Digital art is becoming one of the biggest genres in the art world. Sites like DeviantArt are full of the pictures by amateur artists created using programs like Photoshop, presenting us with a beautiful form of media that redefines the meaning of creativity – especially with those mixed media formats that incorporate a little of the traditional with the modern.

There are so many digital artists who are creating breathtaking work, and so coming up with a complete list of amazing pictures would be impossible. But here is a small collection of 10 incredible works, each one both beautiful and bizarre.

1. Mouse Love

An amazing work by Jose Alves da Silva, this was an entry into a competition to make a super secret agent. In this tutorial, he shows the process of which he creates Mouse Love, which was the Master Individual prize winner in the XXIV CGChallenge. According to him, he lost a lot of sleep over two months working on it.

2. By the Sea

A gorgeous picture by Adrian Baluta, he shows how he created this science fiction piece that has both a large space ship hovering over the ocean, and a smaller ship in the background for size comparison. The use of an old fashioned ship beside a futuristic marvel is a fantastic choice.

3. Ed, Eddie, Eddie!

A tribute to rock legend Eddie Van Halen, this caricature created by Marcos Aurelio exaggerates the look and style of the musician. Wonderfully detailed, everything from the enormous mouth to the 80′s-era feathered man hair is absolute perfection.

4. Dangerous Entertainments

Created in April 2006 by Sergey Skachkov, this shows a “Crater-City” filled with buildings made of what appears to be organic matter. Bubbles of another organic material are floating from the city into the sky. Riding one is a little boy, who is risking his life for the thrill of the ride. For a fantasy based image, it is very believable.

5. Willpower

One of the most powerful digital images ever, this picture by John Strieder shows a woman fighting with everything she has against someone holding a gun to her head. Fighting has managed to begin destroying the gun. The look on her face is incredible, and the detail of the metal melting at her forehead is impressive.

6. Junk Tree Paradise

This awesome picture started off with the artist, Corey Loving, drawing a junk pile with scrap metal. On top of that, he created the image of a tree, and running to it a collection of adorable, innocent children. It is incredibly intricate, and shows how traditional processes can be applied to modern media to make stunning digital scenes.

7. Portrait of Nathan

Jason Seiler started this sketch of his friend Nathan with a ball point pen. But from there he scanned it and used digital technology to flesh it out. What resulted is a quirky, well made caricature. The skin tone is fantastic, as are the small details in the expression. Notice the faint quirk of the lips on the right side.

8. Drows Versus Goblins

A great fantasy picture by Alexey Zaryuta, this one features a battle between the Drows and the Goblins. Not only is it a complex picture with some great color, but there are amazing details in the front, where you see some of the individual faces.

9. Jonathan Shroud

Mario Veltri is the art director for an Italian magazine, and award winning artist and a well known name in the industry. He created a character with a science fiction bent named Jonathan Shroud, and in this tutorial he gives a nice explanation of how he came up with the concept drawings.

10. The Package They Carry

Another picture by John Strieder, this is also a very intense and powerful image. He created a 3D model for each child before filling in the details. On their backpacks are a number of symbols based on both religions and ideals, good and bad. For example, they have the star and crescent moon of Islam, but also the swastika of the Nazis.

11. Armada

Kan Muftic made this dynamic feature showing a military armada along with a large fantasy creature obviously meant to be a weapon. The cavalry ride ahead of it with their horses, and there is a very traditional, oil painting look to the entire thing.

Conclusion

There are an endless number of digital paintings that you could show off as an impressive example of this media format. But these are 10 that I think you can agree have something very special.

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10+1 Beautiful and Bizarre Works of the World’s Best Digital Artists