2013 has been a great year for Urban-Muse. The Urban-Muse fanbase on facebook has grown 6 times over this year to about 65,000 as of this posting. There haven’t been any posts on the website this year because the focus has been entirely on growing the social Media Base on Facebook and Tumblr, but now that site is nearing critical mass expect to see more updates and a new design and CMS system.
To do this “Best of Feature” I had to look through the many thousands of posts Urban-Muse made this year on Facebook and Tumblr and coupled with what YOU the users have said were the best, to make my judgement on the best pieces of the year on Urban-Muse. During this we consistently saw certain artists consistently deliver high quality, and highly liked/shared art. In no particular order these were the top Artists on Urban-Muse this year.
- Fatima Camiloza
- Jeremy Mann
- Chiara Bautista
- SNNN
- Jace Wallace
- Wojtek Fus
- Kyrie
- Jennifer Healy
- Tom Bagshaw
- Anna Dittmann (Escume)
Toward the end of the Article we will talk about one of our 2 picks for piece of the year. The other will be tommorow.
While putting this special together we noticed some patterns so we’ll start with these groupings of popular pieces.
Batman
A enduring pop culture icon and personal favorite Batman has always captured our imaginations and inspired many artists to share their take on the Dark Knight. Here’s some of our favorites from this year:
Batman Work in Progress by Jim Lee
Batgirl by Stanley Lau (ArtGerm)
Batman Vs. Joker by Jung-Geun Yoon
Harley Quinn by Taho (Fatima Camiloza)
Breaking Bad
This year marked the end to Breaking Bad, one of the finest written, filmed, and acted TV shows of our generation. We posted lots of Breaking Bad pieces this year even devoting an entire day to Breaking Bad, here are a couple of our favorites:
Frank Tzeng from Sony Santa Monica Studio’s take on Walter White / Heisenberg
One of our Favorite Scenes from the show of Jessie Pinkman and his girlfriend Jane “Jessie Jane” by Imora Wetz
Rikk the Gaijin’s incredible photoreal CG piece of Walter White with the non textured version to prove it’s actually digital
Ballerina’s
Ballerina’s have been an icon in the arts since their inception and of course the classic paintings of Edgar Degas, even to this day Ballerina’s, their grace and beauty still get lots of attention from great artists all over the world. Here are a couple of our favorites:
Ballerina by ZhuZhu
Ballerina by Crysse
Ballerina by Renee Chio
The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead now that Breaking Bad is over is arguably one of the best shows on Television and enjoyed another fantastic season this year and is still going strong. Here’s a couple of our favorite Walking Dead art from this year, we also posted many more throughout the year:
Flesh and Blood by Czaritsa
Hair of the Dog by Czaritsa
Photography
Urban-Muse.com primarily focuses on traditional media and digital paintings but we will also sometimes post installations, and of course great photography. Here’s some of the most well loved photography/Photo manipulations from 2013:
Anxiety by Beethy
Bajo Agua by Elena Dudina
Elena Alferova
HAKAN Photography
“Sleep” by Babak Fatholahi
Snow Falling at Yokohama Station Photographer Unknown
Zena Holloway is one of our favorites and we’ve posted her many times on the page
“S_H_O_G_U_N” by RockerDish
Best pieces
Nearly all of these pieces have been chosen by the Urban-Muse fanbase by achieving 1,000 likes or more with the top piece at nearly 9,000 likes.
Adorable piece from Daniela Uhlig
Clara from Doctor who by Alice X. Zhang. We had a Doctor Who themed day for the 50th anniversary of the show, and this piece was the most liked of the day with over 1,000 likes.
Ivan Alifann – Porcelain Skin
Iconic work from Alyssa Monks
Andy Zig’s Great Balls of fire piece for this years Scope art fair, when we posted this it became the most liked image in Urban-Muse history with over 5,000 likes, until it was later topped by a piece we will be sharing in the next post. Andy Zig was really excited to see how well it performed and we were glad to help give it a bigger audience.
Anna Dittmann (Escume)
Anna Dittmann (Escume)
Anthony Jones
Apocalypto by 88grzes
Awesome piece from Audrey Kawasaki
Back by CN. Luyang Wang using the same study as one of our favorite Lin Ran Pieces we picked as best of 2012, based on references from Errikos Andreou
Beaverman
Bec Winnel
Benjamin
Benjamin Walfridson
BenJee
Kyrie, Kyrie has been HUGE this year on Urban-Muse getting probably 60,000+ likes in total, we had a hard time NOT picking this for image of the year, but we decided to go with another one. Kyrie is the best, definitely keep an eye on this amazing artist.
Camilla d’Errico
Massive pieces by Guillermo Lorca Garcia Huidobro La Giganta I and II
Jessica Salehi
Shane Scribner (Model: Lauren W.K.)
Christine Wu (Model: Lauren W.K.)
Clint Cearly – “The Naiads”
A great piece by our good friend Xiau Fong Wee – “Snack Time Rawr!”
David Palumbo
“Dazzle” by Kincept
Eloy Morales at work
Erik Jones Work In Progress shot
“Fashion Girl” by Mr. Pink
Fragile Peace by Moussin Irjan
“Freedom” by Apofiss
Haval L7M
Idrassi Soufiane
By: ILikeYourSensitivity
Imai Takashi
“Islands” by Alice X. Zhang
Jace Wallace (Wakkawa) is one of our favorite artists, and he’s had a huge year on Urban-Muse with his pieces getting probably around 100,000 likes total. (He paints ALOT and we share most of it) So we’re giving him an extra special shoutout here with some of our favorites of the year, including one we couldn’t even post on Facebook because of Nudity, but we did post it on our TUmblr.
Jace Wallace (Wakkawa) – “Fragile”
Jace Wallace (Wakkawa)
Jace Wallace (Wakkawa) – “When the Darkness Comes”
Jace Wallace (Wakkawa) – “You’re No Lamb” Another tough decision for us, this was also nearly selected as piece of the year.
Two great artists for the price of one!
Jace Wallace (Wakkawa’s) portrait of the talent (and Lovely) Jasmine Darnell (Yasahime)
Jana Brike at work
Best Piece of 2013 1 of 2
As you probably guessed from the cover image to this special, we have selected Tom Bagshaw’s Audrey Hepburn pieces to be one of the two best pieces we’ve posted all year. Tom has been a friend of Urban-Muse.com practically since it started, and we’ve loved watching his work progress and his fanbase grow to over 100,000 likes on Facebook. This is our Favorite Tom Bagshaw piece yet and it was even the default picture of the page for about a month. GREAT WORK TOM!
See more of Tom’s Work at his website http://www.MostlyWanted.com/ or his Facebook!
Urban-Muse is curated and owned by Curt Anderson (Los Angeles, California)
MAKE ART. PAINT THINGS. BE AWESOME.