The Most Extraordinary Paintings and Illustrations: A Visual Guide

Nicholas Moegly painting of a glowing orange tent in a suburban backyard at night, deer standing quietly in the blue dark

Seventeen years, six hundred-odd artists, and the pictures we still think about.

Most pictures you look at once. A few you keep going back to, and after a while you notice they have changed how you look at everything else.

Since 2009 we have been collecting that second kind here: a tent glowing in a backyard long after midnight, houses stacked on top of each other with no regard for gravity, a whole zoo drawn without lifting the pen, a hundred years of posters, and paint that got bored of the canvas and wandered off. Think of this as a map of the painters and illustrators who stopped us mid-scroll. We will keep adding to it.

617

painting and illustration stories and counting

4,300+

art stories across every medium

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worlds in the Moss & Fog atlas

01 · Painters of the Quiet Hour

Not much happens in these paintings, which is the point. Nicholas Moegly works the hours after the neighbors have gone to bed. Anton Van Hertbruggen paints the backyard in February. Maciej Sidorowicz can make a boat on trailer stands look like somewhere you would want to spend the afternoon, and Jim Darling paints the one view every traveler has seen and nobody photographs well.

Anton Van Hertbruggen painting of a snowy suburban yard at dusk with a figure looking up at the sky — Nicholas Moegly’s Suburbs After Dark

02 · Worlds That Fold

Cinta Vidal builds houses where the floor is also the wall, depending on which figure you follow. David Ambarzumjan drags one loaded brush across a city street and a savanna shows up underneath it. Rafael Silveira and Sascha Braunig both paint faces you cannot quite hold still. Look as long as you like. They will not resolve.

Cinta Vidal painting of an interior where rooms and furniture are arranged on multiple gravities at once — Cinta Vidal’s Time and Space

David Ambarzumjan painting of a zebra on a modern city street with a single brushstroke revealing an African savanna — Cinta Vidal’s Time and Space

03 · One Line, No Lifting

Draw an animal without lifting the pen. It sounds like a party trick until you try it. Jonathan Calugi fills entire scenes this way, Loooop has worked through most of the animal kingdom, and ShouXin’s cats are not strictly one line, but they are so few lines that the cat seems to keep moving while you look at it.

Jonathan Calugi single continuous line drawing of figures, palms and objects with pops of pink and yellow — One Line Wonders by Jonathan Calugi

Loooop one-line animal drawings, a dozen creatures each drawn in a single stroke on a pastel gradient — One Line Wonders by Jonathan Calugi

04 · Illustration With Something to Say

Editorial illustrators have a hard job: say what the article says, in one image, before anyone has read a word of it. Myriam Wares and Will Cordell are as good at this as anyone working right now.

Tania Yakunova has been on this site since 2022 and keeps getting better. And the lantern scenes in our India collection are the kind of pictures that make you homesick for somewhere you have never lived.

Myriam Wares editorial illustration of a cyclist riding along a moonlit river under tall trees — Myriam Wares, Editorial Impact

Will Cordell illustration of a face made of glowing green foliage with bright eyes — Myriam Wares, Editorial Impact

05 · The Natural World, Drawn

Before cameras, if you wanted to know what a stag beetle looked like, somebody had to paint one. Joris Hoefnagel did it in the 1500s and his beetle still holds up next to anything made since.

The habit never went away. Tiffany Bozic paints on wood panels so the grain shows through as water, Alfred Basha grows a deer out of bare branches, and Martin Wittfooth’s bear is on fire and in bloom at the same time.

Joris Hoefnagel 16th-century watercolor of a stag beetle with enormous antlers — Hoefnagel, the Godfather of Insect Illustration

Illustrated moths in reds, yellows and pinks arranged on a black background — Hoefnagel, the Godfather of Insect Illustration

06 · Futures Past

The future used to look better. Robert McCall painted it for NASA with monorails, domes and total confidence. Albert Robida drew Paris in the year 2000 while living in the 1880s and got a surprising amount of it right. Japanese magazines of the 1960s filled their pages with robot fire brigades. We went deep on all of this in our guide to retrofuturism. This is the short version.

Robert McCall painting of a gleaming future city with domed towers, monorails and spacecraft under a blue sky — The Optimistic Futurism of Robert McCall

Matthew Lyons stylized illustration of a modernist plaza with figures, flying vehicles and a pink evening sky — Matthew Lyons’ Stylized Futures

Albert Robida 19th-century illustration of Paris in the year 2000 crowded with flying machines — Matthew Lyons’ Stylized Futures

07 · The Poster as Art

A poster has to work from across the street. Eric Rohman made them for Swedish cinemas a century ago and they still do. Achille Mauzan sold liqueur with pure Art Deco nerve. Drew Struzan painted so many of the movies you grew up with that you probably know his work without knowing his name. Ugo Gattoni’s Paris 2024 poster is the newest one here and the most crowded. Get close to it.

Eric Rohman Swedish film poster for Alibi with faces, a clock and a pistol in bold red, yellow and green — Eric Rohman, Sweden’s Relentless Poster Maker

Achille Mauzan Art Deco poster of a monk in a red robe holding a glowing glass for Gran Liquore di Santa Vittoria — Eric Rohman, Sweden’s Relentless Poster Maker

08 · Paint That Left the Canvas

At some point the canvas stops being enough. Pawel Nolbert’s brushstrokes lift off the surface and cast shadows. Alexa Meade paints on actual people, then photographs them, and the photograph reads as a painting. Joshua Vides did the same thing to a car museum.

Saype paints on hillsides at a scale you need a drone to take in, and Helena Minginowicz paints portraits on paper towels, which should not work and does.

Pawel Nolbert portrait with a sculptural three-dimensional paint stroke swept across the subject's eyes — Pawel Nolbert’s Dimensional Strokes

A single colorful brushstroke suspended inside a clear block of resin — Pawel Nolbert’s Dimensional Strokes

09 · The Masters, Revisited

And then there are the ones everyone knows, still turning up surprises. A Rembrandt that had gone missing comes back into the light. A grasshopper turns out to have been stuck in a Van Gogh since the 1880s. Hilma af Klint, who was painting abstractly before Kandinsky and asked that her work stay hidden for twenty years after her death, finally gets the crowds. O’Keeffe, Amy Sherald and Maria Prymachenko round it out, and none of them need our introduction.