John Bramblitt
John Bramblitt, an American artist, stands among today’s most recognized creators. He lost his sight at thirty and endured a deep, unsettling period, likening it to being cast adrift in open waters without a lifebuoy. Art became his anchor and a powerful coping mechanism during this crisis.
Even before vision faded, Bramblitt loved drawing. In a difficult stretch, he returned to the practice, noting that painting helps him channel his emotions and process inner turmoil.
Beyond detailed landscapes and portraits, he infuses his figures with palpable emotion. He works with special tactile paints that can be felt to discern color — white has a dense feel, while black carries a more fluid movement. The painting’s boundary is marked by the raised texture of dry pigment on the surface.
Val Thomson
Scottish artist Val Thomson invites viewers to preserve memories in a novel way. He blends cremation ashes with paints to craft landscapes and portraits that carry personal resonance. In a Reuters interview, Thomson shared that the idea grew from his brother, who died of a heart attack and whom he deeply loved.
“Most of his ashes went to their garden, but a portion remained,” Thomson recalled. Ann, the widow, didn’t want to part with the rest, yet she wasn’t sure what to do with it. The artist wanted to immortalize John on a beach painting because he enjoyed holidays—hence the idea of including his ashes on the shore.”
Graham Fink
British multimedia artist Graham Fink paints with his eyes on an electronic canvas. He sits before a transparent screen, studying an image and guiding it with eye movements. An infrared system tracks the gaze and translates those motions into digital lines, letting a portrait emerge in as little as five minutes or as long as an hour.
“Art often starts with a hand-drawn idea, yet I wanted to push a painting from the subconscious straight from the eyes to the canvas,” Fink said. He pursued a process that lets the viewer feel the image forming from the eyes inward.
Ian Sklarsky
Ian Sklarsky, an American artist, embraces the blind contour method, completing a piece without glancing at it until the drawing is finished. Like Fink, he sketches the entire contour in a single line on traditional paper. Sklarsky notes that a typical piece takes about seven minutes, after which color may be added to enhance the composition if needed.
Pricasso
Australian artist Tim Patch, known as Pricasso, uses his own body parts as painting tools. The nickname cheekily nods to a provocative term while joking with the name Picasso. Patch refers to his work as the initial form of penis art.
From 1978 to 1982, Patch showcased his work in galleries before opening Hellfire Pottery with a sister. In 2002 he shifted focus to portraits and began penis painting experiments in 2005.
To attract attention, Pricasso painted portraits of notable figures, including Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and others such as Michael Jackson and Jimmy Wales. He shares his process in private workshops and has amassed a global following, with practitioners like Brent Ray Fraser and Dane Ove Max Jensen creating portraits of Kim Kardashian using similar methods.
Jordan Mang-Osan
Filipino artist Jordan Mang-Osan creates images through pyrography, a technique that uses a magnifying glass and sunlight to burn and incise surfaces. Childhood experiences left him with burned thumbnails and inscriptions, yet Mang-Osan refined this talent into large wooden portraits, landscapes, and contemplative scenes on expansive wooden canvases.
Oleg Goksel
Influenced by Kyiv, Oleg gained attention after painting at depths of two to twenty meters. He explains that the underwater setting allows him to capture the world’s beauty in truer light. To protect the canvas from water damage, he coats his works with waterproof glue. A single piece can take around forty minutes, and underwater hues—browns, greens, and blues—may shift to brighter tones after surfacing. He and a partner from St. Petersburg earned a Guinness World Record as the creators of the largest painting completed underwater.
Vincent Castilla
Vincent Castilla, an American artist and tattooist, paints with visceral, often nightmarish themes reflecting a person’s inner states. He uses a portion of his own blood as pigment, diluted with water to varying strengths. Castilla’s art has gained notable traction, including album and movie work—contributing to Triptykon’s debut album cover and the Savage County poster.
“I wanted the most immediate, unfiltered link to my work,” Castilla explained. “The images feel honest and instinctive, a direct expression of emotion and experience, shaped spontaneously on canvas.”
In 2018, his life story was chronicled in a biographical volume titled Bloodlines: The Art and Life of Vincent Castilla.
Lina Victor
The New York Times has described Lina Victor’s portraits as regal and futuristic, rendered in black and gold. The British-Liberian artist blends traditional painting with real 24-carat gold leaf for a luminous effect.
Victor keeps her process guarded and has declined opportunities to feature her work in films. In 2018 she publicly addressed a plagiarism claim related to a widely circulated video but continues to exhibit in museums and galleries.
Karen Eland
American painter Karen Eland, a devoted coffee enthusiast, uses the beverage as a dye. She recalls the moment inspiration struck when she saw espresso in her cup, and her love of lattes spurred a new artistic direction. She dips her brush into coffee to create works that echo the style of masters like Picasso, Matisse, Vermeer, and Da Vinci, while swapping the palette for rich coffee tones. Notably, her pieces often feature familiar faces in a caffeinated twist, such as the Mona Lisa with a coffee cup in hand.