Z is for Paul O Zelinsky

I found Paul Zelinsky recently and accidentally- my kids and I were checking books out of the library and grabbed a Rapunzel book off the shelf.   I'm not sure how we ended up with it- my kids are young (4 and nearly 2) so sometimes books are just grabbed off the shelf and I don't see where they came from and the child doesn't necessarily know why they grabbed it...

ANYWAY

So we read the book and I found that while the art had kind of a primitive feel to it (which is to say that it didn't feel like the artist had any academic training) I still enjoyed it- so I looked at the cover and found my artist for Z!  Now I've looked through more of his art in order to make this post- and have found that Zelinsky is very very good at stylizing- what initially looked a bit primitive- was intentionally done.  I like most of his older illustrations better than his newer ones- I'm not really a fan of a lot of the poorly done art that you will see in children's books these days- and much of his newer stuff seems to be within that style.

anyway- here are some of my favorites:

This first one has a few images from the Rapunzel book that we checked out:

the next two are from some of the other books he's illustrated

And with that I made it to the end of the A to Z challenge!!

~Alicia

Y is for Yarrow Cheney

Yarrow Cheney- another amazing illustrator- if you look at his Portfolio and his Blog you'll notice that he worked on Despicable Me- if you scroll past all of that you'll get to see some of his other work.  It is all pretty amazing and kinda whimsical (I know I use that word a lot but it tends to be pretty appropriate more often than not)

~Alicia

X is for Xia Gui

Xia Gui is an artist from the early 1200s according to Wikipedia he was a landscape painter of the Song Dynasty.  Now I chose him in part because I was having a hard time finding an 'X' and looked far and wide and decided to look at Asian painters.  The other part of the reason I chose him was that I really really like the way he used line and tone to create these beautiful paintings.  I want to do more research on this particular painter because I am very intrgued about what little I have read about him on Wiki (which is a nice reference but hardly an academic)

Anyway- here are the pieces I found:

~Alicia

W i for William Whitaker

Another portraitist- beautiful figures, beautiful paintings.  Once again another one of my art heroes that I hope to be like one day.

Head to his website to check out more of his amazing art: WilliamWhitaker.com

~Alicia

V is for Lois Van Baarle

This girl is absolutely amazing- I could write paragraphs talking about how wonderful her art is.  I'm not going to though- go check out her website: Loish.net to see more examples of her art.  As usual I'm just sharing a few that I really love below.

~Alicia

U is for Adriaen van Utrecht

This painter is rom the Flemish Baroque period and lived about 1599-1652.  He's one of those painters that doesn't get taught a lot (but to be honest- unless you are in a college level art history class no one talks about anyone beyond Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Michelangelo or Rapheal...) Adriaen painted incredibly detailed images in oil.  They are absolutely beautiful- I hope to be able to paint as well some day.

~Alicia

T is for Will Terry

I've been lucky to have Will Terry as a professor for the last few years and I've learned a lot from him.  He does primarily children's book illustrations- and has recently (over the last 2 years) has been branching into children's book apps for ipad.  He also teaches classes online- he is incredibly busy.  I love his painting style- it is so fun to look at.  The ones I'm sharing are a few that  I've seen him paint in person.  Or at the very least I've seen him working on them at various stages.

~Alicia

Hello!!

Ok- I need to catch up for this week; I will be doing that tomorrow- So 4 posts all at once. I just finished most of my finals today (YAY!!) my last one is due on this coming Monday.  SO I'll be able to start visiting other blogs and stuff- thank you to everyone that has continued to visit despite the fact that I haven't been visiting back! Right now I'm going to take the night off and relax before the final sprint to the finish.

Alicia

S if for Charles Santoso

 Charles Santoso is an illustrator I found recently.  I don't know a ton about him- but I love the way he draws.  His draphtsmanship is at a level that I hope to reach some day- I love the way he renders his imaginitive characters.

Check out his website:  http://www.charlessantoso.com/ for a whole bunch more of his awesome work; below are some of my favorites.

~Alicia

R is for Arthur Rackham

 Arthur Rackham is an older illustrator- his work was published from about 1900 to the 1920s- He illustrated Alice in Wonderland, Grimms fairy tales- and several other books.

He uses a combination of ink and watercolor and his work is beautiful.  I think my favorite thing about his work is the way he uses lines- absolutley amazing.

~Alicia

Q is for Qing Han

Qing Han is a freelance artist that I stumbled into about a year ago while doing some google search- I cannot remember what I was looking up; but I found Qing's tumbler page and book marked it because I loved the style so much.  I've since learned that this individual is actually an animator from looking through their DeviantArt page.  He has so many beautiful pieces on there- well worth checking out.

One of the things I love about his work is how rendered it is despite being very stylized.

Enough talking; here is the art:

And that is that- keep on looking at beautiful art!

~Alicia

P is for Petar Meseldzija

Another realistic fantasy painter! Petar Meseldzija is; as I've said often on this blog- amazing.  If you go through his work on his website you'll see he's been involved in a variety of projects- spot illustration for Diablo 3 (a game by Blizzard Entertainment) comic books, and also a lot of fine art pieces ranging from portraits to landscapes and anything you can think of in between.

All of it is incredible and just delightful to look at.  When it comes to people I'd like to paint like- he pretty much tops the list.  He uses color and value so effectively that the characters seem to come to live within his paintings.  I might be 'fan-girling' a bit here- but it's hard not to.

Here are some of his pieces that I love especially from his website:

I did some studies in my sketchbook but haven't done an inspired by sketch for him yet- I'll put that up if I am able to get to it later.

~Alicia

O if for Oliver Tszeng and Isaac Orloff

Both Isaac Orloff and Oliver Tszeng work in visual development- which is the field I ultimately want to end up in.  (which kinda lets me do anything from character design for movies or video games to illustrating books, though people with the skill set tend to work mostly in film)

One of my final pieces for one of my classes is a visual development piece- so it was nice to look up these artists and see how others do things.

No personal sketch tonight- I'm still fighting with my scanner.  *Hopefully* I'll be able to start posting my own stuff again tomorrow with the professional stuff.

Anyway- here is the art.  (not going to go into a lot of detail tonight- just a quick 'check it out')

Issac Orloff

He does character design as well- but what caught my eye the most was his building and room design.

Oliver Tszeng

 He has more on his blog- so go check it out.  I love the little graphics he has on there showing his process and reference.

Night!
~Alicia