This image by Robyn Drayson, entitled Personal Umbrella, looks sweet and spontaneous at first glance. However, a more detailed look reveals the strength of the composition and of Robyn’s painting skills.

The two dragons create a fantastic chiaroscuro effect in blue-black and pale grey and pink. Their spiralled bodies form a yin-yang shape, while the lighter dragon’s wing sweeping over the top of the image pulls the viewer back down into this spiral and straight to these characters’ faces. The warm pink of the wing is complemented by the rainy green background.

Robyn’s rendering of sparkling scales and of raindrops is superb. The iridescent shimmer on the lighter dragon is particularly strong and demonstrates Robyn’s skill with painting light. The colours are delicate and watery, echoing the transparent raindrops above. This image is full of sweeping, repeating rhythms – the pink of the upper dragon’s wing is echoed in the cherry blossoms beside the darker dragon character, the green of the background is picked up in the opalescent scales. Check out Robyn’s Gallery for more of her beautiful fantasy wildlife characters!

Meanwhile, here are the other images that stood out for me this week.

Kristina Gehrmann’s painting The Song of Lorelei is reminiscent of the work of 19th Century painter William-Adolphe Bouguerou and brings character and humour to this German mermaid character.

Sticking with sirens, Alexandra Knickel’s Mermaid is an imaginative concept piece with a clever and believable approach to a mermaid’s biology.

These comedy Vikings by Duncan Beedie are all at sea and full of character.

Nanako S created this fantastic manga scene just for Practice.

Rakan-ji by Alexander Tooth is an oriental-inspired fantasy scene.

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My Image of the Week this week is Moment of Peace by Brandon Hopkins. This is a gorgeous piece of classic fantasy art and makes great use of colour and tone to create atmosphere.

Purple and blue are usually uneasy bedfellows in a palette, but Brandon has managed to make them look rich and opulent by combining red-purple, purple and blue-violet with touches of azure and magenta. Gold detailing lifts the cool tones with a complementary pop. I’ve always loved those descriptions in classical myths of characters like Dido, Nausicaa and Camilla clad in ‘Tyrian purple’ and the clothing colours in this image evoke the same sense of luxury and nobility that Homer, Virgil and Ovid do when they use this term as a signifier.

The pose and facial expression tie in well with the title. The heroine’s face has just relaxed from its usual battle-ready wariness, her shoulders and sword arm have just dropped down to rest. Nonetheless she’s still an Amazonian warrior and ready for action: her eyes are watchful even in repose. The armour’s slightly more practical than most; the anatomy reminiscent of the insanely buffed heroines of Boris Vallejo, making this a believable but still fantastical character.

The dreamy forest glade is the perfect setting for this character. The soft pinks, yellows and deep mossy greens are evocative of an enchanted forest or a humid, misty jungle. The scene begs the question – what’s going to happen next?

Honourable mentions

Overcomer by Clement Ng is a well-drawn, sweet little illustration that tells a sad story.

Blackbirds and the Estate Overspill by Paul Attard is contemporary, Expressionistic and energetic.

Missing You – October 1940 by Kristina Gehrmann is a poignant piece of hyperrealism.

Island Paradise by Gareth Barnes is a fresh, quirky, oriental-inspired illustration.

Bromance by Duncan Beedie is just OMG LOL.

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Digital art comes in all shapes and sizes and on all digital devices. So why should the premier magazine dedicated to it be any different? We’re not stuck in the print and paper world – just like digital art itself, Digital Artist is available on a wide variety of platforms and in a wide range of formats.

Mobile artists taking digital art out of the studio on the iPhone and iPad inspired us to make the magazine available via the iTunes store and its Newsstand app. And as other tablets and smartphones have got in on the mobile art revolution, so we’ve brought Digital Artist to Android and Blackberry via Zinio. Now you can take Digital Artist’s tuition, techniques and trends with you and create the best digital art wherever you are.

To make it easy for you to find individual issues, or subscribe via your tablet or smartphone, we’ve developed an easy-to-use website to help you purchase magazines and manage your subscriptions. Check out www.greatdigitalmags.com and bring Digital Artist – and the mobile art revolution – to your device today.

In a week where Avengers Assemble (or The Avengers, for those everywhere in the world apart from the UK) hits the screens, I just had to pick one of the characters that pop up in it for my Image of the Week. Allen’s image is of the Mighty Thor and it ticks all the boxes for a great piece of comic art.

The character is over-the-top and stylised. This isn’t the pretty-boy Thor of the movies; this is an angry superhero with mammoth strength and a grudge. This image really rewards a close view as high-res as possible. Allen has used a superbly painterly technique to render the character’s physical features and especially his distinctive armour. The colour is crisp and the brushwork textured and evocative. The chain-mail armour wraps around the character’s deliberately over-exaggerated arms and legs in a way reminiscent of the imagery of comics artist Simon Bisley.

The complementary colour scheme in the lighting is also a great example of how to manage this technique effectively. The highlight tone of the pale blue lightning and that of the orange-yellow light are of the same value, providing a colourful side-lit effect without creating shadow areas that are too dense. The orange to  blue-purple gradient at the back helps to unify the two colour schemes and make the lighting feel natural. Allen’s use of purple as his main shadow tone is warm enough to contrast against the blue and cool enough to stand out against the orange.

The pose is a textbook example of why comics artists need to study anatomy in depth. Although hyper-exaggerated, it’s realistic and visceral – the gripped hand, combined with the small floating rocks in the foreground, really demonstrates this character’s physical power, more so than the hammer and lightning that are Thor’s trademarks. This is a really well executed study of a popular character. Don’t forget to check out Allen’s Gallery for more of his excellent work.

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This week’s Image of the Week is a delightful illustration by Colette Alexandratos, entitled The Claw.

Great use of texture makes this feel like a mixed-media or even traditional piece. The soft jade green of the cute toy owl being carried off by the slightly warmer-toned claw of the title makes him stand out against the other toys at the bottom of the illustration, which are in warm and neutral tones.

This is a really lovely, appealing illustration. Like all good pieces for children it relates to something that a child knows – in this case, a lucky-dip machine – but also adds a sense of character and story. The little toy owl has a resigned, wide-eyed expression. The two toys that flank him drop away, escaping back into the pile of animals, robots and aliens at the bottom while the owl is inexorably pulled up by the claw. And look at his little face! I’d want to win him.

Check out more of Colette’s work on her Gallery.

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The great thing about tablets and smartphones is that you can paint and draw wherever you are. Now you can access Digital Artist’s mobile art tutorials wherever you are, by subscribing through our iOS app or via Zinio. That means that no matter where you are when you’re playing with Inkpad, Pixlr-o-matic or Brushes, you can improve your artwork with great tips like this one from Matthew Watkins on the artwork above, featured in issue 31 of Digital Artist:

“After I export from Inkpad, I open the image in Pixlr-o-matic. Under the Film menu I try a number of filters before settling on Jessica.

“I save this step then open the original image again and, under the Lightbulb menu, choose Gritty. I save this to the Photo Gallery.

“I import these two images and the original into Brushes then set the transparency for each level to create the desired effect. Using the Eraser tool I cancel some of the areas I don’t want from the Gritty layer.

“I create another layer on top and do a little retouching with a brush.”

iClone5 is an amazingly easy-to-use animation suite that even lets you use a Microsoft Kinect as a mocap device!

We have four copies of this fantastic product to give away. To be in with a chance of winning, just head over to our Facebook page for more details.

Creative agency Margaret is celebrating its fifth birthday in Secret Service style, with a design competition called MI5.

If you have a license to illustrate, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to produce a design that celebrates the theme ‘Margaret Is 5′ or ‘MI5′. Here’s your brief from M:

“Inspired by a mild obsession with Nancy Drew, comparison with 80s US detective agency series Remington Steele, and some of the seemingly mission-impossible projects which we’ve taken on and conquered, this seemed like the perfect theme to mark our birthday, as well as reflect on some of the dramatic turns of the past half-decade.

“Submitted designs must contain the word MI5, but beyond that, the brief is open to the most imaginative and crafty of interpretations. Whether you find inspiration in the letters themselves, or the national security connotations – from the serious to the silly, we’d love to see what you come up with.

“Our favourite designs will be displayed as part of an exhibition at Lo & Behold Gallery at the end of May, with the winning design selected by a panel of judges and displayed on a limited edition tote bag, which will be circulated to the great and good of the Margaret creative network.

“To choose these winning designs, we have put together a judging panel that includes Shane Walter, the founder and director of onedotzero, and Emily Gosling, Reporter at Design Week.”

Submissions should be sent to MI5@margaretlondon.com by Friday 11th May 2012.

Please note: This is an external call for entries – do not send your questions or submissions to Digital Artist; use the email address above. Find out more about Margaret London at their tumblr. This news story will self-destruct.

I’m a huge fan of chromatic colour and Mona has managed it really well in this illustration, called Breath, contrasting two tertiary hues: a deep, heavily saturated turquoise and its complementary orange-red, and backing both of them with a lighter, more neutral muddy green and rust-toned background. (If you’re not familiar with chromatic colour, it means hues that are undiluted with white, giving a rich, saturated, glowing tone).

The composition of this piece is intriguing too. While it’s essentially figurative, combining a female silhouette with natural motifs, the placement and pose of the figure against the plants, fruit and seeds behind her gives the image a semi-abstract vibe overall. The combination of hard and soft colours with tight, tangled ink work is fresh and contemporary with a fantastic mixed-media feel.

One thing it calls to mind for me is the Greek myth of Persephone; the goddess of spring imprisoned in the underworld for six months out of every year thanks to the pomegranate seeds she ate. I’m not sure if those are pomegranate seeds over to the left of the figure, but the good thing about semi-abstract images like this is that they draw out the viewer’s own responses to them, whether those are emotional, visual, or based in trying to guess what the image is ‘about’. As Mona’s not telling us, you’ll have to figure out your own imagined backstory for it! Check out her Gallery for more of Mona’s work.

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Fairy tales are a huge trend at the moment, particularly in the US – there are a host of folklore-inspired movies out or in production right now. The good thing about fairy tales is that we all know them well, which makes it easier to add your own spin or visual language to them without diluting the essence of what you’re portraying.

Sandra Chang-Adair has used the classic Cinderella pose for her piece Steampunk Cinderella – stepping out of her carriage, with a focal emphasis on the face and, of course, the shoe. But this being a Victorian-inspired steampunk Cinderella, those glass slippers are topped off with spats, while the gown takes an early 19th Century influence. No mice/horses for this lady either – her carriage is a mechanised one, while her coachman is mostly a cast-iron automaton.

What I like most about this image though is its colour harmony and the way that Sandra manages to say so much with a palette that’s essentially restricted to browns, blue-violet and off-whites. Most steampunk echoes back to British Victoriana, making use of rich reds and greens to denote drawing rooms and their denizens. Sandra’s background landscape and the colours it’s depicted with are far more reminiscent of 19th Century America, giving this something of a Western, frontier feel.

This colour palette also makes the Cinderella character look fresh and cool in the midst of this sere, brown canyon, bringing the focus back to her and away from that intriguing castle – half Victorian Gothic, half Frank Lloyd Wright fantasy – in the background.

The best fairy tale illustrations always add to the story and present the viewer with details to find. Who’s arriving in that airship in the background? And what will happen when the clocks on that parasol stroke 12?

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