Lesley Smitheringale Fine Art

Dan May is an artist living in Atlanta, Ga. He spends his days (and nights) painting dreamlike environments that transcend space and time. These delightful yet haunting images are often based in personal observations of both human’s and nature’s relationships with each other, blended with a healthy dose of whimsy, fantasy and cautious relevance…

I had trouble selecting examples and they are all beautiful but I forced myself to pick a few.

A selection of thumbnails of Dan’s work

When Fear Gave Way to Frolic

Autumn’s Fall

l to r: Gust and Toast

Delicate Nature

Beauty and Buggane

Dan May’s Website

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Kate is a Graduate from the University of the Arts in the UK with 1st class honours in BA Illustration. Her work is

Creative, quirky and with a passion for doodling I am enthusiastic and dedicated to every piece of work I undertake

My favourite pieces from Kate’s folio are her “Little Birds”

Nelly uses berry juice as blusher

Kate’s website

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This is another fantastic post from the site COLOURLovers, posted by evad

See full post here

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More changes and improvements and I think that one more session on this drawing tomorrow and it will be finished for my client.

Day 3 - two sessions

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There is a beautiful ethnic, folklore and fairytale quality about this illustrator’s work and his illustrations are totally devine.

Finnish born, now London based artist, Klaus Haapaniemi became interested in illustration after seeing some well-designed Russian animations on TV when he was only eight years old. After graduating from Lahti Design Institute, Klaus lived in Italy where he worked as a key print designer for Diesel and Diesel Stylelab. Klaus’s long list of commercial clients include print collections for Clements Ribeiro, Cacharel, Marimekko and Levis, plus store identity for Selfridges, an ever expanding range of his own published books plus ceramics and wall tapestry collections.

“Kauris”

“Oravat”

“Castle Wall” Mural

“Hauki”

“Taika Cup Blue”

Klaus’s website is under construction but you can see more of this work at Big Active

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After looking at the portrait for a long time, I realised there were quite a few areas I needed to fix up such as the snout and the eyes so I worked on it for a few hours again today fixing up the most obvious proportion errors I had made.  I think it’s a lot better and probably the hardest thing of all to achieve is to capture the animal’s personality.

The source photograph

Day 1

Day 2

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For a long time now I have felt the need to create a social community based on my passion for the arts and photography with a focus on two things, Australia and wildlife. As a practising artist and photographer and also being Australian I felt that there was a real gap for Australian artists to launch themselves, network locally and gain exposure to Australian facilities such as Galleries, Exhibitions, Retail outlets, online shops, self-publishing options, local photo shoots or sketching and painting classes, framers, suppliers, etc you get the idea. Click on the picture below to go to the main page where you can join if you wish.

I would often see really good sites with similar aims but they are all in America and this is not advantageous in many ways for Australian artists. My vision for this Australian Wildlife Art Community “Oz Nature Niche” is for it to grow into something huge - a massive network of resources if you like but I can’t do it on my own.

I have set this up so that members may join freely and contribute freely in any way they can. I think that if we can gather a pool of artists’ expertise, resources, stimulus, galleries, portfolios etc and then advertise the sight by using the badges available which we can embed into our own websites and blogs we can’t help but open up a larger audience. I have nearly 30, 000 visitors who have checked out my website at http://www.lesley-smitheringale-fine-art.com so you can imagine that if the Nature Niche Badge is embedded on my site, it should generate a lot of interest and likewise when all members do the same. (You can see an example of a badge on my website.)

I see it as a community which we will visit often and help each other out and I can’t count the hundreds of hours I have spent scouring the Internet for information on all of the previous things I have mentioned. After now doing it the hard way and bookmarking a lot about sites and blogs, finding out ways to design a website, the best online shops, how to self-publish a book, where to purchase matte boards and so on, why not share this knowledge with a community? Remember also, that it won’t cost you a cent, totally free- just your time and willingness to share in order to promote the arts in Australia. Click on picture below to visit my page (this is an example of what your page could be like).

I only hope that you will share my vision and help this site grow as I think it has so many wonderful opportunities. If you join and you have your own, fresh ideas - things I haven’t condsidered then please let me know or start a new forum discussion in the relevant groups.

What you will get for FREE if you join “Oz Nature Niche”:-

• your own personal page which is customisable with themes
• rss feeds and the ability to embed your own rss feed from your website or blog
• create your own gallery or portfolio, artist bio and resume, links to your other sites
  
• your own blog with option to include pictures and create an rss feed of this blog
  
• join and create forums
• invite friends to your Group(s)
• join specialised Wildlife Groups within Oz Nature Niche such as Fine Artists, Photographers, Digital Artists, Manga Cartoon Illustration & Comics, Crafts Merchandise & Textiles
• critiques and constructive criticism of your work
• make friends and connect with fellow Australian artists
• ask for and give technical help and tips within your Group(s)
  
• add gadgets and widgets to your own personal page and Group page
• add videos including YouTube etc
• add music to your own page and group pages
  
• engage in Live Chat within all of the Groups in Oz Nature Niche
• lots of exposure, networking opportunities and marketing possibilites
  
• create a Badge to advertise Oz Nature Niche on your existing website and blog plus many more features still to come ….

Hope to meet you on the Nature Niche.

Kind Regards

Lesley

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There is a really good article called “Classic Colours - Impressionism” posted by evad on the COLOURLovers site which I often visit. The article was inspired by the colors of the great impressionists, plus some information about each painting and artist from wikipedia.

Click on the picture to view the complete article.

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After a stay in Japan, this extremely talented French illustrator has produced a series of charming watercolours of little Asian characters with stylised square heads for a children’s book entitled “Pi, Po, Pierrot” The attention to detail is beautiful and they are anything but simple - the subtle shading and colours, clever composition, decorative patterns and the ability to capture the essence of the culture and characters in the scenes is outstanding.

some illustrations from the Pi, Po, Pierrot book

Samuel Ribeyron’s blog and website

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These would please any geeks who have an eye for design I’m sure and what a novel idea.

See more at GeekStuff4U

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