| Charles Vess does fairytale art as it used to be, or as I remember it in a dream. | Jo Chen is a comic book cover artist. Her excellent life-drawings are well-complimented by her use of color. |
| Stephen Brayfield’s art caught my eye immediately and has haunted me since the first time I saw it, most especially his weeping wraith. I’m struck every time I see them with the fragility of his figures emphasized by the damage they’ve sustained. | Dean Spencer is another artist who has illustrated comic books, as well as providing art for book covers. His work is harsher than Chen’s but quite talented. |
| Michael Parkes is, for me, the unassailable grand master of fantasy art. No one else combines that delicate touch and almost medieval feminine face juxtaposed with the absurd so gracefully. | Caniglia’s art ranges from outright horrific to creepily so. My favorites are the children with the bugs on their faces. |
| It should come as a surprise to no one, then, that I love James Christensen’s work almost as well. | The Art Renewal Center is the website to go to for inspiration. It provides quality images of art from every period, in every style. |
| The Duirwaigh Gallery is filled with the work of briliant artists, including the incomparable Thomas Canty; Amerano, reminiscent of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood, and the luminous work of Kinuko Craft. | Luis Royo, another grand master of fantasy art, provides a vision of tortured women, often scantily clad, but it is their faces that draw my attention the most. |
| A. Andrew Gonzalez provides us with images of luminous women of stone and fire. His vision is breathtaking. | Jenny Jenoosh‘s talented art depicts beautiful young women with a playful spirit. |
| H. R. Giger –Who else can combine machine, monster and woman into multiple strange visions that are impossible to forget? | Deena Warner is a prolific artist and web designer who creates a unique vision for every book her art covers. |
| Anna Repp‘s delicate drawings bring unreal horizons to life. Many of her pieces seem to fade between realities, while others situate the viewer completely in a vivid other-place not our own. | Peter Schwartz‘s contemporary art is, strictly speaking, representative of nothing real. Many of his more recent pieces are stark–as he describes them–masculine. Others are strangely playful while evoking the dark lurking even in the light. |
| Amy Rowland‘s art is sometimes ugly, sometimes primitive, but distinctly unique and pwerful. The focus on oversized heads, breasts, and strange features such as multiple arms or bird claws, bring an intensity to the art that is enhanced by her bold use of color. | Bosaiya‘s work is a delight to view. His photographs take note of the old, worn, and the every day and make them luminous, strange, and often menacing. His images of insects and arachnids are fascinating, though I personally prefer his barns and machinery. |
| Ben Baldwin has provided cover art and illustrations for many authors, but it is his personal work that I find most compelling. Take a look at The Watcher, or The Trees in his personal work section to see what I mean. | Francois Thisdale utilizes mixed media collage to illuminate his point of view, but his commercial work is just as stunning, especially those whose focus is on a window to the soul and the things found there. All of his works, for me, evoke a mood of curious inquiry. I want to know what the secret is, hidden in each piece. |
| Rachel Winchester is the artist who provided us with the drolleries we use on every blog post. The dragonlich and the griffonlich, though small, demonstrate her care for detail. Her collage work provides a vision of Athens, washed in color and from a fantastical, feminine perspective. | Anne Cain is a skilled cover artist, but it is her Yaoi illustrations and those drawn in an anime style that I enjoy the most, including the deeply creepy cover to Dark Resurrection, reminiscent, to me, of animated Japanese devil-monsters. |
| Emma Peterson‘s sample covers numbered 3. “Red Dragon” and 6. “Image 1″ in particular are good examples of the kinds of cover art we like to see, intriguing characters who aren’t posed as if for a cheesecake calendar, but who, instead, attract the reader’s eye and make them interested in the story. |