You know what it is. It's ya boi Si here with other round-up. This was honestly a fucking great week for looking at cool art. I have seven pieces selected. If there aren't seven pieces in this round-up know that I got too tired to post all of them.
Eli Minaya has a very cool combination of collage and digital in the way he produces images. His use of the kind of off-kilter layer modes like subtract and divide to produce this incredible colour combinations has always fascinated me and there's really no one else working right now at this level whose work looks anything like it. It has an incredible energy to it.
One of my favourite things in fantasy and sci-fi spaces is to establish detail in ways that make somewhere feel lived in and there's a lot of that in here. From a technical perspective the blocking on this composition is doing an incredible job of directing attention and establishing space, placing the viewer in a visible foreground. The warm-cold/dark-light dichotomy here is both clearly establishing a focal area while also giving the viewer that perfect golden hour comfort that plays very nicely in this afternoon nap atmosphere. Lest you think the calm atmosphere is only true because the alligator is asleep, poqu also includes an alligator peacefully reading letting you know that that nap is is the exact level of chill these gators have.
Here's just some really solid concept art. Having work on isometric production art before this is great as illustrating how a thing is constructed, how it might be used, the scale of the thing. It evokes a specific place and hints at the culture. It gives you a sense of its use, but a shape language that gives it a strong identity.
The first thing I need to establish about this piece that astounds me is that this is done in gouache on canvas. If you aren't familiar, gouache functions very similarly to watercolours. It's a little chalkier so its easier (not easy) to achieve flat opaques. Its also quite thin, so getting colours to look as clean and flat as this (on canvas!) is quite something. I love this palette. I love how the yellow eats all the other colours except that dark blue which punches through at points that kind of bound the important shapes. I love how the intense (almost pinkish) white establishes the most important focal areas and then ends in red lips and red lines, putting your eyes directly on the face, the focal point of the image.
Moving to something a little less colourful is this moody piece, from the school of art that is focused on drawing portraits of hot goth ladies from the waist up. There's really nice use of noisy paper textures at work here, good value grouping to read the image easily and the touches of red to a lot to let your eye dance around the image. Some things I particularly am drawn to in this image are both the immaculate rendering of the snakeskin coils and the way in which we are never shown the head of the snake, but it remains so easily identified as being such. The other thing I love is this out of focus suggestion of a hanging house plant that establishes the space as being much more real it would otherwise feel without it.
Andrew's (or Schmandrew's as he has monikered himself online) work is easily identified by its saturated jewel tones and wavy, flowing lines. He self describes as a "fantasy pop illustrator" and there is something to be said for that, with really bold attention-wrenching palettes that could, in the wrong context, feel really commercial. I always love seeing the really sharp geometry of Andrew's work, the way that bold shapes interact and overlap and the very well curated balance of the the size of these shapes keep the image easily readable.
This colourful week comes to a close with this piece by ahad. I'm tired and I'm out of stuff to say, but I hope by now you are able to come to your own conclusions about why this composition is strong and probably have a good sense of why I am drawn to it particularly. Good morning and happy monday, wishing you a good week, ahad says as they post this image. Indeed. What a way to start a week!