Spotlight: Painting in the Behance Network

Painting is an ancient art form, and today has developed far beyond its primitive roots, blank canvases and paintbrushes; almost anything that can be adhered to a canvas in addition to paint has been. It's wonderful to see practitioners of this medium heavily represented on the Behance Network, with techniques ranging from watercolor to digital painting to the use of mixed media. Today, we take some time out to spotlight some of our favorites to date.

Karo Knitter uses dried flowers -- but not in your grandmother's sense of the term -- in her mixed media creations. Juan Salvador Cobos Seron combines old manuscripts, books and letters with paint, pastels and charcoal to create his thoughtful portraits, and old dictionary clippings and photographs pop up in the whimsical works of Chris Yormick. Countless other medias meet the board of studio kxx in the series "crack is right here," creating something that is as beautiful as it is disturbing.

Watercolor meets geometry in Malota's recent Mountains series. Surrealism infused with truths such as "we who are monsters breed monsters" is prevalent in the work of Charlene Chua. David MacDowell's acrylics explore celebrity, gluttony and sin in a caricaturist nature which is, at the same time, strangely realistic. Allan Burch paints his celebrity subjects (featuring Al Gore, Amy Winehouse and Natalie Merchant) a positive -- sometimes romantic -- light.

MTV Europe commissioned Sam Gilbey's digital painting prowess for the MTV Switch site last year, which seeks to raise awareness regarding environmental awareness. Spaceships were the order of the day here, and the intergalactic theme was further enhanced by animation, XML and Flash. Greg Washington takes pain on the canvas and onto his...sneakers. That's a more than positive way to assuage an obsession, as far as we're concerned.

Finally, Elsiane, a musical act, retained the services of  More Than A Friend to build some album artwork based on one of their existing paintings, Mend. The work that followed consisted of not only the album collateral, but the art direction for the entire project as well as their live show design -- proving that all it takes is one piece to inspire far larger bodies of work.