Fantasy art: Crisco's glow in the dark paintings

I saw one of Crisco's painting videos on facebook and had to share his stuff. He paints scenes and then adds a glow in the dark element to them. Check out his youtube channel for more videos.

Steampunk Apocalypse

I stumbled across this while getting the cover for yesterday's Art of Steampunk post.  I found it on Agglomeraticon.

It's by a Canadian artist, Crystal Yates, aka Shades of Earth on Devient Art.  And it is fantastic.  I give you, Steampunk Apocalypse:

I wonder if she'll be at FanExpo Canada...

Fractal Fantasy

Fractal Fantasy from Jessica Strider on Vimeo.

I created this video using 4 of the fractals from the Fractal Lab library (fractal.io). The music is "The Goya Discovery" Written and Performed by: Derek R. Audette - ©MMX Derek R. Audette (SOCAN) (derekaudette.ottawaarts.com/​music.php).

(For some reason the video player makes the film choppier than the original. Feel free to download it from Vimeo to see it at a much higher frame rate.)

From the Fractal Lab website:

"Fractal Lab is a WebGL based fractal explorer allowing you to explore 2D and 2D fractal. The fractals are rendered using the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) to enable real-time interactivity.

WARNING: it is possible to create GLSL fractal shaders that will lock up your GPU requiring a hard reboot if pushed too hard. Use at your own risk!"

Heed the warning. I crashed my laptop twice using the program, but it was worth it. You can play with colours, fog density and other parameters. Just remember to save your fractal, because it's very hard to recreate one you liked. Play with your fractal in preview mode, but don't forget to click the box and end preview before taking photos or video clips. For the sake of this video I only zoomed in. On the website you can change the camera angles and move in different directions. And you have use a browser that supports OpenGL (so Google Chrome).

You can create some nifty space and fantasy art with the fractals.  The first was done by my husband, the other two by me. 

SF Contario - Artist Alley

I'd meant to do a few SF Contario posts last week, but other things came up, so they've been pushed back to this week.

First up are some of the fantastic works from Artists Alley.

The artist guest of honour was Billy Tackett, 'art with BRAAAAINNNNSSSS!!'. He has some great pictures in his "Dead, White & Blue" series, like this one: A New Corpse.


Heather V. Kreiter had a nice display of "My Little Demon" ponies.


Margaret Chown's site won't let me save a picture for display. She's got watercolours and more, so go check it out.

Kerry Maffeo has steampunk inspired art. You can see some of it on her blog, and buy it on her etsy page.


If you like steampunk jewelry, there were two dealers. The first, Irina Pertseva,


the second, C. J. Grand-Cowan.

Zardo - Photographer and Artist

For those of you who like fantasy art, here's a photographer who makes his work look more like goth paintings. Check him out: http://zardo.deviantart.com/

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/

Fantasy Artists X2

Here are some more fantasy artists to be aware of.

Luis Royo does some incredible fantasy and SF covers. He has a way of portraying movement in stationary subjects. Please be aware that his site has a lot of adult content.
http://www.luisroyo.com/





An old favourite, who still brings out fantastic artwork is Jody Lee (perhaps best known for her work on Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books).
http://www.jodylee.org/Version2/index2.html





An artist I only became aware of recently, with his cover for Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker, Dan Dos Santos is currently on the ballet for the 2009 Chelsea Awards for best cover illustration: paperback book, for Patricia Briggs's Cry Wolf.
http://www.dandossantos.com/home.html








And finally for today, Chris McGrath, who did Rob Thurman's Nightlife, Butcher's Dresden books and more. Here's the cover for Matt Sturges's Midwinter.
http://www.christianmcgrath.com/

Fantasy Artists

I've always found fantasy art to be very inspiring when coming up with ideas. Ok, it can be construed as stealing someone else's idea in a way, but if you're explaining WHY the fairy has butterfly wings and is holding a glass rose in its hand then it's merely a creative writing exercise. And if it gets your own imagination flowing, where's the harm?

Here are a few of my favourite fantasy artists:
Kagaya: http://www.kagayastudio.com/starry/index.html
The page is in Japanese - but worth the effort of trying various links (I've linked to one of the subpages showing off his 'starry tales' paintings).



Todd Lockwood (I've bought copies of a few of his works to inspire me in my office at home.) He's done the new covers for R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt novels (Forgotten Realms) among many, many others.
Check out his works here: http://www.toddlockwood.com/


Josephine Wall (I cut up a calendar of hers, putting the paintings all over my apartment. Her works are ones you can stare at for hours, missing details each time. They draw you in and force you to imagine what might have happened to the people in the paintings to bring them to this point.)
http://www.josephinewall.co.uk/josephine.html

Anne Stokes (I was made aware of her artwork through one of the 'best in fantasy art' books that comes out periodically. This wasn't the Spectrum collection, so it was by luck that I happened upon it. Since then I've seen her art in many places.)
http://www.annestokes.com/