Julie Dillon

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

Time to invoice the telegraph for using my illustration, I guess

Rise From These Dark Waters by Megan M. Davies-Ostrom (Paperback with Signed Bookplate) — Bad Hand Books Min, royal daughter of the elven-like Yhathlin, was born to be a diplomat. Representing her nation at the joint American-Canadian embassy in her subterranean city, she was good at walking the tightrop...

WORLD WAR Z meets GAME OF THRONES meets THE DARK CRYSTAL in @mmdaviesostrom.bsky.social's epic dark-fantasy novel RISE FROM THESE DARK WATERS. Coming in 2026. SAVE by using code BADFRIDAY25. Cover by @juliedillon.bsky.social. Illustrated by @tomsbrown.bsky.social.

badhandbooks.com/preorders/6y...

Addendum to this excellent post:

You do not have to be good at something to have fun.

Don't hold yourself up to hyperrealistic or professional or your favourite ___ standards.

You're new and learning!
Be YOU, not a copy of someone else.

Four small paintings in wooden round frames sit on a pile of antique papers and postcards. The paintings feature: a ghost cat, a ghost girl, and eldritch horrors in the sky on stormy seas

Finally got around to putting these up! Smol originals, ready to hang, $165 each :) thecreepingmoon.store/collections/...

Comic of a woman picking flowers and then having a nice kiss. Text reads: slow down. Take your time. When you're ready, you'll bloom, too.

Reminding myself once again that it is not a race.

a border collie and small bird commune under the moon in a dark wood amongst barren trees. Fairy light illuminates the bird's words to the pup: Even the moon glows from borrowed light... So, if you need it, I'll gladly lend you mine tonight. from the devastatingly talented, Sina Simbürger https://www.instagram.com/sin.xline

need-a-penny, take-a-penny

Using genAI alienates you from everyone else. It doesn't democratize art, it atomizes it.

No genAI user is gonna get an outpouring of sincere support from others because even they themselves don't give a fuck about what they're making.

A sumi and liquid acrylic paintings of two snakes intertwined on a rock. In the middle is a sunflower and as the snakes meet, they turn into something they are not

'An Awakened Slumber'
sumi and liquid acrylics

my first personal painting in a long long while. It was the planned painting for this years New Year's card for the year of the snake. I am so glad that I painted it anyway.

we're at 31 submissions out of the 100 available slots already, damn

Oh wow, what a cool project!! 🤩

Picture of a model based on the Armstrong enemies from FF9

Picture of a model based on the Armstrong enemies from FF9

Picture of a model based on the Armstrong enemies from FF9

Concept art for the Armstrong from FF9

I needed a project to keep myself busy recently so I scratch-built an Armstrong from Final Fantasy IX 🏠🐟

I was told I should study computer science because my art was just "silly ding-dong shit," so I studied computer science for years before admitting to myself I was miserable, and decided to at least give myself a chance to do what I wanted before defaulting to what other people thought I should do.

Mokosh, Slavic deity of fate and abundance.
This month's ℘atreon postcard 🕊
Join us before the end of November to get one!
www.patreon.com/natasailincic

She also features in the 2026 Calendar for the month of August ✨

Koi Pup. The oranges on this are so much fun. 8 x12 acrylic and coloured pencil on watercolour paper. Original for sale. Inspired by a monster from the Demon Slayer anime.

An ephemeral blue painting on canvas of a borzoi Cerberus with humanoid features mixed in. It has 2 canine heads and one human head, long hair and fur following together.

An ephemeral Blue painting on canvas of a beautiful person with a shaved head and dark skin embracing and being enveloped by a pale eel human hybrid creature. The creature has an eel head, human torso, and eel tails for legs that undulate around the person they are holding.

A colorful watercolour-like painting of a robed person with chin length hair. Superimposed on top is a tableau of a wolf chasing a deer in a circle. They are painting as though they form the pattern on the robe. A floating mask, different fungi and gingko patterns decorate the background. The person holds a bleeding chrysanthemum in elegantly posed hands.

A thigh tattoo of a tiger-human chimera. The creature with three heads leaps up and across the thigh, twisting in the air, claws out. It's body is decorated with shelf mushrooms, rib-like flower petals, scales and other organic textures. Wings sprout from its hips. One of its heads is human.

My name is Mandy and I'm a 1/2-white-1/2-Chinese artist in Canada. I tattoo at Baohaus Collective, as well as exhibit my paintings in galleries across North America.

Website: mandytsung.com

I like that her book is very straightforward and practical. I'm still learning watercolor, and I'm shocked at the amount of lighting effects can be achieved by spraying water right on the painting and letting the color bleed across the paper :O

Thank you! It's mostly big runny washes made over masking fluid to preserve the white areas; I'm shocked at how much heavy lifting the masking fluid does! :O

#folktaleweek2025 day 5: Charm ♥

I need to scan this in properly, but I’m real pleased with this little watercolor study I did today 👉👈 I got Nita Engels’ book “How to Make a Watercolor Paint Itself” and it’s been really helpful in figuring out some landscape techniques ☺️

It works out pretty well! I have an Epson Surecolor P800, which has waterproof inks and takes thicker paper, so I can run a sheet of Arches paper through it just fine to transfer the lineart. :)

a stylized 3d render of a large manul sitting on a georgian orthodox church.

manul

finding that balance between letting it do what it wants and carefully reigning it in is definitely a challenge 😅 It really helps that I can print out a new sketch onto watercolor paper to quickly start over when I mess up, which takes away some of the stress, lol

A woman with a plaintive expression holds out a pomegranate half. A dense briar of branches sprout from an opening in her chest and surround her, with only the hand holding the pomegranate emerging from the briar.

My next presentable watercolor attempt, after a few more flubs and restarts. 😅 I still have a *lot* to learn, but I'm really enjoying the process along the way.

A woman with a plaintive expression holds out a pomegranate half. A dense briar of branches sprout from an opening in her chest and surround her, with only the hand holding the pomegranate emerging from the briar.

My next presentable watercolor attempt, after a few more flubs and restarts. 😅 I still have a *lot* to learn, but I'm really enjoying the process along the way.

work on the creative project that pays me money and that i am under contract for and that people like????? no thanks, im busy thinking about my creative project that im kind of bad at and somehow costs me money and that nobody asked for

too real 🤝

Drawing of Daisy in a white peacock dress in the hands of Gatsby. Publishing synopsis reads “ In which Nick Carraway develops a parasocial codependency with Gatsby—an aspiring couturier with a fabricated identity— until control shifts within New York’s criminal underworld and a deadly, reignited obsession with a former starlet shakes Gatsby’s grip on reality, thus threatening Nick’s ideal American muse”

✨PUBLISHING ANNOUNCEMENT ✨
At long last, my Great Gatsby retelling - a psychological thriller/drama graphic novel filled with vintage glamour - is getting published! #GreatGatsbyIIE

Minerva (2024) • Acrylic on Fabriano