Portrait Adoption – Ellen Million Graphics Blog

Featured Artist: Madison Stuart

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 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!

Featured Artist: Brandy Woods

An elf with dark skin and long white hair occupies the right 2/3rds of the image, turned toward the viewer. Her right arm holds a white cloak with edging of golden embroidery closed at her throat; the sleeve depicted on her right arm is purple with a golden cuff. She wears a diadem of gold with a dark center-set jewel. Her eyes are tilted, and a subtle smile plays on her lips. The background is painted pale gold. — Elven Portrait Adoption

This week, our spotlight turns to illuminate that artist of colorful characters and storied scenes, Brandy Woods! Brandy joins us from Montreal, and is originally from Louisiana where the walls of her family home were papered in her childhood drawings.

A sketch of a human woman, examining a leaf held before her face between pointer finger and thumb. Her bust is depicted. Her hair long, moving in an unseen wind. She wears a simple diadem with a curved decorative element in the center of her forehead. She appears to be wearing a plain, colored dress with some small lace edging at neckline and the one cuff in the illustration's view. She also wears a simple necklace: a thin chain and some circular center element. — Curious Human Portrait Adoption

“My mom tells me that even before I held a pencil, I was using fingernail polish to ‘paint’ on my highchair,” Brandy confided. She’s largely self-taught, and drew early inspiration from Wendy Pini before being deeply influenced by manga. She’s spent the years since refining her style, and attended Dawson College’s Illustration & Design program in her 30’s, graduating at the top of her class with honors and multiple scholarships.

When creating, Brandy most often sketches in pencil before digitally coloring her works in Corel Painter or Photoshop. She also enjoys working with acrylics, oils, and watercolors. Much of her inspiration is drawn from fantasy and various world cultures. When she’s not creating, you’re likely to find her reading—”One of my life goals is to have a library like Neil Gaiman’s,” she told us (a worthy goal!)—or playing video games. She enjoys science fiction, fantasy, mythology, and more. She also enjoys collecting Breyer horses, red foxes, and fountain pens. You can discover more about her and her work at her website.

A full figure stands against a soft background of mountainous brown-grey terrain and a blue-white sky. He stands with feet spread and arms held aloft. A brown owl is just alighting on the figures left arm. He faces the viewer; his left arm is covered with a baldric and arm-length glove. His right arm is bare, as is much of his smooth chest. He wears a short cropped purple vest, a teal cloth belt gathered by a gold center buckle over draped purple cloth with golden detailing in a thick edge over bagg golden pants tucked into knee-high brown boots. He also wears a purple bandana with golden detailing over his dark hair. He has a scarred face, the line running over his left eye. He bears a serious expression, and a partially open mouth. His facial hair is dark, and sort of an extended goatee out to the sides. — Owl Guy Portrait Adoption

Brandy is one of EMG’s most popular Portrait Adoption artists, with a gallery of seventeen portraits – several of which are on wishlists and many of which come with the option to purchase the original. She’s an inspired portrait artist as well – her character studies pull off impressive characterization in expression, stance, clothing and equipment details, and more. You can even request customizations on a number of her portraits. In her gallery, you’ll find everything from women warriors in both sensible and non-sensible armor, dark elves and skeptical elves, spellcasters and unicorn companions and characters in excessively long coats. She’s also open to commissions! We invite you to discover more of her work at EMG through the link below!

Brandy’s Sketch Fest gallery.

Featured Artist: Marika Purisima

Self-portrait of the author with her character Lorelai: a pale face is depicted from mid-nose up, wearing round spectacles; the person's eyes are brown, and dark colored hair frames their face under a white knit cap with cat ears (showing pink interiors); the brown bespectacled hedgehog faces the viewer from her perch atop the hat. — “Meeks and Lorelai”

This week, our spotlight picks out that artist of bespectacled hedgehogs and bright whimsy, Marika Purisima (AKA Meeks)! Meeks joins us from Vancouver, where she’s lived for the last eleven years – and she has no intentions of leaving any time soon! She describes herself as “artistically inclined aspie with a lifelong love of stories.”

A mottled red octopus faces away from the viewer, looking back at the viewer, wearing a many-armed grey-blue coat. The background is an impression of sea greens and blues. — “Coat of Arms”

She’s been creating art since she was a small child, with her parents saving drawings she made as a toddler. Disney’s classically animated films are some of her earliest inspirations; she also draws on historical sources from the Medieval period or early modern Europe (though obviously this can vary depending on what she’s working on). While she has fond memories of first learning to paint with oils, she’s more recently fallen in love with watercolors and Conté Crayons. Mostly, though, she works in digital, with her favorite programs being ArtRage and Sketchbook. When she’s not creating art, you can find her practicing swordplay – from the rapier and the longsword to the sidesword and polearms. She also enjoys sewing, scaling up from doll’s clothes to altering her own to making cloaks for secondary defense in swordplay. She paints fencing masks too! Discover more about her and her art at her website.

A friendly rounded green dragon with gold horns and purple eyes faces a masked tanuki and looks surprised. Smoke curls from the dragon's nostrils and open mouth. The tanuki is facing away from the viewer in the foreground, wearing a green hat on his brown and black furry body. He also wears a red Chinese-esque dragon mask with gold accents. In the background is a green lawn, brick wall, and Lorelai the hedgehog hurrying toward the dragon and tanuki while holding a red book. — “Jiro Dragon”

Meeks has been a delightful and productive friend to EMG for around six years now, contributing to Sketch Fests, Portrait Adoption, and Torn World! Her Sketch Fest gallery contains nearly 100 drawings and is full of puns, humor, and whimsy. See the hippo who swallowed a dwarf, grin at Lorelei the bespectacled hedgehog (who stars in the books Meeks founded Elder Days StoryTime to publish), chuckle at a tanuki pretending to be a dragon! Over at Torn World, she’s contributed to the article on fang deer and contributed drawings of snow-cats, skycats, deathfins, and more. She’s even got three portraits available for adoption – and these are popular characters! – ranging from a magic-user to a warrior to a rogue. We invite you to discover more of her work at EMG through the links below!

A young blue-eyed lynx-looking snow-cat of Torn World crawls down a branch toward the viewer. Detailed sketch on blue-grey paper. — “Snow-Cat in Winter”

Meeks’ Sketch Fest gallery.

Meeks’ Portrait Adoption gallery.

Meeks’ Torn World Creator page.

A humanoid figure of small stature with pointed ears climbs a rope up a brick wall to an open window barely in frame in the upper left. Light spills from the open window. The figure is wearing green, brown, and white adventurer clothes. It is night. — Portrait Adoption