Website: Camilla d'Errico

Camilla d'Errico is a traditional painter who creates illustrative portraits with surreal elements, often integrating animals and flowers into her work. Her figures are doll-like and the integrated elements give her paintings a very organic feeling.

Website: Andy Kehoe

Andy Kehoe is a painter that I absolutely adore. His style is fresh and use of repetition and the decorative elements is masterful. He creates a world of anthropomorphic creatures and creatures that exist in a conscious realm with surrealist elements.

Website: See Throu

Aaron Sikstrom creates females in a surreal space through pencil and digital paintings. 

Website: Loomis Tutorials

A list of free indepth books from Andrew Loomis.  Useful information on general geometry, proportions, figure study, and perspective.  Very useful for general drawing and correcting drawing mistakes.

Website: Ana Bagayan

Ana creates paintings of doll-like girls, most commonly in portrait form.  She also create imagery with animals and Pop Surreal elements.

Website: Spoongraphics

This website has a useful article on how-to make different photo effects.  This could be useful for photographers or also for digital artists who depend on manipulating different effects.  It includes pinhole photos, cross processing, split toning, etc.  It lists about 15 different indepth tutorials. 

Website: Loish

Lois van Baarle is an artist that I've been watching for a long time.  She is a studying animator, but I've watched her long before she was into animation. Her color work is impressive and palettes are nothing short of amazing.  Well worth a look over for both artists who like digital and traditional works.  Her work is digital, but it has a traditional look with layered textures.

Website: Milk

Vector works are currently hot, and Milk doesn't disappoint as a vector artist. However, its the actual content and execution of the works that makes me fall in love with this artist.  All the surreal imagery and personal touches add a dramatic punch to the body of work.

Website: Patrick Fatica

Patrick's work may not be for all tastes, but it has a lovely, distinct flavor.  I find the figure work to be less polished on a technical level, but its this that gives the art part of its charm. The emotive quality of the work is where it really shines and this is what makes the work interesting.

Website: Paper Stock Images

Useful stock for digital arts.  The images are around 3000+ in wide, 72 DPI.  It would make a high quality print at about 8x10.  Eight different paper and cardboard images.

Website: Fawn Fruits

Daniel Hyun Lim is an artist who works primarily in colored pencils, acrylic, and pastels. The use of color and ornamental detailing and elements immediately caught my eye. Personally, my favorite images from Lim are in the Fawn Fruits section and the Gallery section where he uses color, form, heavy repetition and implied texture to create beautiful works.

Website: Audrey Kawasaki Interview

Full interview shown above.  Here is a snippet: These days, what is your process for creating a piece? Today, in preparation for a new project I’ll be working on, i bought large wood panels, about four foot. tall. It’s going to be a panel of four. One for each girl. Sisters. Life size. i’ve never worked this big on wood, so this should be fun. Anyways, it’s plywood, and the patterns and grains didn’t look very smooth and pretty when purchased, but i took them home, and cut the edges round, and sanded the surface down real hard with my electric circular sanding tool (which i love and adore) and VOILA!

So then, I need to plan what to draw. I draw directly on with pencil. I usually don’t do sketches or transfer an already drawn image and this is why the drawing process sometime takes the longest time (or at least it feels like it) and most of my energy. I do lots of rough drawing on there, lots of erasing, lots of sanding down to clear out the un-erasable pencil marks. Sometimes this takes all day or two or three. After the complete drawing, I seal the wood and pencil with acrylic gel medium. This makes the wood surface paintable. I then use oil paint. thin layers and washes at first. I like to leave the wood grains and patterns divisible and translucent, the concentration on her face and eyes, lips, expression, then embellish her with decorative patterns and colors. The piece is complete once I coat a couple layers of polyurethane, which is wood furniture gloss/sealer.

Website: Joshua Middleton

Joshua Middleton is an illustrator and sequential artist. I like the unique look that his figurework has. In comics, all the drawings have a tendency to have the same flavor and from a visual standpoint it's nice to see an artist like this.

Website: Moleskin

Moleskin brand sketchbooks have become incredibly popular in the last couple years. The materials for the sketchbooks are lovely and well-crafted. The smooth pages make for crisp, precise sketching and inkworks that can easily be converted for digital media via scanner/import. Sketchbook shown above is from the artist, Paul Torres.