The end. That’s it, here it is, we’ve arrived, we’ve come to Z here in the A is for Artist series. From now on you’ll have to dig up new artists for yourselves. Perhaps you’re worried; how will you feed your eyes? They’ll go thin and fall out. One will roll under the couch and get covered in hair. It’s partner, you catch, but now you’re doomed to hold it in your palm forever, like a witch in a greek myth. Don’t fret, we’ve been addicted a long, long time, and our eyes remain plump and happy. What we’ve shared is just the beginning. A rabbit hole down to the center of the earth and back. Well that last bit is a lie, I don’t think you can get back. No matter, down here it’s warm with company.
[Note: Click on images for larger and more detailed versions.]
Spider Zero
Some artists specialize in producing work that’s a wrestling match between the beautiful and the grotesque. Simon Lee, who works under the moniker Spider Zero, sculpts horrific creatures built from tortured anatomy. Yet, what should be repulsive remains absolutely compelling.
Feng Zhu
Trained as an industrial designer, Feng soon learn that his skills could just as easily be used to design giant robots and fantasy siege weapons. He’s worked on everything from triple A video games to the Transformers films. If you need complex tech that looks cool, Feng is your man.
Zhaoming Wu
A Chinese painter whose buttery paint application, atmospheric rendering, and obvious love of color combine to produce only the best kind of eye candy. His subjects, while often highly accurate, melt into pure paint at their edges.
Anders Zorn
Sweden’s answer to John Singer Sargent, Zorn was another virtuoso of paint application. A master of capturing a sitter’s likeness, he gained international recognition and great wealth from his portraiture. Along with his economy of brushstrokes came an economy of colors. Zorn apparently limited his palette to only black, vermillion, yellow ochre, and white.
Mark Zug
Couple a love of Golden Age illustration with science fiction and fantasy and you get the work of Mark Zug. His boundless imagination has conjured images for everything from Dune to Magic: The Gathering.
Lisbeth Zwerger
A visual descendant of both the great fairy tale illustrators like Rackham, Dulac, and Tenngren, but with a more modern design sense. Lisbeth creates ethereal watercolors that sync perfectly with her subjects of classic fairy tales.
C O L O P H O N
The lowercase italic “z” is from Nofret Medium by Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse, a calligrapher and book artist. The serif text font Aldus is by Hermann Zapf, calligrapher and type designer, and the author of many other serif, blackletter, and titling faces.
We are Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon. We live in a pocket-sized apartment in Brooklyn where we collect neat, weird things. Our home is abundant with books, old furniture, mismatching tea cups, and a cat named Cipher. We both illustrate stuff for money so we can continue to invent stories, buy shoelaces, watch puppet shows, and eat sandwiches.
