Lines and Colors art blog
  • Annie Stegg Gerard

    Annie Stegg, fantasy art and illustration
    Georgia based Annie Stegg is an illustrator, concept artist, character designer and gallery artist who works in the vein of fantasy art. Her clients include Ballistic Publishing,  Apple, Android, Hi-Rez Studios, Tiki Games, Addicting Games, and SPIL Games.

    In her personal work, Stegg appears to take inspiration both from Golden Age fantasy illustrators like Rackham, Dulac and Parrish, and from the 18th century Rococo artists who incorporated intricately detailed design elements into their paintings.

    Stegg’s take on folklore and mythical themes often revolves around female characters in lavish dress, surrounded by lush idealized vegetation and the kind of storybook animals who interact with people in fairy tales.

    She works oil and acrylic, as well as colored pencil and watercolor. On both her website and blog, you will often find images of work in progress or in her studio environment, in which you can get an idea of the textural aspect of her paintings and the variation in scale at which she works.

    A number of Stegg’s paintings are currently on view at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA, in a show she shares with her husband, fantasy illustrator Justin Gerard. Some of the works are collaborative. The exhibition runs until November 29, 2015.

    There is an amusing 2013 interview with Stegg, conducted by Gerard, on Muddy Colors, and a video interview with both Stegg and Gerard for One Fantastic Week on YouTube.



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  • Stanislas Lepine

    Stanislas Lepine, pre-Impressionist scenes of paris, the Seine, Normandy and nearby villages
    Though he participated in the first Impressionist exhibit — and shared with them a move away from the conventions of academic landscape and a search for the atmospheric effects of light and color — 19th century French painter Stanislas Lépine largely stayed outside of their circle.

    Lépine worked outside of most artistic social life, for that matter, keeping largely to himself and working in his own manner.

    His similarities to the Impressionist painters, who he appears to have have presaged to some degree, derive largely to the shared influence of Corot and Johan Barthold Jongkind on both Lépine and the other artists. Lépine was apprenticed to Corot for a time in the mid-19th century.

    Like the Impressionists, Lépine took Paris and it environs as his subject, and in particular the River Seiene in all its moods and aspects — portraying its quays, bridges, barges and waters, both in paris and the small villages nearby, with painterly aplomb.



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  • Eye Candy for Today: Romá Ribera’s Woman in Evening Gown

    Woman in Evening Gown, Roma Ribera
    Woman in Evening Gown, Romá Ribera

    Link is to zoomable version on Google Art Project; downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons; original is in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

    Ribera uses soft edges here to great effect, not only in framing his subject in soft backlighting, but in the portrayal of the texture of her hair and the fur on her gown.


    Woman in Evening Gown, Google art project

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  • Denis Sarazhin

    Denis Sarazhin, still life, figures, townscape paintings
    Denis Sarazhin is a Ukrainian painter who studied at the Kharkov Art and Design Academy and the Ukrainian Art Academy.

    In addition to exhibitions and galleries in Europe, Sarazhin’s work is available in the U.S. through Gallery Russia in Scottsdale, AZ.

    When I came across Sarazhin’s work, I was immediately struck by his stunning use of color and his wonderfully tactile expression of texture. These are especially apparent in his still life paintings.

    I particularly enjoy those in which he composes his still life arrangements outdoors, combining the appeal of still life and landscape.

    Sarazhin also paints figurative work, and incorporates much of his textural approach into those compositions as well.

    Though all of the credits I can find list his medium as oil, many of his pieces have the brilliant, fluid appearance of watercolor.

    His website includes portfolios of both painting and photography.

    [Via David Gray]



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  • Titus Lunter

    Titus Lunter, concept art
    Titus Lunter is a concept artist for the gaming industry. His credits include Tom Clancy’s The Division, Forza Horizon 2, Killzone: Mercenary, Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, Fifth Edition.

    Lunter appears to focus on environments, and is particularly adept at casting them in dark, moody tones, while still retaining their character as stone, metal or foliage.

    I particularly enjoy the way he can craft a composition in a range of muted tones with close value relationships, and then effectively punctuate it with small, crisp accents of light.

    His website has galleries of work, arranged by year, and a gallery of highlights, as well as sketches. If, like me, you’re not fond of the vertical bar navigation, once you click to make the images fullscreen (which you’ll want to do anyway), you’ll have access to more traditional navigation arrows.

    You can also find his work no his ArtStation and deviantART portfolios, and his blog.

    Lunter has videos and tutorials on his website, with full versions of the tutorials available on Gumroad.



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  • Eye Candy for Today: Böcklin’s Odysseus and Polyphemus

    Odysseus and Polyphemus, Arnold Bocklin
    Odysseus and Polyphemus, Arnold Böcklin

    Link is to zoomable file on Google Art Project; downloadable file on Wikimedia Commons; original is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

    The file on Wikimedia, though originally from the Sotheby’s sale to the museum in 2012, seems over-saturated in reds. Not having had the pleasure of seeing the original, I’ve adjusted a copy of that file to bring it more in line with the color on the museum’s site.

    Arnold Böcklin is an artist whose best known painting, Isle of the Dead, is so famous it makes him seem a one-hit-wonder, and his other work is often overlooked. Here he takes on a mythical scene, but his heart is obviously in his love of dramatic rocky landscape.

    The figure of Polyphemus, the giant son of Poseidon as portrayed in Homer’s Odyssey, is rendered in a sketchy, gestural forms almost as textural as the rocks on which he stands. His face is essentially a blur of madness and motion.

    The rocks themselves, however, are painted in wonderful lavish detail, rich with subtle variations of color and texture, as is the sea and foam that washes around them .


    Odysseus and Polyphemus, Google Art Project

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