Edward Sorel - line and wash illustrator. Thing is, his lines don't really explain the subject he's drawing...as I found out just now. Well, some of them do, but look at the shading. Is it just me?

Joel Peter Johnson - fine art illustration

Mark Summers Scratchboard explains a bit about the process of creating an image for scratchboard

How to land a jumbo jet

 countries by cocktails

 how to prepare and eat local fruit

 hand gestures in different cultures

 haggling in Morocco

neil gaiman and the four illustrators

 the first illustrator, uses lots of paint flicking

 the second uses nice watercolour and loves people's faces

 the third uses conventional comic book techniques

 and this is what the fourth imagines the end of the universe to look like. I remember something like this from reading 'a complete history of graphic design'

 collage!

 1. Totoro

2. Rupert Bear?! 

adventures in Penrith

Cropped photo of town square

same again

 awesome looking bottle of olive oil

 Silhouetted people at the bonfire in Carlisle (I didn't want to make a post of that night, because it was foggy and my photos were crap)

cute sweet shop sign

pretty colours

 cool mirror/bird cage

coffee machines? i dunno

 the local grocers. boss.

 comic shop window?

 nice street scene

 nice patterns at the fabric shop

 castle ruins

Cathy Brett at Aoi Portfolios

I swear I've seen her work before, but I can't think where. She does a lot of book illustration so it was probably a teenage fiction one. Teen fiction is actually pretty good, doesn't take long to read and usually has cool book jackets...not that I judge a book by it's cover or anything....

Tomislav Tomic
Another Aoi Portfolio artist. I'd love to get that level of detail in my work, but I have a really poor attention span. The top image makes me think of the black and white brief and how the illustrators use line to show tone and also the direction the contour is going.

One day, before I die, I will make an image as lovely as this. It's not just the colour I like, it's the really funky dudes making towns on hills. Isn't that cool?