Mashing art styles with GIMP: Caleb Thomas

DeviantArt is a bit of a universe, with planets orbiting around entire subculture suns. Sometimes these solar systems collide, and that’s how you get mixes of stylized anime, fashion model tributes etc.

Meet Caleb Thomas who uses just GIMP to do all of that and a lot more.

So, why did Caleb go for GIMP? Here’s some background:

While I was browsing for a suitable program for myself, there were GIMP users who had results that mimicked the work of those who used other programs like Photoshop. And the most impressive thing was that unlike the other programs, GIMP was free.

So I wanted a digital art program that would be easy on my pockets and where I could make high quality, fully colored, digital images. GIMP fit that criteria like a glove so BAM! There you go.

There are some recurring “models” on Caleb’s paintings: Annie Mei, Korra, etc. But it would be completely unfair to mentally file his work under “tributes” or “based on reference photos” category. Caleb does a lot of original artwork and concept art, including drawing with natural media.

Here’s a “the making of” timelapse for the painting above:

And here are more artworks from his DeviantArt and Tumblr galleries.

There’s plenty more of Caleb’s artwork to admire on DeviantArt and Tumblr.