19th century painter Thomas Hovenden was noted both for his work as an artist and for his role as a teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

As a painter, Hovenden painted domestic scenes, historical events and to some extent still life subjects. He is noted in particular for his depictions of African Americans, both in domestic and historic contexts, such as his well known depiction of The Last Moments of John Brown (images above, top), now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has a zoomable high resolution version on the website.

Hovenden’s interest in African American subjects may have stemmed from his wife, artist Helen Corson, who he met while studying at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Her family were abolitionists, and the barn on their property that hosted anti-slavery meetings, and as a stop on the underground railroad, later served as Hovenden’s studio.

In 1886 Hovenden was appointed to replace Thomas Eakins as Professor of Painting and Drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts when Eakins was asked to leave amid conflicts with the board of directors over nude models, insubordination and other accusations of “inappropriate behavior”.

Hovenden’s students included such noted artists as Alexander Stirling Calder, Robert Henri and Henry Ossawa Tanner.

Self taught New York artist Janet Ternoff finds great fascination in the facades and interiors of buildings.

She works in a realistic style, at times with considerable detail. She works in a range of sizes, from 8×10 to considerably larger.

Her series of exteriors of bars, stores and restaurants feel in a way as if portraits of the establishments, with lots of attention to details of signs and other characteristics of the facades.

She also has a series of surface and subway trains as wall as a series of interiors that I particularly enjoy, particularly when they feature staircases in older buildings.

In all of her compositions, Ternoff is continually finding fascinating play of light, from brief splashes of highlights against weathered brick to deep contrasts of shadow and sunlight. She also paints scenes of twilight and nighttime, as well scenes with stormy or overcast skies.

Her website has a gallery divided into subsections, one of which, “New collection” is divided again into further subsections.

Ternoff also maintains a blog called New York Street Art.

Anthony S. Waters is a California based concept artist and illustrator who does work for the gaming industry. He has worked with companies like Sony On-Line, DNA Productions, Lucasfilm, Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Hasbro, among others.

Waters works in both traditional and digital media, and often works with a bright palette, though at times almost monochromatically. His richly organic designs for environments and creatures seem at times to revel in convolutions of form, a feeling of graphic playfulness beneath their more dramatic surface.

I particularly enjoy his creature designs, in which he experiments with imaginative variations on subjects that can too often be formulaic.

His website has sections for Environments, Creatures, Characters, etc. and within each there are both finished work and sketches.

Waters also maintains a blog, contributes to Design-o-Matic and has a gallery on deviantART that has additional images.