Featured Artist – Ellen Million Graphics Blog

Featured Artist: Nicole Cadet

Welcome to Ellen Million Graphic’s Featured Artist of the Week! Each week, we select an EMG artist and share their work and history. We hope you enjoy getting to see incredible artists this way.

This week, we’re proud to spotlight Australian artist Nicole Cadet! Nicole’s been a student of fantasy art since first discovering libraries at a young age. She’s particularly intrigued by medieval and mythical imagery, and that interest weaves through her fantasy art in pomp and pageantry, and the wild or whimsical glory of the fae. You can explore more of her art, find her Etsy shop, and learn about commissioning Nicole at her website: www.nicolecadet.com.

Nicole has contributed art to EMG-Zine, and we’re featuring her “Rose Unicorn” piece today in honor of National Unicorn Day! (This is apparently a thing in the US, and we’re not complaining!) She also has a good array of portraits available for adoption, ranging from Star Wars Jedi to a number of elves and a well-armored fellow. Nicole has also been an enthusiastic participant in Sketch Fests since 2010, leaving many prompts for fellow artists and creating fantastic sketches herself. A couple of her original sketches are even available for purchase at her Sketch Fest gallery.

We invite you to explore more at her pages over on EMG as linked below:

Nicole’s Sketch Fest page.

Nicole’s Portrait Adoption page.

Here are the illustrations featured above:

Portrait Adoption, available now.
“Earth Goddess,” by Nicole Cadet, original sketch available for purchase.
Another Portrait Adoption, available now and quite popular.
“Queen of Diamonds,” by Nicole Cadet.
“Rose Unicorn” by Nicole Cadet, featured in EMG-Zine: “Unicorns.” (April 2008)

Featured Artist: Tiffany Toland-Scott

Welcome to Ellen Million Graphic’s Featured Artist of the Week! Each week, we select an EMG artist and share their work and history. We hope you enjoy getting to see incredible artists this way.

This week, we’re spotlighting Tiffany Toland-Scott! Hailing from the Cascade foothills, she’s been a full-time artist since she was 17 and sold out her first art show. She’s been inspired by the mythic from childhood, and counts American folklore, Southern Gothic media, and Victorian cemeteries among her inspirations. Her work has been featured and published all over the world, and you can explore art both haunting and beautiful at her website at www.epiphany.gallery.

Tiffany’s been a Portrait Adoption contributor since 2008, contributing popular figures that appear caught mid-movement. She’s also been a dedicated contributor to Sketch Fest since 2010, crafting remarkable sketches in the single hour allowed and then adding finished paintings later – you simply must wander through her Sketch Fest gallery!

There are two Portrait Adoption pieces included in her featured illustrations, and we invite you to explore more at her pages over on EMG as linked below.

Tiffany’s Portrait Adoption gallery.

Tiffany’s Sketch Fest gallery.

The pieces featured above are:

Sand Witch.
Wreath of Moths and Butterflies.
Lost Books.
Portrait Adoption, with some customization available.
Another Portrait Adoption, with some limited customization available.

Featured Artist: Mayumi Ogihara

This week, the spotlight turns to Mayumi Ogihara! Originally from Japan, Mayumi now lives and creates in BC, Canada. While she began as primarily a portrait artist, she discovered a talent and love for creating fantasy art – which she’s been practicing with great skill and passion ever since. You can discover more about her, explore her a portfolio full of soulful and emotive illustrations, and even watch videos of her process at www.mayumiogihara.com.

Mayumi has been an excellent friend and supporter to Ellen Million Graphics for years – her Sketchfest gallery is especially impressive, since she’s been a regular participant for the last four years. She also provides portraits to the Portrait Adoption site, where she even now has several portraits available that are rife with story potential.

Each of the illustrations included in this feature gallery have products available, and we invite you to explore more at her pages over on EMG as linked below.

Mayumi’s Portrait Adoption gallery.
Mayumi’s Sketch Fest gallery, including art available on various products.

The pieces featured here are:

Portrait, ready for adoption.
“Star Bright.” ACEO print available!
“Elven Prince.” Original available!
“Guardian of the Forest.” Print, and ACEO print available!
Another portrait, ready for adoption.

Featured Artist: Kir Talmage

Welcome to Ellen Million Graphics’ Featured Artist of the Week! Each week (or so), we select an EMG artist and share their work and history. We hope you enjoy getting to see incredible artists this way.

This week, our spotlight picks out that artist of adorable whimsy and organic delight Kir Talmage! Kir joins us from a cabin in the woods of Vermont, where she lives among creek and fauna and forest.

She’s been creating art since she was a child drawing on the walls of her grandmother’s summer cottage, and kept up the practice for stress relief and “casual comfort” for many years as her focus stayed riveted on STEM studies. Now she embraces her art as a journey, part and parcel of the fabric of her life. She finds herself inspired by and learning from so many other illustrators, and also found her work grounded by excellent art teachers in high school and college. Some of her inspirations include the work of Trina Schart Hyman, John Bauer, Alan Lee, Brian Froud, Jill Barklem, Mary Jo Koch, and Stephanie Pui-Min Law. While she most often draws with pencil and pen, she adores watercolors, saying “I am astounded and amazed and delighted and befuddled by them.” They help her evolve as an artist. She doesn’t have much time for hobbies, but also doesn’t see a sharp delineation between her work and her play. There are always family relationships to nurture, books to read or create, hikes and outdoor activities to enjoy, and so much more as part of life. You can explore more at her website.

Kir has been a friend to EMG for at least half a decade, participating in many Sketch Fests and contributing to the shared world and worldbuilding project that is Torn World. She has contributed over 100 sketches to her Sketch Fest gallery, depicting everything from a present-toting dragon and a behatted coffee-rower to a hookah-smoking unicorn and a rock-and-roll naiad. She’s also a prolific and creative prompter, leaving over 200 prompts from the simple “crab apples” to the involved “where Neverland, Neverwhere, Otherwhere and the Borderlands meet.” Over at Torn World, you can find an illustration of longfingers that she did and an article on the Dorruuyirv, a sort of polar seagoing mammal. We invite you to explore her work at EMG via the links below.

“The Song of the Twisted Tooth (a personal concert)”

Kir’s Sketch Fest gallery.
Kir’s Torn World creator page.

“Grandmother Fox Stitching Up the Stories”

The featured illustrations are:
“Ocean Child”
“Mage Rat”
“Rocking the Water”
“The Song of the Twisted Tooth (A Personal Concert)”
“Grandmother Fox Stitching up the Stories”

Featured Artist: Madison Stuart

This week, our spotlight picks out that artist of colorful characters and fantastical folk, Madison Stuart! She joins us from Massachusetts by way of Indiana by way of her birth state North Dakota. Madison’s been drawing as long as she can remember, benefiting from generous parents who bought her art supplies whenever she asked for them. She cycles through visually creative periods where she draws most days, and fallow periods when she doesn’t – and finds herself most inspired by the science fiction and fantasy worlds she’s read about throughout her life, along with all the fandom and webcomics she’s encountered in her years wandering the Internet. She took a few art classes in high school – and did chalk portraits of many of her teachers! – but is largely self-taught.

While she’s worked with colored pencils and acrylics and even extensively with felt-tip pens, Madison is currently focusing on creating digitally. ” I’m still not sure whether I like digital art or not,” she confessed, “but I can work really quickly digitally and these days I lack patience; if something isn’t mostly done in an hour or two I put it aside and never touch it again.” She may be focusing on digital art, but she also said she’ll use any type of media that’s in front of her – even if it’s ketchup! She went on to add: “Perhaps some day I will be patient again; making lots of tiny lines is rather soothing, and I miss how easy it is to blend colors when using physical media.”

When she’s not doing art, you can find her reading (over 300 books a year!), knitting shawls (from her own patterns), and collecting weird accessories from pins to necklaces. She claims these are for one-day cosplays, but she might just be a dragon building her hoard.

Madison has been a contributing Portrait Adoption artist with EMG since 2009, and has created more than a dozen portraits for the site. She credits fan art with getting her into drawing portraits, and noted that her most frequently doodled subject are disembodied faces. She’s drawn characters from a freckled fawn-girl to finely-dressed elves and a blue-hued tiefling to characters of a dozen attitudes. Her portraits are also always stunning deals, so browse her Portrait Adoption gallery here!