Miniature Paintings Commemorating Special Occasions

Lorraine Loots started her painting marathon in 2013, setting out to produce a mini painting for each day of the year.  It was a beautiful project that saw her admires and followers suggest paintings for dates that were special to them.  When 2014 arrived and her city was designated World Design Capital, she decided to extend the her project by a further year and an extra 365 miniature Art pieces.  Now in 2015 she is loving the process so much that she is just continuing.  Loots covers, in her paintings, a multitude of subjects, we have included a few below with a video, in which she explains how the project came about.

Paintings - Getting Hyper Realistic in the Kitchen

Ruddy Taveras, incredibly talented Artist from the Dominican Republic, created these amazingly Hyper Realistic Paintings.  The very intense colours and the way he conveys transparency, make these paintings something special.  We have divided his paintings by colours and subject matter.  Enjoy...

Star Wars & other Miniature Paintings and drawings

Karen Libecap has been immersed in art since she was born, as her mother is a painter and wood carver.  Libecap owns and operates her own photography studio and loves to express her art in may different mediums such as watercolor, acrylics, clay and wax.  Today we are going to have a look at her miniature Drawings and Paintings that for their size, contain a lot of detail.

Paintings using Flower Petals

Lim Zhi Wei aka (Limzy) is a Malaysian Artist working out of Singapore.  After work there was not much time left for big complex paintings, so she used things she found around to incorporate in her art.  She used things like: food, flowers, pencils, cotton, stamps, thread, and much more.  In this post we have chosen to focus on her flower paintings.   It is interesting and very subtle, the way the painting portion is very light, to match the flowers she is using, so that the flower themselves, do not stand out, apart from the composition.

There is more Art created with petals on DesignStack, like: High Fashion Drawn with Petals and Flower Petal Birds.

Travels through the word's Architecture in Paintings

Polish Artist Maja Wronska graduated as an Architect last year and now brings us on a trip around the world with her beautiful watercolours.  Watercolours have a general, dreamlike quality associated with them, but Wronska really knows how to bring it out in her paintings.  You can see she has a real love for Architecture in the quality and detailing of the buildings she chooses to draw.  Enjoy your travels through the word's Architecture and its beautiful cities...
More of her work on DesignStack here Architectural Paintings and Drawing - Sketches.

Surreal Paintings - Balance of Mind and Heart

Talented surreal Digital Painter Christian Schloevery, skilfully tones down the digital part making his art look like it was painted on canvas.  In his art, he covers many different themes, that mostly centre around feelings, dreams and aspirations.  He uses his paintings as a seed leaving it to the viewer to germinate and grow into a story personal to them.  Enjoy...

Watercolours, Graphite and Gouache Drawings and Paintings

French Artist Nabil Nezzar uses a mixture of media, to create his contemporary drawings.  Watercolours, graphite and gouache, are used to give live to drawings and paintings, focusing on different part of the bodies.  On some, he concentrates on the face, on other, the upper portion of the body, the third category includes the three quarter length portrait and finally the portions that just focus on the clothing with no heads (plus one odd one out at the end).  A variety of poses, angles and subject matter, all inspiring.

Paintings or Sculptures in Portrait Collage

American Artist Jason Mecier has had an interest in arts since a young age, using all sorts of materials to construct his paintings / sculptures.  He came up with the idea of asking celebrities for their unwanted items, in exchange for a painting.  It soon caught on and as you can see below, he was very successful.  We have put together a group of celebrities from the past and the present with a video where, Mecier tells us more about his story and his work.  He works with all sorts of materials for his art, this is how he classifies them: Beans, Candy, Food, Junk, Yarn and Miscellaneous.  Mecier says that his artwork can take from 50 hours for the simpler ones to 2 months of solid work for the more complex.

Snippets of Real Life in Watercolor Paintings

French artist Thierry Duval has a passion for arts that reaches back, from when he was a child.  These amazing watercolours don't look like most of the ones we see out there, they have a definitive Photo Realistic look.  The other amazing thing about Duval's art, is the amount of detail he manages to inject into paintings that are not that big in size.  Amazing eye for detail and the capacity to make the watercolours reflect, lighten and darken his beautiful scenery, make these paintings look like, snippets of real life.  If you look at the "The lights of Montmartre" above or below the bigger scale one, Duval reproduces the art pieces for sale out of the shop.

Paintings of Dream-like Cities of the World

Kal Gajoum is a traveled Artist that started in Tripoli, where he was born, moving to Paris, then Britain and is now living in Canada.  His Oil Painting and palette knife techniques give his art a beautiful dream like feel to it, where you don't quite get to focus on the details like the people or their surroundings, but you get a perfect sense of what the picture is trying to convey.  As you would expect from his love of travel, his paintings cover many cities around the world, concentrating on the cities where he lived.  Lovely paintings that leave you with a serene feeling.  Enjoy...

Scenes of Realistic Night Time Paintings

Nigh time scenes are not that common when it comes to paintings and that is why we have decided to concentrate on Evgeny Lushpin's dusk artwork.  What makes these paintings special is the concept, the choice of light and the realistic look Lushpin is capable of infusing into them.  Most of his work is based on scenes of the major cities around the world, if you have been there, it will remind you of them, if you haven't, it sparks the flame in your mind to imagine its urban surrounding.

Dream or Nightmare in Surreal Paintings

Japanese Artist Naoto Hattori now living in the United States, says this about his work "My vision is like a dream, whether it's a sweet dream, a nightmare, or just a trippy dream. I try to see what's really going on in my mind, and that's a practice to increase my awareness in stream-of-consciousness creativity. I try not to label or think about what is supposed to be, just take it in as it is and paint whatever I see in my mind with no compromise. That way, I create my own vision."  Enjoy Hattori's magnificently surreal, dream inspiring, Artwork.

Varying degrees of Detail in Paintings with Expressions

Artist, Emma Leonard loves to concentrate on women and specifically expressions, sometimes quite hard hitting ones, mostly  melancholy and sadness.  Emma who is an Illustrator based in Melbourne, combines traditional art with Digital effects to enhance the finish product.  We love how her art goes from very detailed and realistic to minimalistic, almost dream like in its smokiness (if that is a thing).

Soothing Art in Surreal and Ethereal Paintings

Armenian Georgi Matevosyan (Георгий Матевосян) has a list of accomplishments throughout his life,  He graduated as an Engineer and Architect which he took up as a carer, for a time. Then he studied jewellery making and designing, but his love for art, is the one that trumped all his other interests.  Beautiful Paintings that give you a soothing and relaxing sensation when you look at them.  The thick brushstrokes help to add character giving direction, in their flowing motions.  We hope you enjoy them as much as we have...

Paintings of Creative Surreal Worlds ready to Explore

We featured Polish Artist Marcin Kołpanowicz last week and his (Link=>) "Painting Architecture in Surreal Worlds" this week we are exploring more of his other paintings, with a more generic subjects.  These paintings take, great imagination and a capacity to convey, in paintings, the double meanings and hidden messages, Surreal Paintings are so famous for.  Kołpanowicz acts as the conductor and guide when he takes us on a journey visiting and experiencing the worlds created by his vivid creativity.  All aboard...

Magic Realism in Surreal Paintings

Canadian artist Rob Gonsalves had two things growing up, a love for daydreaming and a love for art.  As he grew older he managed to combine these two aspects of himself into his art.  As well as a surreal feel, his art also has an optical illusion side to it, where your eyes and brain have to do a double take in order to process the image.  Gonsalves calls his style Magic Realism and the paintings below will definitely show you why.  Dreaming is an enjoyable emotion that is almost free, the only thing it is going to cost you is time, a price worth paying for...

Portrait Paintings focused on Expressions

French freelance Designer and Illustrator Florian Nicolle aka neo, has a very distinctive style that comes across in his beautiful paintings.  Even though the paintings as a whole, has not got a lot of details, especially on the periphery, he is formidable in capturing the expression of the people that populate his work, in particular the eyes.  Towards the end of the post we have included some famous faces that you might recognise.

Fairy-tale Worlds in Surreal Paintings

This is how Alexander Jansson describes himself "Some kind of "artist", digital mixed media illustrator, 2D/3D animator, mystery scientist, manager of Orchestre de Mystere, Resident of Gothenburg, Sweden".  We have chosen his work because of the beautifully Surreal feeling, that transports us back to childhood, when viewing his paintings.  Jansson almost acts a guide, walking us through the door, to these enchanting worlds and characters.  Vivid colours with different parts of the image alternating between focus and out of focus, really help give them a dreamlike quality.  Please enlarge the images when you are in the post in order to get the full effect.  We have included a video of the Ramone Bosco trailer, in which the combination of the animated images, as well as the perfectly chosen background music, help float us to a fantastic world of story telling and fairy-tales. Enjoy...

Photo Realistic Paintings with Textured Finish

Marco Grassi is an Italian artist that paints incredibly realistic art, in order to showcase, just how good his work is, we have added, for each painting, two more detailed ones, as you will be able to see below, the bigger scale photographs do not diminish the quality of the detail you get.  As well as getting the colour, texture and the slight translucency of the skin absolutely right, Grassi also adds textures like Paint, Stone, Ceramics and various Materials to great effect.  Enjoy...

Figurative Painting in Cityscapes Oil Paintings

Jeremy Mann is an accomplished American Artist who captures Human Figures, Landscapes, Still Life and Urban Cityscapes, with oil paints.  In today's post we are going to focus on the last of these subjects, the Urban Cityscapes.  Mann's work is characterised by the absence of sharp details, that you might get in a photograph, the view is sketchy and almost invites our brains to fill in the the painting.  You can look at them as small windows into the beautiful cities they represent where, the images have not come into focus completely and we are getting glimpses, details, of the beauty they have in store for us.