The photography of Lily Nance engages the arresting vulnerability of youth in a way that only the perverse and loving reaction of the subject to its inquisitive observer really can.

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The street art of Alexandre Farto, aka Vhils’, is so refreshing. He carves, sculpts, drills, scratches and paints his images onto the wall. And he captures emotion in great detail. Check out this awesome video to watch him in action.

London-based designer and photographer, Karnatarka, has some nice portraits from India showing the diversity of the country.

Ann Marshall creates her captivating portraits using a unique blend of traditional techniques and paper collage. She is currently exhibiting at the New Masters show at Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles, CA.

I found this young photographer from Melbourne on Flickr. Michelle Dylan Huynh is only 19 but takes amazing portraits. There is always a softness to them, but also a raw quality. She choses her models wisely: there are certain characteristics in the person’s face that are so intriguing and she captures them well.

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Sexy is over-rated. Simplicity and elegance is what this portrait photographer is all about. Frederic Melotte’s portraits of people and animals have a feel-good, unpretentious quality, and they stay true to the subjects’ personality. Born in Mauritius, and based in Malaysia, he has been producing beautiful photography across these two countries for the last few years.

Cristina N. Paulos creates interesting, emotional artwork using Mirror Twin cartoon characters and titillating vixen female imagery. She now has an online shop.

New York city-based illustrator Mike Marsicano depicts his New York in its gritty, unsavory, captivating glory in a recent series of illustrations, integrating timeless quotes, poignant cityscapes and sharp portraits of some of the characters that overrun the city.

Dame Edna Everage looking anything but average, Michael Jackson small and sensitive? It all seems rather fitting, really. As does the rest of this brilliant series of photos featuring pets tussled, styled and pampered like the hungry celebrities that they are.

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It’s often assumed that great artists were born that way, which really isn’t true usually. Buddy Nestor, for instance, didn’t really start painting until the birth of his son in 1997. Now he’s a prolific painter, creating really demented portraits of women. I hope that’s not an indication of how he feels about his son.

Lucy Fahey has put together some amazing mixed media portraits, combining colour pencil drawing and photography digitally assembled. Using a hyper real style, she has accentuated facial features usually associated as traditional markers of beauty. The portraits blur the boundary between the real and an absurd distortion of the truth.

Treading a fine line between sculpture and painting, Jasper Knight’s art explores the relationship between his material and subject. Using materials like signs, tiles, cardboard, perspex and plywood, along with vibrant coloured paints, Knight has been a finalist for the past five Archibald Prize exhibitions including this year with his portrait of Bill Wright. [Read about more Australian artists on The Colour]

If I were the CEO of a big company, I would totally hang a bunch of Argentine-born, Berlin-based artist Juan Arata’s paintings, not because they suit a corporate environment but because I like making people uncomfortable with very subtle visual cues. I said this at a job interview for a CEO position once, which is why I am not a CEO.

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Philippe Halsman is a genius photographer who during the 1950′s ended all his portrait sessions by asking the sitter to jump. Thankfully everyone from Richard Nixon to Dali and Audrey Hepburn said ‘How high?’ because the resulting series is one of mischief and glee. It is also a disarming look at some of the most famous names of Halsman’s time.

Amazing oil paintings by Parisian artist Francoise Nielly, who uses a palette knife to achieve the dramatic textures and bold line work that punctuates her portraits.

Maarten Wetsema is a Dutch photographer living in Arnhem, The Netherlands. Wetsema is represented by Van Kranendonk Gallery in The Hague, The Netherlands. He has had numerous international exhibitions, and his images have appeared at Photo Miami and Paris Photo.

It takes an alert photographer to capture no-frills, naturalistic images such as those by Brooklyn-based Youngna Park. There’s an honesty about her work that’s refreshing amid the highly-produced, big-budget styles and the overly-stylized hipster verite that abounds these days.

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While Petra Cortright’s irreverent new media work that incorporates animated gifs and tacky web symbols and emoticons is generally amusing, her series Portraits II is particularly amazing, the digitally smeared images becoming beautiful still-lifes and haunting portraits that truly transcend their source photos.

Jeff McMillan’s body of work represents a managerie of pop-culture icons where movie characters, Star Wars aliens, and mythical beasts collide in a carnival sideshow.

Unlike other photographers delving into the subject of adolescent femininity, there’s no sense of voyeurism in Anastasia Cazabon’s images. Instead, there is a personal and mythical narrative that is perpetually beyond the grasp of the viewer, who Cazabon leaves with merely the incomprehensible minutiae, the turned backs, and the hidden faces in the wake of a small but important event.