Presenting the formidable talent of Kent Williams. Working simultaneously as a painter and as a graphic novel artist (amongst other pursuits), he has been contributing to comics since the the early 80s. In 2005 he worked with filmmaker Darren Aronofsky to create The Fountain graphic novel. His expressive brush work attentively combine realism and abstraction. Often in dream-like surrounding, his central characters largely seem to be mid-narrative. I have always seen a strong Egon Schiele influence in Williams’ work, which is especially evident when looking at his pencil work. Keep up-to-date with Williams by checking out his website and blog.

Beijing-based Benjamin Zhang Bin is a comic artist best known for his brightly coloured painted style. He gained popularity in the west due to his stunning cover work for Marvel Comic’s titles X-Men Origins: Emma Frost and New Mutants. He has also written and illustrated manhuas including Orange (2006) and Remember (2004). Not your typical black and white manhua style, it often takes Benjamin much longer to produce work, with Orange rumouring to have taken three years to produce. See more of his illustrations over on his blog.

San Francisco comic and freelance artist Chris Staggs graduated from the Joe Kubert school for cartooning and animation. Relatively new to the comic industry Mr. Staggs has already worked on Marvel Comic’s Deadpool titles, and more recently has been working on a Dark horse title’s Mass Effect: Homeworlds and Prototype 2. The cross-section of his illustration influences, including J.C. Leyendecker, Mike Mignola, Alphonse Mucha, Claire Wendling, Sergio Toppi, Sebastion Kruger and Carlos Meglia, are shown in his large range of styles. I particularly like his some of his more recent black & white commissions, which you can see on his DeviantArt page.

Oh yes, Happy new year!

Julian Totino Tedesco began working in comics in 2009 illustrating interiors and covers for smaller publishers like BOOM! Studios and Kickstart Comics. Since 2011 Tedesco began working for Marvel Comics on titles including Venom: Circle of Four, Uncanny X-Force, Northanger Abbey, and Season One.

His characters are beaming with emotion, and his colour pallets perfectly set the right moods. Tedesco’s painted covers are absolutely stunning. His short, thick stroked brush marks remind me very much of impressionist paintings. To be wowed by more of Tedesco’s work check out his deviant art page.

By the mid 90s I had successfully chosen my three favourite comic book artist, Joe Madureira, J. Scott Campbell and you guessed it, Humberto Ramos. You can only imagine my delight when they buddied together to form Cliffhanger. Over the years I have revelled watching the way Mr. Ramos’s style has evolved, I especially love his confidence in his un-inked pencils. It was his art in Impulse that made me sit up and take note. After which he went on to work on some brilliant comics including, Ash, Crimson, Out There, Wolverine and Runaways. Dotting around publishers early on, Mr. Ramos has, it seems, found a home with Marvel, and is currently penciler for The Amazing Spider-Man.

- Here is a little something for you fellow Cliffhanger geeks!

Recently going through some of my old trading cards I stumbled on my 1994 Marvel Masterpieces set. All my love for The Brothers Hildebrandt came flooding back. I loved their short comment on the back like,

“We found that we literally had to develop a new style to paint this set, to convey the extremes of the intensity for the characters!”

Just the kind of stuff to get a young illustrator charged up! The brothers started painting professionally in 1959 and worked solidly since, illustrating for posters, books, adverts and, of coarse, trading cards. I was sad to read that Tim died in 2006, but the duo’s work will definitely continue inspiring illustrators for years to come. See more of their work on their website.

Though I would write a post about the late and great Jean Henri Gaston Giraud who passed away just a month ago. R.I.P Mr Giraud…

For those of you who don’t know, he was a French comic artist mostly known as a bandes dessinées artist (Comics that are created for a Belgian and French audience. These countries have a long tradition in comics and comic books Flemish Belgian comic books (originally written in Dutch) are influenced by francophone comics, yet have a distinctly different style. Many other European comics, especially Italian comics, are strongly influenced by Franco-Belgian comics.)

Jean Giraud has had a vast career, working with Marvel Comics on  a Silver Surfer miniseries which won the Eisner Award for best limited series in 1989 and his awe inspiring later work on “Inside Moebius” an illustrated autobiographical fantasy in six hardcover volumes totalling 700 pages.

“Giraud’s working methods were various and adaptable ranging from etchings, white and black illustrations, to work in colour of the ligne claire genre and water colours. Giraud’s solo Blueberry works were sometimes criticized by fans of the series because the artist dramatically changed the tone of the series as well as the graphic style. However, Blueberry’s early success was also due to Giraud’s innovations, as he did not content himself with following earlier styles, an important aspect of his development as an artist.”

View his official website here: moebius.fr