Awesome Illustration

Annie “Ancho” Choi is a brilliant young artist whose wonderful animations landed her a gig working for the famed Studio Ghibli. Her Instagram and TikTok feature a selection of her beautifully rendered visuals, each of which features an unexpected transformation. We especially love her wearable bread loafers.

Artist Ed Fairburn creates incredible portraits by drawing intricate crosshatch patterns on maps. His precision penmanship works hand-in-hand with the underlying map lines to produce outlines of his subjects and explores the relationship between people and the world around us. You can find prints and originals of Ed’s work on his website.

Artist Alain Biet created this mindblowing short film, which starts out with an artist painting an image of a pencil. As soon as he’s done with that one, more everyday objects start appearing and accumulating until the frame is completely filled. We can’t imagine how long it took Alain to create all 8,000 watercolor paintings. Music by Yan Volsy + Pablo Pico

These artful playing cards from Montenzi feature imagery inspired by the ancient Roman tile floors. Their backs have tiled patterns, while their fronts reveal shapes and images with the well-worn look of millions of footsteps. They come in a greenish-grey classic edition and Purple and Teal limited editions. A three-color bundle is also available.

Huion’s displays are created for artists and designers, with built-in pen support for drawing and painting on screen. The 24″ displays come in QHD (2560 x 1440) and 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) resolutions, and are Windows/MacOS compatible. Their battery-free pens have a 5080 LPI resolution, 8192-level pressure, and 60º tilt sensitivity.

Illustrator DP Truong chose Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow as the subject of a pencil drawing. After he finished the 21 cm (8.26 in) black-and-white portrait, he kept going. Only for the next drawing, he went with a smaller piece of paper. Then he repeated the task over and over until he got down to a 0.2 cm (0.07 in) image.

Irish artist Shane Gillen is a talented illustrator with a unique drawing style. But while he was creating an image of Vecna from Stranger Things 4, the creepy villain paid him a visit from the Upside Down. At least he didn’t snap Shane’s bones.

This guidebook from Red Right Hand Comics teaches you everything you need to create your own pixelated works of art. It offers more than 200 pages of lessons on making sprites, backgrounds, animation, and ideas for an efficient workflow. Both the digital and hardback versions include access to a digital resource archive.

Artist Edson Aurélio Hudson shows off his improvisational abilities by tossing some random hardware soaked in ink onto a sheet of paper, then incorporating those blobs of ink as the foundation for an imaginative illustration. See more of his improvised images in this compilation video.

Artist Richard Berner makes amazing illustrations comprised of countless tiny people. From a distance, the images look like one thing, but on closer examination, they’re made up of a sea of intertwined souls. You can find prints of some of his works on his website.

Known for their whimsical images of drunk cats, artists Arna Miller and Ravi Zupa created this hilarious deck of cards illustrated with their pub-crawling, booze-swigging kitties. The images are also available on matchboxes and stamps.

Artist Chet Phillips created this awesome deck of playing cards featuring hand-drawn illustrations inspired by vintage matchbook covers. The subjects of each image are drawn from pop culture subjects, from Alien to Monty Python’s Holy Grail.

Artist Nadine Sophie designed and illustrated this impressive deck of cards which features images inspired by the gods and monsters of Greek mythology. The cards feature a bold monochromatic look, which brings out all of the light and shadow in Nadine’s detailed imagery. That Cerberus 3-headed dog is badass.

Artist Visoth Kakvei is known for their intricate floral and ornamental illustrations. Among their incredible works are their “Floral Hole” images that appear to have a deep, dark hole in the middle of them. Another artist even animated one image to make it look like a bee was crawling out of the hole.

Illustrator Daniele Turturici shows off a little bit of his digital painting technique, as he takes a scene and brings it to life through the addition of light and shadow created by a neon sign. The restaurant’s proprietor is known as a “Draak” in the artist’s universe. Be sure to check out more of his work on Instagram.

We’re fortunate to be able to work from home, but not all trades can get their jobs done remotely. Illustrator Robertas Nevecka uses animation to offer up some clever ideas of what members of a film crew might do with their talents while isolating at home. Music and sound by Simonas Jončys.

As we’ve seen before, James Raiz aka TheBoxOfficeArtist loves to draw comic book heroes. In this time-lapse, he illustrates 100 different variants of the anger and adamantium-filled X-Man, from his comic book tiger stripe, to his look in the X-Men movies, to the rarely seen Hulkverine, and even Old Man Logan.

Detroit lawyer and artist Colin Darke not only can draw well, but has the rare ability to do it with both his left and right hands. But he doesn’t just use them one at a time, he draws with both hands at the same time. Check out his Instagram for more time-lapse videos of his work.

James Raiz aka TheBoxOfficeArtist loves to draw complicated scenes featuring lots and lots of characters. In this clip, he meticulously illustrated 100 versions of The Dark Knight as seen in his many different guises over the years. Join James’ Discord community for a chance to win a print of the finished image.

Andymation spent over 35 days over the course of 3 months creating this insanely-thick flipbook. The 658-page anime-style sequence only takes about 50 seconds to watch, but it’s a serious testament to the artist’s illustration skill and dedication. Skip to 15:07 for the money shot.

The consistently amazing animator Jake Fried is back with another incredible work, meticulously hand-illustrated using ink and Wite-Out on paper. The images in “The Blank Page” take us on a wild journey through the artist’s mind, and the wonder of creative possibilities.

Artist JF Lemay is a master at creating awesomely creepy and twisted black and white illustrations. In addition to his still images, his instagram is filled with cool video clips, like this multilayered human, complete with skin, bones, organs, and a special surprise inside.

Digital illustrator Robson Lami likes to take cartoon characters and reimagine them as if they were living, breathing people. He’s taken on Rick Sanchez, Popeye, Woody, the Powerpuff Girls, Sonic the Hedgehog and many more, and they’re almost always incredibly creepy.