Local Artist Showcase Part 2

Here's the second batch of artists whose business cards I picked up at Fan Expo. Of course, there were a lot more artists than this, many of them fantastic.

First up today is Panda Pad. I almost bought the example print then realized I had nowhere to put it, so I'm posting it here to show the complexity and simplicity of Genevieve Tan's work. She had other, more colourful pieces, but I loved how she kept this stark and all the detail in the dress.


We bought some magnets from Moonlight Whispers, who has several categories of items for sale at her shop as well as a nice gallery of fantasy and other art. Here's one of her magnet designs.


Next up is Bluefeathers. Mengling Chen has a decent collection of artwork, some in a gothic style others anime or steampunk inspired.


Christopher Yao at yaozagraphics does mostly cartoon artwork.


The last artist is a bit different. Rather than working with paper, Cheryl Garrett-Jenkins works with glass out of her Rubyeyes gallery. She does mostly custom work, but even when she doesn't, her items are all one of a kind.

Local Artist Showcase Part 1

I collected a number of business cards at Fan Expo Canada and thought it would be nice to showcase some of the local talent for those who couldn't attend.

First up is Faebyl Art. Monika Ptok-Byard has a lot of nature/fairy themed artwork. Here's a sample:


Next is Echo Chernick Fine Art Nouveau. There's mythological and fairy inspired art nouveau as well as a few steampunk pieces:


Brain Lag has an awesome logo on their business card. You can see it at the top of their site (woman with dagger and dragon jumping in front of the moon). It's a two person group, Janson & Jinx. Jinx does photography as well as anime based and traditional fantasy art while Janson does comics. Here's one of Jinx's pictures.


I'm not sure if this last group is local, but they had a great booth and several artists in attendance. Imaginism Studios. There are 6 artists listed on their site but only 4 have sample work up. They've done concept art for television and movies, most recently for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

Fantasy Artists X3

It's amazing how many great fantasy artists there are. And when I go to their site, knowing only one or two book covers they've done it's fun to see how many OTHER covers they've done that I know.

Take Matt Stawicki as an example. I knew he'd done more of Carol Berg's covers, but I didn't realize he did Karen Lowachee's or a lot of the newer (and much better looking) Dragon Lance covers.
http://www.mattstawicki.com/








Cris Ortega is a Spanish artist who I discovered through her own book of stories and artwork, Forgotten. It's haunting but beautiful.
http://www.crisortega.com/






An artist whose covers (at least on Solaris titles) almost force people to pick up the books, Michael Komarck. When Summoner first came to the store I knew it would be a hit. With cover art that good, how could the book possibly be bad? (I know judging books by covers doesn't always work, but sometimes, as with Summoner, it does.)
http://www.komarckart.com/






Finally, an artist whose covers I remember from my teens, Keith Parkinson. He did the original covers for the Death Gate Cycle (Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman), and writers like Terry Brooks, David Eddings, Terry Goodkind and more.
http://www.keithparkinson.com/