Just over a year ago, I decided to draw one illustration a day and post it online for a year. I did it initially to practice and to develop. I completed the project last month and I’m really proud of myself for achieving what I had hoped. I feel like an illustrator now. It goes to show what can be done with a bit of focus and an Internet connection.

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Just finishing at Brighton with a degree in Illustration, Katie Scott is one of my favourites from this year’s graduates. Her intricate watercolors resemble medical drawings, but with a closer look, reveal beautifully surreal diagrams of hybrid creatures.

Her subtle use of colour and her immaculate eye for detail allow for her interests in early science, and the world’s uncertainty in this area, to come alive in her drawings.

It’s quite common for Richard Wilkinson to illustrate his subjects in an isolated setting. Often they appear to be disconnected from society and going through a rough time, which forces the viewer to sympathise with their mindsets.

Howkapow is a new online design shop which supports emerging designers and illustrators. Everything is pretty lary and colourful, and it’s based in Bristol, not London, for once. It’s run by young husband and wife duo, Cat and Rog How, who have just started a new range of collaborations with young graduates.

The first time I ever consumed a certain psychotropic substance, I proceeded to board a plane and go on a trip in more than one way. I had my sketchbook, and I coped with my deteriorating mental state by drawing pictures in it. I think had I never regained my sanity and never gotten off that plane, my drawings might have started looking like those of Casey Jex Smith.

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I’m totally floored by British illustrator Matthew Lyons’ retro-futuristic work. At the tender age of 22, Lyons is definitely someone to watch out for.

There’s something that seems personal and honest in Jaime Zollars’ work with the expressions on her characters’ faces as vital to the narratives encapsulated in her paintings as the compositional elements.

The psychedelic and surreal mixed-media drawings and collages by Jason Matthew Vivona are growing on my brain like a benign alien tumor.

What’s not to love about the idea of taking classic 1980s album covers (The Breakfast Club soundtrack, for instance) and reinterpreting them using characters from famous comic book series’. Illustrator Cliff Chiang has done just that. And he’s done it very well, with his takes on Jennifer Beals from Flashdancing as Electra and Duran Duran as Vampirella, among others.

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Contemporary artist Jason Jägel’s work features multi-sensorial work abounding with clear-cut graphic representations and eventful creature-filled scenes, which Jägel describes as a ‘preoccupation with slippery meanings and storytelling’. His line work and sense of colour is so appealing that you probably recognise his signature style from MF DOOM album covers.

Thankfully illustrator Jerome Prieur didn’t develop too far beyond his high school obsession with cyborgs and quasi-medieval imagery — his notebooks for biology class must have been works of art unto themselves.

Though Parisian illustrator Guy-Pascal Vallez (otherwise known as GAX) probably has very elaborate and fully rendered narratives in mind when he creates his images, but it’s probably best not to ask him what they are — it’s more fun to let his beautiful work inspire your own idea of what’s going on.

Argentine illustrator Juan Weiss makes great use of pattern and texture in his surreal images. His treatment of every day people and common animals such as milk cows and pigeons imbues his subject with a mythic power.

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Oakland-based illustrator Fred Noland has a rather playful, indie style that would have fit right in at Fantagraphics Books back in the 90s. Good stuff.

Looking at a Linn Olofsdotter illustration is like confronting every deep, dark fantasy you’ve never imagined but probably should have.

Ynki and her magical and intricate world of imagination is the creation of Berlin-based artist, Zoe Keogh, whose pastels and brightly coloured love injected into her artworks is such a joy. She draws, scratches, prints, inks, and presses, creating delicate delights, which were on display as part of her first solo show at Keith and Lotti in Perth, Australia, earlier this year. Keogh has also exhibited in London, New York and Paris and is working on an intriguing seven sins concept.