Art Rage 3 is here

I have been trying out the latest version of Art Rage for a few weeks now and am really pleased with it. I have the Studio Pro 3 version as it has the most features. They have improved the interface which was pretty good to start with anyway. Now you can scale the panels and also drop them on a second screen if you have one, to end up with an uncluttered workspace.
There is a 'canvas puck', a little navigator a bit like Photoshop has, but here you can use it to instantly rotate the canvas which is one of the most useful features of Art Rage.
New tools include Watercolors, the 'heavy bleed' setting gives realistic paint deposits, I was really surprised when I tried it out. They have also added Inking pens, and an auto smoothing setting on the pens and the pencil which means you can get that smooth vector-look similar to drawings done in Flash.
Other new stuff: the Gloop pen is good for trippy unexpected results and the Sticker pen which is like the image hose in Painter.
More really handy things are the Fill, Selection and Text tools and a straight-line function which do make life much easier even if they are not strictly drawing tools.
Anyway I definitely think Art Rage has grown up now, the Pro version is more expensive, but I think it's a match for some of the other big fat graphic apps out there!
link to comparison PDF

Hobbit paintings by Justin Gerard

Justin Gerard is an illustrator I had not heard of before I came across his blog where he has some fantastic paintings illustrating the Hobbit. He works on paper with watercolours and then continues the pieces digitally. I think he manages to get the best of both techniques this way when you see the great results.
He has posted the process of the Battle of the Five armies and explains why this scene is so exciting to paint. If you are a Tolkien fan like me you must see these paintings and even if you're not they're still stunning.
There is also an interview on the excellent Tor Sf and fantasy site.

Making fairy tales on Youtube

Pj Lynch is an Irish illustrator who has an interesting Youtube channel. I especially liked watching 'Making fairy tales part 2', in this video he shows us how he paints a very nice fire -breathing dragon, from the sketch to the final watercolor.

Kristin Elder : demo

Kristin Elder paints beautiful intricate watercolors. She has posted a work process on her site so you can see her progress from a doodle to this amazing finished painting.

Moira Hahn

I love the paintings of Moira Hahn, particularly her series from 2006-2007 which seem to combine many of my favorite things. They are watercolors that resemble Japanse prints with fantastic animal characters, cats, tigers ,fish , owls and many others. The colors are glowing and very beautiful. This one is called 'Food Fight'.

The secret of glowing watercolors

This article on watercolour is fascinating. It goes into a lot of detail about the physics of paint and the way it interacts with paper, some of this is a bit hard to understand but I really learnt alot from it. The whole website is very informative and really worth exploring if you use watercolours.