Artist 50: Peter Longstaff

There's no denying that Peter Longstaff is a great painter. He style is very impressionistic and conveys a lot of emotion. The British painter uses brushstrokes to his advantage, creating a variety of textures that make the viewer want to touch the painting.

Winter Walk


Winter Wonderland


Did I mention that he has no arms? Yeah, he was born with no arms because of a drug his mother was taking during pregnancy to cure morning sickness. He taught himself how to paint using nothing but his feet and mouth. That's pretty damn impressive!

Peter inspires me to overcome physical obstacles, no matter what the odds are. He also reminds me that when you're thinking your life sucks, there's always someone worse off, and they just might surpass you if you let your problems get to you.

No freakin' arms!

Artist 49: Paul Reed Smith

More guitar art! This guy is a professional luthier, and considered the best in the world. One of his average guitars sells for $3,000 easily. He does make a more affordable line, but the sound is nowhere near as thick as his hand crafted, Stevensville, Maryland made axes. There is one model in particular that almost every guitarist drools over when they see it. This is the legendary PRS Dragon



The entire body is covered in mother of pearl and semi-precious stone inlays. If you think it looks impressive in the photo, you should see it in person. There is currently one on display at the Museum of American History in Washington D.C. The attention to detail on these guitars is flawless. Every inlay piece fits snugly into the routing. This is one guitar I would be afraid of playing, because if I were to scratch it the entire world would hate me.

PRS inspires me to strive for that legendary craftsmanship, no matter what medium I'm working with. Impeccable build quality will always be something clients will take into consideration, so you might as well build it to last.

Artist 48: Doug Rowell

I will always have a passion for the guitar. It's such a fun instrument to play and look at. Let's face it, those absurdly expensive, hand built axes should sometimes be in museums, and often are. Not every guitar comes out of the shop with master artistry, sometimes they need special attention. Doug Rowell is one of those guys who will take an already great looking guitar and make it extraordinary. He's a wood carver, and claims that he can carve anything out of anything. Now, Doug is a man of few words. He lets his work do the talking, so I'll do the same.

Strat Nouveau


Dragon Heart Xiphos


I'm a huge fan of Ibanez guitars, so the Xiphos hits home with me. I also like radical body shapes that stand out from the crowd, especially the pointy ones.

I actually plan on building my own 7-string guitar in the near future in an original body shape. It's nothing too gaudy, but still looks different from anything else I've seen. Rowell has motivated me to carry through with this extremely ambitios project.

Artist 47: GWAR

Yup, you knew it was coming. The almighty GWAr has made it on my list of influential artists. GWAR is a splatter metal band composed of alien war lord who were banished to Earth millions of years ago by the Master of the Universe because they were making a general mess of things. They were frozen in antarctica after they caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. But before they were frozen, Beefcake the Mighty stretched dinosaur gizzard strings across the Grand Canyon and wrote the first song in the world, "I Write the Songs." It is a little known fact, but this song actually contained every single song known to man kind, other people just copied parts and claimed it as their own. They were released from Antarctica during the 1980s due to the massive amounts of hair spray being used, causing the polar ice caps to melt. Sleazy P. Martini discovered them, gave them instruments, and set out to promote the best band the world has ever seen. 25 years later, they are still touring across the world, killing their audiences every night.



But seriously, they're actually a bunch of VCU graduates who majored in Fine Arts and Music Performance. Put those two together with a killer sense of humor (pun intended), and you get GWAR. They are much more than just a band, they're visual artists as well. They make their own costumes and props in their studio, The Slave Pit, in Richmond, Virginia. The members of the studio who don't play in the band get to dress up as GWAR's slaves and have their own fun on stage during performances. These performances involve loud heavy metal music, executing victims on stage, bad jokes, and general messiness.

On top of writing music and making props, frontman David Brockie (Oderus Urungus) is an illustrator and produces his own comics and artwork. Everything he does is quite vile and not suitable for children, though it is quite funny. I'm not going to post images of Brockie's original work, because Oderus might find me and take my head off with his sword, and then drink my blood.

GWAR has inspired quite a bit of my work. They kind of encouraged me to used my sick sense of humor in some of my work, and to approach the wearable work with a more extreme look. But most importantly, they have taught me to have fun with your artwork, that way you'll never get bored with it.

Artist 46: Veronique Meignaud

Meingaud is a French born illustrator, who currently resides in Paris. After 2 years of study at the Emile Cohl Art School she worked for 5 years in the video game industry as a concept artist. She is now working for several publishers, including Wizards of the Coast, and is slowly working her way into the fashion industry. She recently publish Kerogen, an illustration book containing her work. She also goes by the alias of Marmotte

Her style is reminiscent to the Art Nouveau style, which originated in France. She uses bright colors and soft, almost impressionistic lines in her paintings.

Paquerette


You might want to take a second look at this one. Notice how she's not a centaur, but actually has legs and is sitting on the horse torso. The is the kind of strangeness I love! Some of her other work is a bit more aggressive and detailed, like this;

Keeper


Eau de Plomb


These last two works give me some awesome ideas for wearable artwork that has a heavier fantasy influence. I might even make a exoskeleton that's both aggressive and serene at the same time.

Artist 45: Uwe Jarling

Jarling was born in 1968. He graduated with a degree in graphic design in 1991 and worked as an illustrator and graphic designer further on. He first jobs were for covers for books and videos, along with many technical and architectural drawings for advertising agencies. In 2000 he started to develop his fantasy style artwork and attempted computer art for the first time. All of his work has been digital since 2003. He currently works and resides in a small town in Southern Germany.

His work has a sort of death metal feel to it, even if it's meant to be non-horror inspired.

Fleshcrawl- Soulskinner


There is definitely a Beksinski influence to his style. He does occasionally do fairies, which I'm not a fan of. His horror artwork is by far superior, since it much more detail and would make the fairy fans melt into a pile of glitter.

Fleshcrawl- Structures of Death


Very Meshuggah-like. His horror work inspires me to add a like evil to my wearable wirework and really play with people's minds.

Artist 44: Adelle Caunce

This is an artist that I actually talk with on Facebook and exchange ideas with on occasion. She's from Surry BC, Canada and apparently grew up as a somewhat feral child. She studied Fine Arts and Criminology in college from 92-97. She gets some of her ideas from corny horror and sci-fi movie. She took up traditional animation training at Sheridan College in Ontario from 99-2001. She then moved to San Francisco, California where she studied computer animation, sculpts large fish sculptures, and draws.

Her fish sculptures are made out of recycled newspapers, cloth, and other objects that she stumbles upon. It typically takes her 10-15 hours per foot of length on her sculptures. No two sculptures look alike, as they are all hand made with no use of templates. She hopes to offer an alternative to mounting fish as trophies and keep them living their lives happily in the water.

Adelle currently resides in Texas.

Her fish sculptures are incredibly whimsical and should make anyone who views them laugh at the comical appearance. She uses a lot of texture in her work, making the newspaper and fabric look like somewhat realistic skin and scales. The most common motif in her work are ridiculous teeth in the mouths of the fish. Instead of using the teeth the species she is sculpting actually would have, she exaggerates them or uses completely different ones, like a great white shark with molars and braces.

While I mainly focus on freshwater with my fish sculptures, Caunce typically chooses marine and deep sea fish for her subject matter. She does put a lot of research into the body structure of the particular fish that she is sculpting, which she later abstracts lightly in order to add a more comical look. She hasn't updated her site in a while, so we can only guess what her most recent works are.

Here are some of her wonderful works;

Goblin Shark


Hammerhead Shark


Deep Sea Hatchetfish


Adelle has influenced me to work on a larger scale and depict even more motion in my fish sculptures. Most of her sculptures are over 6 feet long and command every once of attention in the gallery they are being displayed in.

Here's her website if you want to check out more of her amazing work.
http://www.biguglyfishies.com/BUF.html