Dave Malan is an illustrator and gallery artist based in Salt lake City, where he works for Disney Games. The work displayed on his site and blog, however, is mostly his personal and gallery work, which ranges from straightforward portraiture to highly finished oils in a style that leans to caricature-like exaggeration.
The paintings on his site are mostly portraits, often of family members, painted in a frank “direct observer” kind of approach, at times incorporating a landscape or interior background. The illustrations are caricature style paintings that have a fun rendered cartoon feeling to them. The drawings, in pencil or NuPastel, are a bit of a mix, but tend toward straightforward portraiture.
His blog, Brilliant Anyway, features his work in a more casual format, includes work he doesn’t consider finished or refined enough to post on the main site, comments on the images and the process behind them and additional drawings. He also has some excellent links to the web presence for artists that he admires, his taste in which would be of interest to readers of lines and colors.
Malan seems to be fascinated in particular with faces, whether portraits or caricature, and often posts sketches from his sketchbook of people from the news or popular entertainment.
Malan is a contributor the Avalance Software Blog, a group blog where artists for the company (which is in some way affiliated with Disney) post artwork, often in response to a topic suggested by one of them.
Dave Malan is married to illustrator Natalie Malan.
