Art Owl Studio Paint Brush Set With Carrying Pouch Nice Artist Gift

The one thing that is essential to all art painters is brushes. With that said you can see why the Art Owl Studio paint brush set with carrying pouch would make a nice artist gift.

It has 36 brushes of different varieties that can be used with watercolors, oils and acrylics. That makes this kit very versatile. It even comes with a free roll-up pouch and a PDF guide on how to take care of the brushes.

I mostly paint in oils, but I do a watered down acrylic under-painting first. I would love to have a kit like this with the quality it has and the variety.

The video below will give you a better feel of what's inside this kit.

My Comic Book Character Art - Martian Manhunter

I have mentioned in some posts that besides my surreal artwork, I also do comic book character art. In this post I will show you a video of me doing one of those pieces.

I will be painting Martian Manhunter, from DC Comics. This was a commissioned piece. One of a few I did for this one guy.

Check out the video.



Hope you like seeing how I did this painting. I will post more of these kinds of videos in the future.

Artist Mannequin A Gift For An Artistic Person

An artist mannequin is a good gift for an artistic person because it is a good model for figuring out poses.

This one is 12 inches and made with hardwood. Anyone into drawing or painting the human body, but doesn't have a human model readily availabe can use this to work out different poses.

I have one of these, but I don't use it to workout poses. I have actually used it as an object in a couple of my paintings. One of which you can see below. Below that I have added a video of an animation done with one these just for fun. It just shows another use for one of these guys.

Essential Art Supplies Gift Set For Young Artists

Kids just love to draw, paint and create. This Essential Art Supplies Gift Set for young artists gives them everything they need to be as creative as they want to be.

This thing is full of stuff a child can use to explore their creative side. There's colored pencils, oil pastels, washable markers, high quality paper, a color illustration booklet and more.

I was a young creator back in the days when kids where just given a number two pencil, a box of crayons and a piece of paper. This goes well beyond that and allows a child the opportunity to open up their creative mind.

Works By Some Of My Favorite Artists

For this post I wanted to show a few works by some of my favorite artists. These are the people who inspire me and make me want to be better.

Joel Rea
First off we have Joel Rea. He is my newest discovery. I discovered him about two years ago and I just love his work. It is photo-realistic and is surrealistic, which is the style all my favorites do and also mostly what I do.

Rea uses himself in most of the paintings he does and generally multiple versions of him doing different things in a piece. In his version of "The Last Supper" (pictured below) he is all of the people you see, except the woman of course, which is his wife.
http://www.joelrea.com.au/paintings/

M.C. Escher
Next is M.C. Escher, the master of optical illusional art as I call it. With a lot of his illustrations you don't know if you're coming or going, if you're up or down, if it's birds or fish.

I like the way he fools the eye into thinking you're seeing one thing, but then it turns into something else.

One of the works I like best of his is the "Bond Of Union", which is below. I love the way the ribbons of the heads intertwine at the top end up actually connecting.
http://www.mcescher.com/

Rene Magritte
Below is the painting that I like best from Rene Magritte. It is also the one that put him on the map for me. It is called "Time Transfixed".

I love the realism and the simplicity of the piece. As a matter of fact, that's what I like about most of Magritte's work, simplicity. Even though most are very detailed, the composition is generally simplistic.
http://www.renemagritte.org/

Roland Heyder
I have been following Roland Heyder for awhile now. The painting below is what put him on my radar. I forget exactly where I saw it, but I followed it back to Heyder's site and I check it every week to see if there's anything new.

What I like about the painting, which is titled "The Knot", is how the material clings to the woman's body giving it the look of wetness. And there's those dark, fluffy, ominous looking clouds that I absolutely love.

Where as I like the simplicity of Magritte's work, I love the detail and complexity of Heyder's.
http://www.heyland7.de/english.htm

Salvador Dali
I have mentioned in other posts that Salvador Dali is my all time favorite art creator. After all he is the guy that made me turn from wanting to be a comic book illustrator to wanting to be a surreal artist.

It is hard for me to pick one piece of artwork of his that I like best, but the one below is definitley among them. It is titled "Crucifixion". I love everything about this painting. The realism of the clothing on the woman in the foreground, which I assume is suppose to be Mary, which is modeled by Dali's wife Gala. I love the intensity of the hands and the feet. I love mood of the whole piece and I love his version of the cross.

All in all, a fantastic piece of art.
http://www.dali-gallery.com/galleries/paintings.html

There are other art creators that I like. Some are even comic book illustrators. But these are the ones that have the most influence on what I do.