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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This digital painter’s work is phenominal. Tom lives near Hamburg in Germany and he started off using traditional airbrush techniques onto board but has progressed to digital using mainly Photoshop and Painter.

From an interview with Tom at CGArena this is his advice to artists -

Would you like to give any 5 tips to the Photoshop users which like to create artwork like yours?

• Do not think about your own style or copy other styles, just paint and play around with photos, structures and layers as much as you can so the style will come automatically.
• Just be awake every time and imagine how to paint things that you actually see all the times
• Let you be inspired by nature
• Always compare with the best is a good way to know where you are
• The main tip: be creative and be inspired all the time and: just do it!

Here is a selection of Tom’s digital paintings and none of them are photos!

Black Rhino

Fruit Rain

“Okay: some of you asked me how I did this kind of work. Every single piece was separate illustrated on a separate layer”

Siberian Tiger

Brave Dog

Jumping Cat

Panther

Humpback Whale

Tom’s work on deviantArt (Illugraphy)

Tom’s Website/Blog

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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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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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Stunning attention to detail in these illustrations showing a vivid imagination and lovely sense of colour.

Ronald Kurniawan graduated with honors from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Inspired by ideograms, syllables, letterforms, beasts and heroic landscapes, he slowly but surely continues to create a visual language where the wilderness and civilization could merge happily together. With the belief that the sublime and nuclear age could coexist, he paints romantic environments and breaks the quiet scene with juxtaposed imagery taking the shape of icons and letterforms. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles where he paints meticulously and happily accompanied by his pug Ruffles, an avid artist himself.

“B Wary” plansponsor

CHILICILI Cover for vodafone in the Czech Republic, where all fairytales come together.

“X” Steps of Ronald’s painting - acryclic on wood

“A Buffoon on an Island ” acrylic on birch/ 5′ x 3′ / roq la rue galler

Ronald Kurniawan’s Website

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This young Brazilian graphic designer has produced a novel range of design products and I particularly admire his paper animals which are quite stunning.

I like to work with different medias and techniques, mixing them to create new ways to represent ideas and concepts.

“Paper Forest” poster “In nature, everything turns into more nature”
All the animals and plants were made with paper techniques

“Chinese Tea Box” We decided to give to some ordinary packages a new face based on the product inside, creating a kind of toy-pack, a beautiful object, that people can not put on the trash, but take it to them, reusing the pack. In this case, a beatiful chinese girl opens her mouth to offer you a delicious jasmine tea.”

Carlo Giovani’s Website

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This artist is incredibly talented and her digital collages have a kind of spooky, fairytale quality which I love. She has a store on Etsy where you can purchase her work and a beautiful blog which is a visual delight.

“I like to make pictures, lots of them. These include digital collage, surreal photomontage, drawing, painting and illustration. My most favouritest themes include dreams, dolls, spectres, fairytales, mythology & nature.“

Arielle and Thumbelina

Storybook Adventure and Dulcimer

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Beautiful attention to detail in these works by young French designer Tksh who is doing rather well for himself.

“Still on the run” is the online portfolio of 26 years old multidisciplinary designer Emeric Trahand. Also known as Tksh, Emeric has established himself as a freelance graphic designer in
France in mid 07 and has already been commissionned by clients such as EMI Music/Sony BMG/ Knorr/TBWA Toronto/Exo7/BBDO Montreal/FPLQ/Suzuki/The KDU/4 Westmount Square/The Canadian Globe & Mail/Zoumarmada/Vin d’Alsace/Bak mag/Ins2one/Unicef/Apag … and more.

Website

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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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This Finnish artist’s illustrations done in Photoshop are beautiful with a superb feel for colour, layered textures, whimsical scenes and lots of attention to detail. See more on Johanna’s website.

Nihon no yume 00

Mangrove Heaven

Toads in Trouble


Going to the Jungle Party

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