Hsiao-Ron Cheng

I'm a huge fan of Taiwanese artist Hsiao-Ron Cheng, an imaginative young woman based in Taipei. She creates delicate surrealistic concepts of a dreamy and sometimes nightmarish fantasy world of innocence reminiscent of her childhood. You can tell her work has been deliciously influenced by Mark Ryden - and what's not to love about it? Cheng's work is based on a pastel-hued pale palette, with muted shades of pink and green, flowery details, bunnies, fragile girls, botanical elements and overall a haunting sense of melancholy. Her illustrations reveal soft shapes and an exquisite technique - truly inspiring!

 In my childhood, the wall in my room was always filled with illustration books. 

The magical fantasy adventure stories with many great illustrations were my favorites. 

They inspired me to start to imagine my own world. 

I guess I’m just so OK with not being “happy” everyday and just embracing every true sensations I have… the stories or movies with sad tragic endings are attractive to me, more than comedies. I think maybe the touching feeling I enjoy after finish the sad story is one of the reasons I rarely choose joyous things to be my subject matters.

All the entangled plants shown in my work symbolize the unbearable emotions and feelings in real life. In my imagination, they keep growing up and slowly twining together. The woodland landscapes or flora worlds describe a strong feeling of oppression including all kind of sensation that happened to me all the time. 

I feel like being trapped by those emotions and there seems no way out. My aim is to create more complex worlds with complicated stories of childlike and cruel creatures, and combine them together into one big world. 

Wishcandy

Sashiko Yuen aka Wishcandy is one of my favourite artists. It's impossible not to like her whimsy-fueled, slightly disturbing, pastel-hued artwork. It's a wonderful world full of bright patterns, bubble gum and cotton candy, but also features blood, tears and bruises, so it's quite an epitome of girlhood. Donuts, confetti, lollipops, kitsch bows, candy floss coloured hair, quirky girls... I am marvelled at how inspiring this stuff is! These illustrations are, essentially, a one-way ticket to a trippy Wonderland, creating portraits of imaginary, edgy pin-up-esque rebel girls.

This young artist is currently located in LA and describes her work as "a sassy candy-coated horror show. It's full of compassion, eroticism, violence, and the search for true freedom. Inspired by retro culture, street fashion, kitsch, beauty, and the grotesque. (...) My work is a double-edged sword. It's bright, colorful and fun but it tackles darker subjects. I enjoy exploring both the beautiful and the grotesque. They're not mutually exclusive.". I couldn't agree more.

Slaughterhouse Starlets by Keith P. Rein

Slaughterhouse Starlets is an illustrated series by designer Keith P. Rein that features a set of images of a violent, badass version of some female celebrities, such as Emma Stone, Zooey Deschanel, Emma Watson and Beyoncé. It's a Hollywoodesque bloodshed! Personally speaking, I absolutely love this kick-ass slasher aesthetic and I wish there was a movie inspired by all this lady-like horror starred by the same actresses.
This set of illustrations has been a source of amazement for a couple of months but only now I am mentioning it in this blog. I really like Emma Stone's blood-covered baseball bat and Zooey's axe! As these art mixed-media prints turned out pretty awesome, Keith P. Rein planned on doing more. He told New York Magazine "A lot of times, I'll just make up a story. With her (Christina Hendricks), she killed her husband with the syringe and buried him with the shovel. (...) The overall idea was just taking these pop stars and actresses that are typically not associated with slasher films and putting them in the macabre setting.". Hollywood's finest at the most GORE-geous context you can possibly picture - how cool is that?

You can purchase these illustrations here.