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Jenna Andersen’s Intricate, Surreal Illustrations

Jenna Andersen, an artist/illustrator based in Williamsburg, Va., creates immersive, hyperdetailed scenes, often with surreal overtones. The artist often injects only pops of color into her personal work, rendering natural backdrops in intricate linework, with her animal and human subjects as the pieces’ points of entry. In other works, these typically monochromatic settings are given lush, gouache hues.

Leaning on these woodland backgrounds, Andersen is able to evoke both a playful and eerie mood with the “ghosts” in several of these works. Hidden within the brush and leaves are often hidden icons and objects that add intrigue to each narrative.

Andersen is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, graduating in 2015 before heading into a career as an illustrator and designer. Her personal work has been shown at Helikon Gallery, Gallery 5, Light Grey Art Lab, The Anderson Gallery, This Century Art Gallery, and other spots across the U.S.

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drawing, illustration, Jenna Andersen

Alice Wellinger, Figurative Art, illustration, Mary GrandPré

June 7, 2014

Austrian illustrator Alice Wellinger paints ironic and surreal images inspired by her childhood and everyday life experiences as a woman. Wellinger's paintings are a like patchwork of womanhood, often weaving female bodies with florals and other abstract, organic shapes. Her editorial illustration employs elements of cool surrealism with unapologetic messaging; from a fragile, porcelain-like vagina to more whimsical, like her pregnant Superwoman on a mission. Her imagination runs wild in her personal work. Wellinger’s artist statement on her website is simple: “I always try to tell a little story in my pictures - I like when people have something to think about." See more after the jump!

Nuria Riaza’s Evocative Ballpoint-Pen Drawings

ballpoint pen, drawing, Nuria Riaza

June 11, 2014

Nuria Riaza has an interest in anachronistic visuals — the elegant, female profiles with low-slung chignons and the elaborate facial hair fashions of yore. Her ballpoint-pen drawings — which span impressive lengths, sometimes nearly human scale — strip these elements found in old family photographs away from their contexts. She slices them up as if they were collages, using pens instead of scissors to remix the photorealistic elements. Marble-smooth skin adopts the literal qualities of the material, swirling with a monochromatic pattern of blue and white. Faces become transformed into kaleidoscopic visions, as if we were viewing them with insect eyes. The artist and illustrator does not dwell on the past: She appropriates it for her hallucinatory visions of a bizarre future.

Lindsay Stripling Illustrates a Quirky Dreamscape in “Ouroboros”

illustration, Lindsay Stripling, Watercolor

June 2, 2016

San Francisco based artist Lindsay Stripling usually works in watercolor to create her playful illustrations of dreamscapes dotted with simplistic human characters, animals, and objects. But for her new series, exhibiting this week at Flatcolor Gallery in Seattle, Stripling found herself painting in oils after an 8 year break from the medium. "It's my first real adventure with oils in 8 years and it was fun for sure," Stripling says, "trying to carry my looseness from my watercolors into these oil paintings."

Jamiyla Lowe’s Unsettling, Otherworldly Creatures

drawing, illustration, Jamiyla Lowe

January 12, 2018

Jamiyla Lowe’s fantastical, mixed-media illustrations contain both an absorbing morbidity and humor. Her creatures are often unsettling in their ambiguity, often stemming from fictional worlds or plucked from nightmares. The artist was last featured on HiFructose.com here.

Jenna Andersen’s Intricate, Surreal Illustrations

Alice Wellinger Tells Her Story in Ironic Illustrations

Nuria Riaza’s Evocative Ballpoint-Pen Drawings

Lindsay Stripling Illustrates a Quirky Dreamscape in “Ouroboros”

Jamiyla Lowe’s Unsettling, Otherworldly Creatures

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