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I can't believe I hadn't profiled Asghar before. I remember seeing his work somewhere and being amazed by it. When I saw his work again today I checked in the archives to see his profile on Project 300 and when I couldn't find it I realized I must have forgotten to add him the first time.
Anyway, this talented artist from Hamedan uses the cg medium to create realistic and more traditional paintings. His art is soft and graceful, his lighting and form is at times quite extraordinary. The thumbnail I have chosen is taken from his work titled "Persian Girl". Check out his gallery to see more of his beautiful work.

23 year old Ghassem Farhany's self-taught cg paintings show some great quality and good command of the medium. Surprisingly, he doesn't use any real-life reference for his fantasy-themed works and solely relies on his imagination. Check out this Abadan native's works on his cgsociety and deviant art profiles.

I don't know anything about Touraj Khosravi, but if his personality is as colorful as his art he must be quite a character. For some reason his work reminds me of Dali, a sort of grotesque Dali from hell. His detailed paintings are extremely surreal and at times somewhat morbid and disturbing. One thing is for sure, they certainly have a great impact and there's an air of magnificence around them. Check out his stuff on his cgsociety profile.

Lately I'm coming across more and more young Persian photographers with real talent. My latest discovery is Toranj Kayvan , an 18-year-old talented photographer from Vancouver who seems to have a passion for fashion photography. I'm simply loving her gallery .

When you mentioned "Illustration" in Iran, more often than not people associate it with Childrens Books. Many of the
illustrators there are active in this area, perhaps because it's easier for them to express themselves through Childrens stories, considering the fact that public art shows are severely restricted by content in Iran.

One illustrator that seems to follow the same trend is Arghavan Khosravi. I came across her profile on DeviantArt the other day and enjoyed her fun and whimsical illustrations. Most of her art seems to be hand-painted in the traditional way, which is more of a rarity these days considering all the digital art out there. Check out her gallery.

A few posts ago there was a comment from one of our regular readers introducing a great website with tons of pictures from various cities across Iran. For some reason I had missed it until now. Aryo.ir has a nicely organized gallery of images from all over Iran and is definitely worth checking out. The images are all taken by A. Daneshgar. Incidentally, the name Aryo refers to Aryo Barzan, an Achaemenid warrior who valiantly resisted Alexander's seige and died in battle (you can read about it over at aryo.ir). There is also a comic book currently being produced in Iran named Aryo (I'll write more about that later). The photo I chose is from Bojnourd city, in the Lorestan province.

Some time in the past several months, this website quietly exploded! That's right, I'm talking about our little Google Bomb. Right now, if you search for "300 the movie", which was our target word, this site is the first result, higher than the official 300 movie site. Of course this was only possible with the massive support of the Persian blogosphere who linked to us (4,257 incoming links and counting). As you know, this project was triggered by the 300 movie, but has long since grown to something beyond a simple response to a single movie and is now a source of news and information about Persian art and artists, with an eye towards shedding some light on the History of Persia.

I just came across the website of the award winning artist Mohammad Aghaei. This native of Isfahan's style is strongly representative of the prevalent theme among Persian illustrators: A lot of substance, an almost philosophical approach to illustration, and strong Eastern European influences. I must admit that my personal taste is more inclined towards the North American, more 'comicy' styles, as well as Japanese influences. Nevertheless, there are some outstanding pieces in Aghaei's portfolio and I'm sure the fans of this style will appreciate his art greatly.

Sorry for the delay in updating here, I was on vacation. But now I'm back and the updates will resume.

I'm spotlighting Shervin Bahri. This 22-year old is clearly into fantasy art. There aren't many pieces in his portfolio yet but the ones he have there show his great form. I'm certainly putting him on my watchlist. While you're in DeviantArt, check out Hamed Talebani's updated gallery as well, he has added some nice new art.

32-year-old Ali Khalkhali seems to have a nack for working with clay. I really wish there were more pieces in his portfolio, especially the wonderfully funny Rostam and Esfandiar comic done completely in clay (there are only two pages of that in his gallery). Also don't miss his clay depiction of the Irano-Russian wars.

Rostam is an epic heroic character in Persian literature and mythology. He is basically a 10th century super-hero and there's no wonder that Persian illustrators and cartoonists often draw upong his stories when they approach comics. (incidentally, the only real comic book available worldwide that has Persian characters is the Rostam comic book, which you can check out here.)