Tom Strom is an artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland, who paints and tattoos colorful “creature mash-ups.” Among his inspirations are anime and Disney movies—the former for monster design, the latter for colorful backgrounds. He began tattooing over twenty years ago, during which time he experimented with different techniques and developed his style, which is an […]
Category: Character Design
Dark Dream Characters in the Paintings of Bill Mayer
Bill Mayer is a well-known artist currently based in Decatur, Georgia, whose curious creatures have been widely featured on magazines, ads, stamps, posters, and more. Since an early age, Mayer has been attracted to things that are strange; this leaning towards oddity is evident in the selection of gouache paintings shown here, which include anthropomorphic […]
Alone in a Dystopian Landscape: Concept Art by Simon Stalenhag
Working in the field of concept art, Simon Stalenhag has conceived a whole world. Using his homeland of Sweden as a backdrop (and more recently, California), Stalenhag merges reality with fantasy, turning coniferous forests and snow-shrouded fields into the sites of alien encounters, apocalypse scavenging, and bloody cyborgian crimes. He spent a lot of time […]
Shape-Shifters and Borderlands: Sculptures by Leah Brown
Leah Brown is a Fort Lauderdale-based artist creating sculptures and installations based on her lucid dreams, which she has journaled about since childhood. “I create work about the borderland between what is considered real and what is not,” she writes in her bio. “These works begin as illustrations, but become artifacts of invocation, and I […]
Shadow-Filled Serenity and Terror: Art & Tattoos by Suhwan Bak
Suhwan Bak is a Seoul-based artist telling his “goth-gloomy” tales on paper and skin. In a style that brings to mind Tim Burton’s lanky-limbed characters and the ghoulish terrors of Edo-Period ukiyo-e, his world is anything but ordinary; cadaver-faced women linger alone, dressed in black and partially obscured with shadows and chaotic fine lines that […]
The Surreal Imagination of Angela He
Angela He is a nineteen-year-old artist currently at Stanford who is creating beautiful digital paintings and video games. Her style is imaginative and diverse, ranging from floral, sun-dappled portraits to personified moments of twisted, tender darkness. The mystical characters she creates are shimmering and translucent, emitting light and shadow from within. Her video games encompass […]
Fear, Beauty, and the Abject: Handcrafted Art Dolls by Emilie Steele
Emilie Steele is a multidisciplinary artist based in Stockholm, Sweden, who creates handcrafted posable art dolls. Each doll’s body is first sculpted in clay, then silicone molds are made, and the pieces are cast in resin. Steele also makes all the clothes, wigs, and accessories by hand. These are far from your ordinary dolls, notable […]
Welcome to Faunwood: Enchanting Beasts by Miranda Zimmerman
Miranda Zimmerman, working under the title Faunwood, is a freelance artist currently based in the Pacific Northwest. With a bachelor’s degree in Evolutionary Biology, a graduate certificate in Science Illustration, and experience working on paleontological reconstruction in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, it is clear she has a vested interest in the transformations and […]
Ceramics at the Intersection of Toys and Sculpture by Luciano Polverigiani
Artist Luciano Polverigiani crafts colorful characters that are at the intersection between toy and sculpture. The quirky figurines don exaggerated features that are appealing to kids but carry adult themes—such as the creature with a large spiky tail that it carries like an albatross. To produce these earthy-colored sculptures, he uses a variety of clay […]
Shadowy Magical Realism in the Artwork of Sail (Useless Arm)
“Everything is beautiful, even the ugly,” observes Sail, an artist operating under the curious handle, “Useless Arm.” His paintings are as moody as they are playful, depicting solitary figures bedecked in flowers and masks and pierced by arrows. Various cultural and literary references can be seen throughout—most notably, Asian aesthetics—but Sail’s characters are born of […]