The illus­tra­tion and paint­ings of Sarah Williamson are sim­ply won­der­ful, uti­liz­ing a few dif­fer­ent tech­niques to bring forth her visual lan­guage. There is a major empha­sis on the free­dom of media (as she paints with wet-on-wet) and a love the fig­ure and land­scape. Inspired by what’s around her, the Brook­lynite writes: I used to work, ...

I first saw the work of Lisette Berndt, aka Thoka Maer, through her Tum­blr, It’s No Big­gie. I think I’ve men­tioned how much I love ani­mated GIFs, and was espe­cially delighted to see the ele­ment of the hand in Lisette’s ani­ma­tions. It’s No Big­gie, she writes, is a “satir­i­cal com­ment about our daily life obsta­cles ...

Laura Gee intro­duced her­self to me, and upon vis­it­ing her web­site I found an illus­tra­tor who not only illus­trates, but cre­ates instal­la­tions and curates as well. Laura’s own work uti­lizes sim­ple, bold images and sup­port­ing text that’s often short and sweet. I espe­cially liked this one: Paper is also some­thing that Laura explores in the three-dimensional sense, ...

Print­maker and illus­tra­tor, I first saw the work of Cor­nelia O’Donovan on one of my favorite Tum­blrs, F Yeah Women Artists. Her draw­ing style is loose but together as she focuses much of her prints on nat­ural life, ref­er­ences to his­tor­i­cal dress, and pat­tern. What’s inter­est­ing to me is the jux­ta­po­si­tion of ele­ments in her ...

New work by the Bel­gium artist/illustrator, Brecht Van­den­broucke, below. I am con­tin­u­ally amused by Brecht’s illus­tra­tions. They are truth­ful and weird with a nice sense of irony to them. His char­ac­ter­i­za­tion is inher­ently funny with all-too-flexible limbs and dis­pro­por­tional bodies. Also, the lush, full color and full bleed illus­tra­tions are lush and extremely sat­is­fy­ing to view. ...

Last week, I vis­ited the lovely stu­dio (and home) of illus­tra­tor Yelena Bryk­senkova. Yelena’s illus­tra­tions have gained trac­tion since she has grad­u­ated from MICA, and she’s quickly becom­ing known for her ele­gant draw­ings of women and images adorned with pat­terns ref­er­enc­ing East­ern Euro­pean folk art. Images via Yelena’s web­site. Image via Yelena’s blog. Yelena uses a ...

I keep a pretty poor excuse for a sketch­book — it is a dis­jointed com­bi­na­tion of notes, bad thumb­nail sketches and assorted loose papers. That’s why, when I look at Craig Bowers’s sketch­book, I can’t help but feel pangs of jealousy: There is an amount of beauty and restraint to these pages that I love. ...

I really love they way Javier Oli­vares uses con­trast in his work. Every time I’ve tried to use black in such a ubiq­ui­tous man­ner, it has ended badly. Here, Javier uses it as an oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate inter­est­ing shapes and a cohe­sion to his illustrations. All images via his blog. ...

I saw Vio­let Lopiz via Mallory’s Pin­ter­est last week and went crazy for her work. I love the glaz­ing effect that Vio­let has achieved with the cover of Les Poing Sur Les Iles and sub­se­quent illus­tra­tions. It feels like we’re look­ing at sheets of velum-not a book cover– with the rich­ness and soft­ness of the ...

Perus­ing the MICA Art Mar­ket yes­ter­day (which I would whole­heart­edly rec­om­mend if you are in the area. I’m actu­ally sell­ing at it!), I came across this face, drawn by Paige Vick­ers: A big haunt­ing, yes, but very intrigu­ing. I went to her blog (which is reg­u­larly updated!) and found her illus­tra­tion, book arts, and hand ...