This week’s focus is on an artist that is special to me and my wife both — Jenika is a friend, and comes all the way from Italy. I first met her back in Dublin, at what at the time was the MCM Comic Con, and we kept bumping into each other at various cons, both in Dublin and London over the years.

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A new artwork :) I had this idea while walking in Richmond Park (London) some time ago… #fairytale #goth #jenikaioffreda #littleredridinghood

A post shared by Jenika Ioffreda (@jenikaioffreda) on Oct 17, 2019 at 10:05am PDT

Her work is focused on Micia — the black cat you can see above, following effectively our family life: at home, around the world, and at metal concerts, but it’s not just cutesy prints, it’s also a character from her very own comic book story.

Micia has been for months the first thing we see when we wake up, as the frames are directly across our bed, and it makes us smile.

Since this year’s convention scene is likely going to be significantly scaled down, make sure to stop by if you see her, and keep yourself posted by liking her page.

Also you can see more great frames from Frame Company — we loved the colour (Candy purple), and they executed great for the custom mounts to keep the related pictures side-by-side.

The times are bleak, with a fourth of the World’s population under lockdown or quarantine. I don’t particularly like dark times, and so I would rather bring some fresh air and happiness to people instead. For this reason, I decided to add a third weekly post on my blog, not to rants, or technical content, but rather as a way to show off more artists that deserve appreciation, and probably the support of those who can share, given that conventions are being cancelled left and right.

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🔥💀Did I show you guys Deathwing 3.0? I spent an extra 50 hours or so on this piece, painting over parts again and again but now I can finally say I am happy with it! We actually sold 3 A2 prints of it at the con on the weekend and I'm so happy ! 💀🔥 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ #art #illustration #drawing #draw #twitch #line #lineart #twitchcreative #ink #pen #sakurapigmamicron #micron #dragon #deathwing #worldofwarcraft #wow #fanart #paint #painting #winsorandnewton #schmincke #watercolour #watercolor #acrylicpainting #acrylic

A post shared by Sezzadactyl (@sezzadactyl) on Nov 19, 2019 at 12:26pm PST

Sezzadactyl was at the top of my list. Her art is awesome, we stumbled across her booth at the MCM Comic Con London last year, but we were in a hurry at first (I had a photoshoot booked), and we just promised to come back. Unfortunately we forgot to write down the booth we were at, so it took us a while to find her again, but we were very happy to have a chance to get some prints of hers.

And we didn’t stop there. My wife got me as presents her 2018 and 2019 art books, for my birthday and Christmas. I was (and am) so happy, because I really couldn’t choose which prints to get!

As you can tell from the Instagram feed, she covers a wide range of subjects, from Pokémon (which admittedly was the first thing that caught our eyes) to Studio Ghibli characters, to video games, to dragons and pets.

Her Etsy store is currently on hiatus, but I do recommend, if you like her work, to get a notification for when it’ll reopen. As you can see we already have quite a few pieces, but we’ll look forward to get more in the future!

By the way, I want to give a shout out to Frame Company, where we bought the frames and mounts you see in the picture above. We have so far ordered more than a dozen frames from them, and they don’t just have a great selection to match any art style, but they do custom mounts, including multi-opening ones (you’ll see more of them in the future).