ARTIST THIRTY: Shyama Golden

I stumbled upon Shyama Golden on a graphic design blog and was very impressed with the way she marketed herself. Her business card was quirky and memorable, with an impressively drawn llama on the front and a neon pink backing that made it pop. She also used a letterpress method for the card which made it very professional and neat. Golden's style is much like her personality- eccentric but presentable and clean cut. Her work is created mainly digitally, although she likes to paint as well.

ARTIST TWENTY NINE: Giles Oldershaw

Giles Oldershaw (an artist from England) uses recycled cardboard to recreate famous movie stars. He uses a small amount of paint and a lot of cutting and layering to create these unusual portraits. 

ARTIST TWENTY EIGHT: Riusuke Fukahori

Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori takes 3D art to a new level with his absolutely amazing, lifelike paintings of goldfish in water. He uses layers of resin casting (liquid plastic that hardens) and paints part of the fish on each layer to create a round form

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ARTIST NUMBER TWENTY SEVEN: Sue Blackwell

Sue Blackwell is a British artist with a love for books. She pioneered a new style of art that she calls "book art", where she transforms the pages of a average book into amazing pieces of art that tell a story too. Sometimes she uses the book as the base of the sculptures and other times she frames them in glass or on other surfaces. She cuts, folds, and twists pages to create stunning and whimsical pieces.

ARTIST NUMBA TWENTY SIX: Gelrev Ongbico

A self taught artist from the Philippines, Ongbico creates illustrations mainly of nature-related subjects using texture and thick strokes of paint. While cleanly outlined, the items in his pieces contain lots of detail and form. He is also known for his descriptive titles, changing the meaning from what you would initially expect into something completely different.

ARTIST NUMBA TWENTY FIVE: Erin Clark

An artist from Michigan, Erin Clark uses landscape scenery and woman's blank faces to create alluring collages. She works on hand-crafted and digital collages, and is currently working on a new art series with fellow artist Andrew Tamlyn. Her work is innovative and inspiring- drawing to the faceless identity that many woman feel in our world today.

ARTIST TWENTY FOUR: Luci Everette

Luci Everette from Melbourne, Australia is a mixed media artist that uses many different mediums to create collages. She collaborates with textures, paper cut-outs, hand drawn illustrations, watercolors, and photographs to make whimsical pieces of art. She is has influenced the music scene in Australia proficiently by creating dozens of posters for various bands and independent musicians.

ARTIST NUMBA TWENTY THREE: Diana Sudyka

Diana Sudyka, of Polish descent, is an illustrator in Chicago, Illinois. She runs a popular blog called "The Tiny Aviary" where she displays her artwork along with posts about her creation process and busy life as an artist. She has been commissioned by various artists such as The Black Keys, Iron & Wine, and Modest Mouse. She loves nature, and her artwork reflects that strongly. Most of her illustrations are bright and charming renditions of various animals and plants.
I really love the adventure and fun that lies within the illustrations of Diana Sudyka. Her work is childlike but also tells a story.

ARTIST(s) NUMBA TWENTY TWO: Riitta Ikonen and Karoline Hjorth

The next art series I would like to focus on is a design collaborative called Eyes as Big as Plates. Two artists- Riitta Ikonen (from Finland) and Karoline Hjorth (from Norway) decided to create this project to "explore the nature of their neighborly, pragmatic Finns". The artists first met in Norway in 2011 and now live and work in New York. Their work is photography based although they do create art used in the photographs. One of my favorite series by them is called "Finnish Seniors". Ikonen and Hjorth photographed various senior men and women with in nature, with organic materials decorating their heads and bodies. It is really unique and amazing to see an older generation photographed with the same attention and beauty as a 20-something cover model. It really opens the viewers eyes to see the rare allure of every individual, no matter their age.

ARTIST NUMBA TWENTY ONE: Leonid Tishkov

A Russian scientist-turned-artist, Leonid Tishkov is able to create amazing art due to his rare background and expertise. A professed installation artist, Tishkov has accumulated most of his fame from a series entitled "The Private Moon". In an ethereal series of pictures, we see a glowing moon, "cast down from heaven", interacting with people and landscapes on the earth. This enchanting series was a product of years Tishkov spent dragging an electrical moon around the world and photographing it in vivid and moving places. Tishkov's work is particularly wonderful to me because I have always been infatuated with the idea of heaven touching earth. The hauntingly beautiful images draw a desire in me to see more "untouchable" parts of creation.

ARTIST NUMBA TWENTY: Jordan Carter

I simply adore the work of Jordan Carter. He takes illustration to a whole other level by merging together detailed, realistic ink drawings with simple, brightly colored additions. The final effect is whimsical and very endearing. In his piece Wilbur the Whale Carter we see a simple block style city on the back of an extremely realistic whale. It has a similar effect that spot color has, but obviously with more colors represented. The seemingly conflicting styles are striking together, and create a very other-worldly effect.
Jordan Carter is a freelance artist based out of England. His clients range from magazines to online journals to children's books.

ARTIST NUMBA NINETEEN: Katherine Hardy

Katherine Hardy describes her art as "weaving a narrative together using texture and color". She is a freelance artist and illustrator from the UK and receiver her training from the Royal College of Art in London. She currently works at The Art Newspaper and is pioneering her own children's book about a girl and her imaginary friend. Hardy has a beautiful poster/silhouette style that captures the wholeness of the subjects she is portraying. She uses simple shapes and color to create imaginative scenes and bright, eye catching designs. Many of her pieces have a vintage feel to them, and harken back to the simple style of screen printing (although she uses digital imaging).

ATIST NUMBA EIGHTEEN: Ian Carrington

An up-and-coming illustrator & artist from the UK, Ian Carrington shows his talent through creative and stylized portraits of famous public figures like politicians, actors, and musicians (along with other pieces and subjects). It is truly amazing how the portraits are so strikingly recognizable but still hold a very clear illustrated style. Carrington uses pale colors, detailed strokes, and dotted lines to bring the faces identity and character. He recreates many identifiable people such as Jay-Z, Margaret Thatcher, Sherlock Holmes, and John Lennon.

ARTIST NUMBER 17: Emily Bakes

Many artists say that the very character of color is an art-form. Artist Emily Bakes truly understands this, and chooses colors in a way that transforms a seemingly simple illustration into a creative masterpiece. The subject matter she chooses to depict are normally average things with a twist. For example, her piece titles "Cherry Pie" is very unique. Each item in the pie is illustrated in an un-realistic perspective where no one item overlaps another. The colors are bright blue and red, and give a new identity to a seemingly bland food item. Her work shows the diversity of illustration- although she uses virtually no shading her drawings have a strange dimension and unique appeal.