween!

Erasmus

Rainne the Dragon Slayer

Aurech’s Campfire

Zombie

My name is Sam Branton. I graduated from the Norwich School of Art in 2007 and have since been a working artist based in Oxford. I’m really interested in the relation between traditional drawing styles throughout art history and contemporary childish cartoons such as Ren and Stimpy and Anime. My work often combines these two leaving quite striking images. I think there’s a nice contrast between the sophisticated smartly attired figures standing proudly amongst these creatures which look sweet and innocent at first but on closer inspection can appear rather menacing and perverted.

Since leaving Art School I have been lucky enough to be included in some exciting shows, showing work in London, LA and Stockholm.

Here’s a collection of different pieces, I hope you enjoy them.

So, what would you little maniacs like to do first?

Of all the queens that ever ruled, I choose you.

I feel funky!

hubba-bubba

Blush

But I was born too late.

Three robbers in a cave

Some people call me friend

Childs play

Heroes in the seaweed

If you would like to see more check out my website.

You can also contact me at sam.branton@hotmail.com

Some people give me grief about destroying old books, so I think it is important to make clear that I love books, too!  Because of this, I only use books that are no longer appreciated  for their content, and I never carve rare or new books.  I’ve deliberately put down books (that would have made lovely carvings) if I think someone is likely to appreciate them intact.  My favorite subjects are reference books that are several editions out of date, rescued from garage sales, free giveaways, and second-hand shops.  Although most people aren’t interested in these old books for the information they contain, carving them gives them a second chance to be of value.  My weapons of choice are exacto knives, rotary cutters, tweezers, rulers, pliers, files, custom cut panes of glass, and lots of glue.

All About House Plants

All About House Plants (detail)

Butterfly Specimen Box

Butterfly Specimen Box (detail)

Practical Standard Dictionary

Practical Standard Dictionary (detail)

Topographical Book

Topographical Book (detail)

Topographical Book (detail)

Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary

Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary (detail)

For more examples of my work, head on over to Hokey Stokes! or check out works available for purchase at my Etsy store.  If you have a book that you might like re-purposed, please get in touch with me at hokeystokes@gmail.com and we can discuss custom projects.

I studied painting and creative writing in college and both areas have influenced the direction of my work. My studies in writing have made me become a storyteller with images where I illustrate narrative scenes from everyday life. As a painter, I liked using distinct brushstrokes and bold colors. With my collages, I try to recreate the look and feel of a painting through the manipulation of paper and magazine strips. The way I cut and layer paper often looks like the distinct brushstrokes I once used in painting.

Benjamin
This portrait gives you an idea of what my up-close portrait pieces look like – I’m more focused on the sitter and his emotions than I am with the environment around him.

Commuters
I moved a little more towards abstraction here – simplifying the figures while defining the environment. Typically I hone in on all the nitty gritty detail of a person’s face.

Sightseers
In this scene a woman is pointing to something we can’t see. It’s like we’re eavesdropping on a conversation where we don’t know the entire story or context.

Leisure Day
I think the back of a person can be just as interesting as the front. The way people sit and pose can often tell you a lot about what’s going on in a given moment.

Snorkeling
Water is a reoccurring element in my work. I’m amazed by how colorful water can be when light reflects on the surface a certain way.

Two’s a Crowd
I’m drawn to pairs and individuals. From time to time I create collages of larger groups of people, but I like the intimacy of images depicting couples or individuals lost in their own world.

Bar and Bakery
Usually there’s more emphasis on the figures I’m collaging rather than the environment around them. Here’s an example of when I was doing the opposite of that.

Afternoon Conversations
I’m often inspired by restaurants and cafes. I like the movement and colors found in these places. This is a theme that appears again and again in my  figurative work.

Bren
My collages capture moments in time – even if it’s just a distinct facial expression.

Dinner for Two
The interaction between this couple suggests a story. Viewers can relate this setting to their own lives or something they’ve seen before.

Contact Megan Coyle

I do commission work – see my website for more info.

Email: meg@mcoyle.com

My artwork is about people. I love the human form, whether it’s portraits or figures. I want to show the beauty of it, as well as convey certain messages. Until recently I’ve worked only with graphite and charcoal, but have recently switched to paints.

An illustration for a band out of Orange County, California.

I mainly work in watercolor. When people think of watercolor, they think of pretty flowers and peaceful landscapes. But watercolor’s clarity, transparency and ability to “bloom” or “bleed” make it a great choice for scientific effects also. When watercolor paint meets a wet surface, it forms gorgeous fractal patterns, like neurons or blood vessels. When I look at photos of cells under a microscope, I’m amazed by their resemblance to some of my paintings. I particularly love making pictures of cells in various stages of division, or mitosis – not only is it beautiful, but it’s really the foundation of life itself.

I’ve been selling my work though festivals and galleries in the DC area for eight years now.  I recently started selling online though Etsy.  My paintings are hanging in some very nice labs and university biology departments now, but if you want to buy some bacteria for the kitchen or bathroom, that makes me happy too.

1. Green Cell Telophase

2. Heart Attack 3

3. Bacteria 4

4. Under the Microscope 3

5. Blue-Green Cell Cycle 3

6. Cell Division Blue 1

7. Atrial Flutter

8. Blue Mitosis Anaphase

9. Cell Division 4

10. Cell Division 8

Contact Michele Banks

Website: Artologica at Etsy

I do commission work – I’m happy to do a custom heart rhythm from your ekg, or a particular virus.

Email:  miche@null.net

Cats vs. Dogs

These two pages were a short story collaboration I made with my friend and fellow cartoonist, Greg Fenton. He wrote and I illustrated, this was definitely some of the most fun I’ve had working on a comic.

Manhattan is Elsewhere

Some colored panels for a comic book I’m illustrating called Manhattan is Elsewhere. The author, Wendy Lehmann has been working on her story for at least five years, and is very devoted to her book. It involves romance, super heroes, time travel, history and New York, what more could a young reader want?

Wandering Mind

Just a small sample of a short comic I made for my portfolio. Its 4 parts long, Wandering Mind is the first part which involves a little boy with an overactive imagination.

Catman

Here are a couple of prints from a book in progress of mine. It’s a children’s book about a man who wakes up one morning and thinks he is a cat.

Contact Nethery Engblom

Write me! I’m always looking for new and exciting work.

Email: NetheryE@gmail.com

Website: NetheryE.com

Things people don’t know about me:
. I was busted for climbing the Lincoln Memorial
. ID magazine named my studio one of ‘The 40 Most Amazing Design Offices’ in the world
. I’ve written stand-up material for Jay Leno, Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers
. I have one of the most extensive private collections of Heywood-Wakefield Mid-Century Modern furniture from the 40′s and 50′s
. I bake some pretty incredible double-fudge chocolate chip cookies

Scene from ‘The Donut Chef’ (2009, Random House and Golden Books)
Book reviewers always point out that my work has both a retro and contemporary feel. If I can have a lot of stuff going on in a scene, it keeps the book fresh the next time a kid (or parent) reads it.

The Transcontinental Welt (character study)
Most of my picture books begin with me envisioning a certain character, which I render, and then see if I can build a story around it. I’ll bet that for every book I always have published, I write an additional 15 to 20 stories that I abandon for one reason or another.

Midnight Prom (Rejected cover idea for ‘The New Yorker’)
This is how I work when I submit a cover idea to the magazine. I try and give the magazine a solid idea of where I intend to go with color, composition and concept, but I may deviate from the sketch when going to final.

Read (poster designed to encourage reading by kids)
It’s really a very simple image. I’ve always enjoyed drawing dinosaurs and the Empire State Building, so combining the two seemed to make perfect sense.

Reflection (The New Yorker – November 17, 2008)
My best-known cover for the magazine. The reflection in the water symbolizes the bars of slavery, leading up to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and finally culminating with the ubiquitous ‘O’ of the Obama presidential campaign. Prints of this cover continue to sell incredibly well – and two years after Obama’s victory. I rarely do a hyper-realistic image like this, but when I need to do so to make a certain idea work, I won’t hesitate to alter my style.

We Planted A Tree by Diane Muldrow (2010, Random House and Golden Books)
My picture books are noted for their endpapers, and while I typically create them using a geometric repeat design of some sort, for this book I thought it would be best to take a more abstract and colorful view of what appear to be candy-like lollipop trees.

Releasing The Vapor – 2008
This was actually a piece I did for BLAB (Fantagraphics), and while I like the image, I wound up doing something else for the anthology. I didn’t sketch anything here first, just started playing with the shapes that I saw in my head — and then laid them all down in the scene. I create all my work in Photoshop 3.0 using a mouse (I’ve never even tried a Wacom), and the older I get, the more I seem to be using dramatic lighting to really set a mood.

The Ships Arrive (scene from ‘The Red Lemon’, 2006 – Random House and Golden Books)
I probably have more fun when I get to use impossible angles, exaggerated lines and abstracted forms in a scene like this. If I can make all the elements sort of “lock” together visually like a jigsaw puzzle, it forces the reader’s eye to always scan for new little graphic surprises.

Escape From The Museum (‘Look! A Book!’ 2011, Little Brown)
This is a scene from a very, very elaborate book of mine that comes out next Fall. You can’t see it here, but there are all sorts of weird die-cuts on each page that reveal hidden surprises. When I work on a picture book, I also go to that little “inner child” in my head and try to create imagery that I would have found mesmerizing as a little boy growing up in Southern California in the 1960s.

FEZ (Poster Design – 2009)
I have always been inspired by european poster art of the Mid-20th Century, and this image proves it. It’s one of the “faux-poster” images I create for non-existent products, just images I do for myself. I’ve been trying this year to create unique posters like this, and my fans just love purchasing them — because they’re honest and unique.

Deep Dish Pizza (personal piece, 2010)
I really like clean, graphic design, so when I need to make a simple statement or allusion to a metaphor, I try to keep things uncluttered. Here a simmering red body accentuates the slice of pizza, a restrained glow of lighting and shadows creating a stark aura.

And Sap For Our Syrup (scene from We Planted A Tree by Diane Muldrow – 2010 by Random House and Golden Books)
Composition is very important to me, and I always try to bring heightened visual drama into each book spread. The village buildings in background are god examples of the decorative elements that I incorporate into my scenes.

The Line Snakes (scene from ‘The Donut Chef’ – 2010 by Random House /
Golden Books)
I always try to mix up my characters graphically — some fat, some skinny, some short, some tall — because I think it makes things more interesting for kids. I also thing there’s no reason why characters can’t be black and white and red and green and blue.

Petzoopolis (poster that accompanies ‘Pets Go Pop’ – 2009, Little Brown)
I love graphic simplicity, but sometimes I need to get chaotic – like in this zoo poster. While this image appears small, the actual poster measures 4 feet by 2 feet, so I had plenty of real estate to work with — and all sorts of goofy things hide among the animals and kids.

Interlocking Robots (BLAB, Fantagraphics 2009)
I love creating very meticulous, geometric images and have always been inspired by negative spaces. By using positive and negative space, this robotic optical illusion came to be.

99 Cats (poster, 2010)
I love cats, so will jump at any chance to draw 99 of them (I also did a version of 99 dogs) The posters are available to buy.

Contact Bob Staake

My website is BobStaake.com.

People can see videos of how I work by going here.

My Facebook page.

Below are some examples of my work (you can see more on my website and buy prints and originals in my online shop).

I’ve done rock posters for my friends’ bands.

As well as for more established names.

I also do book covers. Here’s one I did for Penguin that will be out in a few months.

And another I did for Harper Collins (UK) — a funny book by my friend Linda Robertson.

I’ve had my work featured on the cover of Communication Arts.

I’ve designed tickets and posters for Burning Man.

I also do so-called “fine art”. Here’s an original that is for sale in my shop!