work in progress stuff

I love the green gummy bear n_n

B-AGT

            One of my favorite portraiture artists, German artist known as B-AGT, creates fan art of familiar figures in pop culture from video games to movies. Most of his portraits are pencil or paint. Many of the portraits feature characters from the Final Fantasy franchise. He is not a professional artist and only paints as a hobby.

            He grew up creating art as a hobby and draw subjects from shows he liked. His work can be seen on DeviantArt and gained popularity right away. For him, fan art is to interpret something you like. When you like something so much, you want to show our appreciation for it by recreating it but adding personal style. Most of his works are pencil but he also fancies watercolor. It takes him about 12 to 15 hours to finish a piece, which is almost no time at all!

            I find his artwork inspiring because his subjects are very similar to my personal work. I love creating fan art of characters I love from my favorite TV shows and video games. His artwork motivates me to strive to be better and develop my skills.

Lawrence Yang

            Lawrence Yang is an artist that I have been following for years. He is one of the biggest influences on my own personal art when I started out making attempts to teach myself how to paint.

His artwork is influenced by his love for graffiti and traditional Chinese painting. His artwork includes many different mediums from watercolor, ink, and marker. Yang tries to find order in chaos within his artwork and communicates that through color. Yang’s artworks are considered Pop Surrealist type paintings of characters and landscapes. He starts out by creating washes on canvas to act as backgrounds. He stores them until he is able to paint an idea on them, which can sometimes take months. His art started to become popular when he revamped the Pepsi logo to look like an obese man.

Currently, he works during the day for Apple and spends the rest of his time creating artwork. Yang is self taught since he went to school for Biology. Making a living off of art never occurred to him, it was always something he did for fun. He lives in San Francisco with his imaginary pets, Cholo and Binky.

Edward B Gordon

            Edward B. Gordon is a painter who creates small, daily paintings of intimate moments. He was born in 1966 and currently resides in Berlin. His paintings include beautiful cohesive colors and thick, visible brushstrokes which gives him a personal style. Many of his paintings include an exaggerated value of the shadows. Most of the paintings are very small at about 6” by 6”. The subject matter ranges from landscapes to portraits and even strangers on the street. His urban scenes and portraits can be called “en passant” – meaning to detect. Gordon’s paintings show scenes of Berlin in brief, passing moments. He is able to direct our attention to something that we would have never noticed or thought of as beautiful. Gordon has been painting everyday for the past seven years and has just reached past his 2,300^th painting mark! He is able to find his next painting by walking the streets of Berlin.

George Jennings

            George Jennings grew up in an art environment. Being from Washington DC, around his grandfather who was an established artist, and attending a high school for arts influenced his liking towards the arts. He did not attend college but kept developing his artistic skill. Jennings has had a multitude of jobs outside of art including becoming a truck driver, the air force, and several government jobs. Afterwards, he moved to Seattle to pursue a full time career in art.

            His paintings usually come from a simple thought or an idea he has. Jennings hopes to convey a sense of peace in each of his paintings, the same peace that he feels when he creates. He wishes for the viewer to connect to the piece, even if it’s just a small part of it. Most of his works are contemporary portraits using multiple media such as acrylic paint, oil paint, and graphite. He is influenced by Art Nouveau, which is something can be clearly seen in many of his works. Other influences include music, his grandfather, Japanese Anime, and Maxfield Parrish.

            I love his style of art and his influences of Art Nouveau and Anime can definitely be seen. He creates a sense of realism in some aspects of the painting but creates a more abstract aspect as well. 

Ivan Alifan

            Ivan Alifan is an artist that I have been following for quite some time because of his incredible paintings and because I find it amazing that someone around my age can create such beautiful artwork. For the most part, he creates portraits. His latest series of portraits revolve around a figure drenched in a paste-like liquid. This liquid covers the figure’s face creating porcelain like layer on them. These portraits are a representation of how human beings encase themselves in this hardened layer but by doing so are inhibited to move or truly exist as themselves. For Alifan, the series explores the modern gaze and the transformation of an individual. Many of the portraits use pale colors creating a ghostly look to them.

            Alifan was born in 1989 in Russia. He is currently attending OCAD University in Canada for Drawing and Painting. 

Linda Huber

            Linda Huber is probably one of my favorite portrait artists that I have been following for a few years. I find her work inspiring because her subject choice is similar to my own personal artwork. I love how beautifully she is able to capture texture and small detail. Her favorite medium is pencil because she loves to recreate life with an object that is so simple. Many of her drawings are from reference photos and can take between 40 – 100 hours to complete. Huber is completely self taught. Her artwork has been displayed all over the country in advertisements, books, CD covers, and television shows. Huber drawings begin with a photo reference. She prints them out three times. The first print shows a grid to establish where on the paper everything is. The second print puts emphasis on the dark areas and the third puts emphasis on the light areas to show details that may have been missed. Many times she draws with the canvas upside down in order to gain a fresh perspective and make it easier for the brain to interpret the shapes.