Rudy Siswanto is an Illustration Craft Lead at Riotgames; which basically means he leads a team of illustrators and concept designers who help craft the look and feel of particular games.
I’m not a gamer, so I don’t recognize the games for which these images were created, but many of them involve animal characters that Siswanto has portrayed in exaggerated, stylish and dramatic fashion.
Jarosław Jaśnikowski is a Polish artist working in the vein of magic realism/neo-surrealism whose work carries the influence of the original Surrealists as well as their artistic descendants.
In particular, you can see his admiration for the work of Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí and contemporary steampunk fantasy art. The latter infuence often takes the form of trains and airships.
I can’t find a dedicated website for Jaśnikowski, but I’ve collected a few images sources for you to see his work.
Stephanie Law is a watercolor painter from California. Her work ranges from straightforward botanical art to fantastical imaginings with a botanical feel, to stylized animal and plant forms, to fairie images that evoke a feeling of 19th century European illustrators like Rackham and Dulac.
Her watercolor paintings often incorporate elements of metal leaf and ink, and they are sometimes set off in custom frames that she forms into stylized dimesional elements complementary to her images.
Many of her works are circular in shape. I’m not sure if this is for a reason other than a fondness for that form on her part. Most are part of a series.
Her website features galleries in a number of clategories. There is also a store with prints, original art, books and other items. In addition, there is a set off section of her site devoted to her botanical art.
Law has a YouTube channel that features videos of her process.
Arantza Sestayo is a Spanish painter and illustrator who works promarily in the genres of fantasy and imaginative realism.
Her highly refined paintings and drawngs show the influence of Victorian painting, Art Nouveau and the Pre-Raphaelites. (Her image above, bottom, may be a nod to J. W. Waterhouse’s depiction of jealous Circe.)
Sestayo applies her skills across several mediums. If you scroll down on the home page of her website, you will find categories that translate as “Oils, Watercolor, Pencil, Comic, Sketches and Digital”. There is also a section featuring her book cover illustrations.
A number of her pieces are illustrations for a deluxe limited edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from Easton Press.
You can find several videos of her process on YouTube.
Henry Justice Ford (AKA Henry J. Ford or H. J. Ford) was a popular British illustrator active in the late 19th and early 20 centuries.
Ford’s primary medium was pen and ink, but he also worked in watercolor. Though his skill in those mediums may not have been quite as refind as that of some of his contemporaries, he was nontheless imaginative and entertaining — particularly when illustrating fantasy subjects that included dragons, monsters, ogres and demons.
The March/April issue of The Artists Magazine is devoted to imaginative painting and magical realism. The cover and lead article feature the beautiful painting by James Gurney shown in the images above, and a step-through of his process in creating it.
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing this particular painting in person, and it’s a strikingly beautiful example of Gurney at his best in combining the styles of the Victorian painters with modern fantasy subjects. (Imagine if you will, Lawrence Alma-Tadema painting dinosaurs!)
This is a very good issue of a good magazine. Unfortunately, the Artists Network website, for reasons that elude me, is not very effective in promoting the physical magazine. (They don’t clearly associate the cover with a list of contents and excerpts specific to that issue, and from there link to the ordering page.)
If you’re fortunate enough to have a bookstore in your area that carries a relatively wide array of magazines, you may still be able to find a copy.
You can order a physical copy here, and a digital copy here.
You can also access Gurney’s article, complete with images, online if you’re willing to give them your email address. You can link to the article from this page, and once on this page, enter your email address and you’ll have immediate access to the article.
The entire issue (and the magazine in general), are worthwhile.
James Gurney was a particularly appropriate artist to tap for this issue, given that he’s the author of an excellent book devoted to the subject: Imaginative Realism: How to Paint what Doesn’t Exist (Lines and Colors review here).
