Iso Ryoichi (磯良一) is an illustrator from Japan, doing mainly book covers and magazine illustrations. His style is unlike most typical japanese illustrations, and exudes a very strong western feel.

Ryoichi’s basic attitude towards painting is to create artworks that you would want to hang on a wall in your home. At first glance, his works look like xylographs, or etchings. He refer to his paintings as “scratch illustrations”, a result of his unique “drawing” method.

Ryoichi’s initial pieces of works are usually done up in black and white. A cut pen is used to carve the works into a scratchboard. A first layer of gesso is added, followed by a second layer of black ink. The black surface is then scratched off to reveal a white gesso undercoat that will reflect light without any spectral colour separation.

Plastique Monkey is the art blog of Yuka Yamaguchi, a self-taught artist born in Kobe, Japan, and now living in Saskatoon, Canada.

Yuka draws in the traditional way. Colour pencils and ballpoint pen on paper. She is constantly working on her ongoing project called the “turn everything around you cute and fun project”. Her drawings are cute, albeit in a dark, bizzare way.

Once again, it shows that the Japanese are mad. Madly talented, we mean.

She is somewhat of a “renegade” in Japanese personal CG sites as her art is very uniform, (always 400×400 pixel canvases, 128 color gif) and has a touch of realism.

Emma also maintains a blog with lots of cute images, photos of hamsters, and random drawings. Check it out if you do read japanese.

The illustrations of Hayato Jome are like a soft breeze in spring.

Hayato paints with acrylic on canvas board, and has a special liking for drawing portraits of young men and women. He was recently listed in the Lurzer’s Archive of 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide 2005/2006