One of my followers and fellow #dolphinschool classmates 
Hive account@sarahart created this post a few days ago, encouraging her followers to participate in her #mytop5artists contest. The rules are simple...: Upvote and Resteem her post and make a post listing your 5 favourite visual artists. I like the idea because it gives me a chance to share with you guys a bit of what has influenced me as an artist.
I've also decided to use this opportunity to practice and pass on a handy little technique that many of you might not know about, which you might find incredibly useful. I'm not even sure if it is going to work. Guess we'll find out...
Okay, straight to it! These are in no particular order:
Salvador Dalí - If you are anywhere in the spectrum of the art world, you have heard of Salvador Dalí. He is most famous for his strange, often bizarre surrealist paintings, which helped to twist my imagination from a young age. He did a lot of other stuff, however, including sculpture, film and photography. He was as eccentric as artistic geniuses come and loved the attention of the public.
Vincent Van Gogh - I'm as fascinated by who the man was as I am with his work... A true genius who was tragically not recognised as such before he died, he was considered mad. He suffered from mental illness and delusions, depression, and drank a lot. Today he is considered one of the most influential artists of all time. When Doctor Who did an episode in homage to him, I cried.
M. C. Escher - The day will come when I will suddenly pick up a pencil and start a journey to become the next Escher. Hehehe. You look at his work and you just can't believe it. He could "fractalise" anything. He drew inspiration from both nature and man-made architecture, and explored symmetry, reflection, infinity, impossible objects and much more in his work. He, too, sadly, was only really appreciated after his death.
Thomas Kinkade - You had to have been living under a rock the last 20 years not to have seen the glorious work of Thomas Kinkade, self-dubbed "Painter of Light". I've been enchanted with his paintings for years, and have two puzzles of them. According to wikipedia, most critics describe his pastoral paintings as 'maudlin' and 'overly sentimental'. The sensation of wanting to be INSIDE a painting, for me, though, is strongest with his work.
Mandelwerk (Johan Andersson) - The only living artist on my list, Johan has been creating 3D fractal art ever since it was first discovered to be possible, about 8 years ago. It was upon seeing his work that I was inspired to get started with my own. You can see his galleries over at DeviantArt and he also does 3D printing of different fractals - from jewelry to chess pieces. A true pioneer!
Alright, mission accomplished! May these artists give you as much joy as they've given me now that you've discovered them (especially the lesser known Escher and Mandelwerk).
Now for the technique I promised:
You'll notice how I have the images to the left and to the right, with the text neatly justified beside them. My original plan actually DIDN'T work, by the way. I wanted to use tables. But they don't work well when mixing images and text in them. So I tried out justification and DIV tags... For the image:
And for the text, you continue right below the image, like so:
Of course, if you want the image to the left, you change 'pull-right' to 'pull-left'.
It's that simple =)
Bye for now! o/
