Allo, my name is Michal Karmazon, and I'm a painter and draftsman living in California. I drew a lot when I was a kid, but then stopped and tried my hand at thousands of creative endeavors, to finally end up back where I started in 2009. Now it has become my life's mission.

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.

Hello!  My name is Michele Banks and I’m a painter living and working in Washington, DC.  You might say I took the scenic route to becoming a professional artist.  I studied political science and Russian and worked in London and Moscow as a business consultant.  When my husband was offered a job in Bermuda, I went along but was unable to work, so I had a baby and started painting.  Both have turned out very well!

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

Hi there! My name is Nethery Engblom and I am a cartoonist/children’s book illustrator. I have been drawing since I could hold a crayon, and making comics since I was in middle school. I grew up in both Texas and Alabama, and since 2005 I have been living in NYC. Thanks to my amazing parents and some hefty student loans from Sallie Mae, I graduated from SVA with my BFA in Cartooning. I am very inspired by my previous teachers David Sandlin, Peter McCarty and David Mazzucchelli. They helped me find my voice; discover my love for children’s books, and my passion for printmaking. As of right now, I am a freelance artist usually working on comic books for children or young adults, and on my free time I work on a picture book I am both writing and illustrating. My goal in life is to have my work published and spark some imagination and happiness into the lives of kids of every age. Check out some of my work below and let me know what you think!

Things people know about me:
. I'm the author and/or illustrator of over 50 books for kids
. I do work for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New York Times, MAD, TIME, MTV/Nickelodeon, Little Golden Books, Random House, Cartoon Network and Hallmark Cards
. I rarely pencil out an illustration before going straight to the final, color artwork
. I've designed, written and co-directed numerous episodes of Ren + Stimpy, Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack
. I still create all my work using Photoshop 3.0

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.

I'm an artist and illustrator. Here are some of the things that inspire me and make me happy:
• watching kids interact with my art
• hearing people laugh when they look at my art
• breaking all the rules of typography
• using my favorite colors in my work, every day
• breaking things down into big, simple shapes and patterns
• seeing people I don't know who have my art tattooed on their bodies
• cashing checks from happy clients and customers

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.

Hi there Neatoramanauts!

We are id-iom, a South London gonzo design duo who are more than willing to take a punt at pretty much any design challenge! Determined never again to suffer under the yoke of an oppressive employer, this is our ongoing tale of two brothers who are going to take the world by storm or die trying! Hugo and the artist formerly known as Sholto, are both noisy and enthusiastic with a flair for creativity. Hugo's hands and feet however are proportionately too big for his body whilst Sholto's head is shaped like a peanut.

After finishing our respective universities and languishing in a number of dead end jobs it was decided it was time for something a bit different. Known for our mischievous take on pop culture, music & politics, our canvases and graffiti have adorned walls and sidewalks throughout London and Europe.

Never ones to follow trends, we try to work outside the conventional art world, engaging with real world issues in a provocative way. Our idiosyncratic approach is infused with rebellious edge and street-smart attitude - or at least we hope it is!

In order to introduce cognitive dissonance in non-believers all our designs have been carefully chosen and arranged to please believers and make them feel harmonious and confident whilst causing non-believers to become disorientated and mentally challenged. You have been warned.

Cheers
Sholto & Hugo
id-iom


Artist: id-iom
Title: Let it Ride
Media: Acrylic paint & paint pen
Size: 1m x 1m canvas set into table
The ‘Let It Ride’ table was perhaps one of my favourite commissions. It is named after an 80′s comedy featuring Richard Dreyfuss ( it only gets a 6.3 on IMDB but is well worth a watch!) Here is a link to our blog post about this piece that explains how it came into being.

My name is Teale Hatheway and I am a mixed-media painter living in and working about Los Angeles. My work is a study of community and history within Los Angeles, based on the concept of shared recognitions of monumental architecture, and combines distinct materials, from gold leaf to coarse, raw linen, glossy acrylic paint to matte, black ink. I assemble the parts of my paintings with the mind of an engineer, in very specific ways with very specific materials in a very specific order, but because I am painting, I have the pleasure of encouraging chance and creative impulse to hold sway and humanize the works. The result of these contrasts is sophisticated, earthy, tactile and bold. I am unapologetically Angeleno and a champion of beauty.

Victory – The Historic Bridges Over The Los Angeles
Ink, acrylic, gold leaf, copper leaf, chalk and grommets on canvas drop cloth. 9’x12’. 2010.

Victory – The Historic Bridges Over The Los Angeles is a cartographic representation of the Los Angeles River through Downtown looking North, including Griffith and Elysian Parks as well as the Silverlake Reservoir, with stylized elements of each historic bridge traversing the terrain. As an amalgamation of components of this remarkable collection of bridges, there is a puzzle-like quality to Victory, a non-literal landscape or an abstracted panoramic map of the Los Angeles basin, providing hints of locations, but leaving the answers un-spoken.
At twelve feet tall, this painting has presence. My attraction to searching for existing buildings or my own location on old, panoramic maps shifted during the process of working on Victory. Instead of leaning over a book and tracing a path with my finger, twelve feet of painting leans over me, enveloping me, and declaring my presence in every inch of the composition. Likewise, it is fascinating to watch people identify with particular parts of the work, thereby understanding a location within a larger map of related monuments, which are (from North to South):

Hello! I'm an illustrator from Jersey (the small Jersey between France and England), currently living in England. I've been a freelance illustrator for 7 years, working on children's books, advertising campaigns and editorial commissions.

Daughter of an artist mother and a musical mathematician father, I came into the world with a nice balance of perspective and a tendency to refuse any one particular creative outlet. I grew up in New England and am currently living in Tokyo, where I earn a living working with 0-5 year olds while making art and music on the side. An active artist since the age of two or so, some of my earliest paintings include a psychedelic hillside spotted with black sheep (age 4), and a horse trying to eat grass as he gets sucked up into the stars (age 7).

I’ve been doing printmaking for about ten years, mostly woodcut and linocut with some silkscreen and lithography in between. I am largely self-taught, with a few courses in printmaking and animation completed at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. I also create comics and embroidered drawings. My work has been described as narrative, and I like to explore topics of connectedness, instability and personal landscapes, always with a sense of humor. I love to work with high contrast, black and white, and flat imagery. My inspirations are very internal: dreams, visions and stream-of-consciousness doodles. I also have a bit of an obsession with kitchenware.



1. Kitchen Spread (green). This silkscreen print is from a series of textile-inspired pattern prints, in which I explore slicing up images and putting them on repeat. Bon appetit!

Hi my name is Byung and I am silkscreen artist from Los Angeles, California. I come from a background in architecture. It only took me 5 years of school and 4 years working in the field to realize that my real passion lies in art. I see my background in architecture as an essential part of my art. I do not believe that I would have created my current style if I never did architecture. Also my approach to almost systematically changing elements from one print to the other is probably due to my architectural background. Even my preferred medium of choice is influenced by architecture. I sketch my designs on paper first but finalize the color and designs in an architectural drafting program.

I love using the eye as my main motif in my work. It is easily recognized and unmistakable. It can be shown in a simple form but still have such a strong impact.

I have not named most of my prints. I see them more as a continued development and experimentation using the same theme. The prints are assigned a number to represent the order in which they have created.

I'm an illustrator from that there UK, and specialise for the most part in drawing cityscapes and buildings, and the more complicated they are the better.

I've worked on everything from wallpapers for the big dudes like HP to flyers for local arts collectives, and loved working on all of them. There's a few things in the pipeline at the moment but I'm always on the lookout for new and exciting projects.

I use both digital and analogue methods, so some are drawn with pen and ink (and yes, I do get through several pens on the big cityscapes - there's a certain amount of satisfaction in 'finishing a pen') and some I draw straight onto the computer, and some are a mixture of both.

I grew up in East Los Angeles, where schools lacked proper funding. To get me to read my photocopied primers, my father (an artist himself), drew pictures in the handouts. His attempts missed the mark, and I became more fascinated with the drawings than learning to read. I began honing my craft, making drawings on the inside of my father’s books (much to his chagrin…). Rather than scribble on books, these days my work is done on paper and illustration board. I work mainly in gouache and sometimes watercolor. My art is a throwback to my youth, fairytales tinged with a bit of the odd and mysterious. Someone once wrote that my work has a “timeless feel with a dark and whimsical edge”. I like that.

I currently live with my wife and daughter in beautiful Lexington, Kentucky. Other than illustration I like to spend my time running. I have a running stroller that my daughter loves. We get to spend time together as well as getting a bit of exercise, and you can’t beat that. I am hoping to eventually break into the young adult and children’s book illustrating. (Note to publishers and agents: …I’m available.) I hope people can relate to my work and enjoy it as much as I enjoy creating my art. Feel free to drop me a line and say hi.



1. Trip to the Moon (working title) – Gouache on board
This is a panel from a children’s book I am currently working on. My plans are to self publish, sell them through my shop and use as a portfolio piece to send to publishing houses.

My name is Lee Gainer and I am a visual artist in the metro DC area (USA).  My work uses found and created imagery to visually analyze social rules, hidden messages, the psychology behind these ideas and beliefs, and how they alter our behavior.  I am interested in exploring how the possible hidden messages in modern media (commercials, advertising, the web, billboards, etc.) can manipulate us in how we define things, such as what beauty should look like or what success should be.  There are certain unwritten rules that many of us know and live by and I am curious as how they came to be.

For instance, many in the US know of the two month salary rule for buying diamond engagement rings.  It turns out that this was a marketing scheme created by DeBeers in the early 20th century.  They began with one month's salary and then later upped it to two.  Today, the two month's rule has become a romantic tradition in America.  A tradition where a man's love for his future spouse is judged by the size of a shiny rock or rather, what is the bling factor.  I created a print series and a book, both called Two Months' Salary, that shows groups of engagement rings based on the average salaries of several occupations.  I expected to see a difference in the rings according to their price tag but many of them look very similar.  The 2 sets (husband and wife) of 20 prints are 10" x 8".  The book is available through my website.

My name is Dustin Timbrook and I'm an artist working in Huntsville, Alabama. I have a studio in a big, century-old factory space called Lowe Mill that has been converted into work space for dozens of local artists. Last year I quit my day job as a high school art teacher to move into my studio space and make a living off of art alone. It hasn't been easy, but I'm doing alright and I'm doing what I love for a living, so I have no complaints.

I've been drawing, painting, sculpting, and making music and videos since I was a tiny kid. I studied painting at the University of Montevallo, mostly working in oil. Lately though I have been hooked on painting with watercolors, and my work has become very vibrant and lighthearted. I usually work in a stream-of-consciousness manner, making things up and adding to an artwork as I go along - like incredibly detailed doodling. The little vignettes that I paint usually start with a human or animal figure and I build from there. I decide what characters, objects, and environments to add as the scene develops. Leaving the end result of a piece a mystery keeps the painting process fresh and exciting for me. Plus, it results in my paintings being absurd and comical, which is my favorite kind of work to create. I have a website to display, write about, and sell my work.

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So hello, I'm Josh, and I'm a photographer living in Seattle.  I take pictures of the city and of industrial places around the Pacific Northwest, but you wouldn't necessarily know that from looking at my work.  I seek out rusty, weathered surfaces and crop out the surroundings, mostly, so though there may be a small identifying detail that gives a sense of size or place, for the most part the images just become pure abstractions of color and form.

And that's what I like about them - they're pretty and gritty and fun to look at.  It doesn't need to go any deeper in meaning than that (unless you want it to, of course - be my guest!).  I want people just to enjoy them because they're neat looking! Plus I think it's cool that they kind of look like paintings, and I love printing them out on huge stretched canvases to emphasize that effect. I'm ridiculously new at this, and 2010 marks the first year that I've decided to make my work public.  Even though I grew up in a household with a photography professor and an art historian/art journalist for parents, I was always dissuaded from pursuing any sort of career in the art world (strange, right?), so I sort of kept my light under the proverbial bushel until recently.  And how do my parents feel about my work now that I'm in my 40's, you may ask? I'm happy to say they've come around and they're extremely supportive. Hooray!



clearing - I love the little patch of blue just aching to open up amid all the rust and become open sky.