You'll have to forgive me but most of these references are to 80's and early 90's comics.
Dan Jurgens is at his best when he as Jerry Ordway inking him - he catches some stuff Breeding doesn't and isn't as heavy handed.
I'm getting into just about everything Tim Truman has done recently.
I don't much care for Mike Grell as an artist but he can write a hell of a crime comic.
Really starting to like Rick Bruchett and how simple and slightly exagerated his stuff is, especially when he inks himself.
Mike Zeck is pretty cool, though I guess half of Secret Wars layouts were dictated by shooter but I thought that large scale comic was handled excellently by him.
Dael Keown is someone that I thought was cool when I was a kid with his super polished veiny mega muscle characters at image and top cow but I really think his best work was on his early Hulk stuff.
Alan Davis' ealy style had little black placement and I used to have a whole trade of something he did with a short haired Phoenix, Captain Britan etc that I didn't care for. But after Clandestine he started some heavy black placement and I think his stuff has gotten even more beautiful as he's aged. Mark Farmer always does bang up work with him and his diagonal action panels really are amazing, from his layouts down to their gestures and poses.
You can't hear enough about Jon Buscema but I really didn't know his work specifically since so many tried to imitate him but his downturned mouths are a pretty dead giveaway, though I think he's at his best when he is inking himself or like anyone Al Williamson was inking him. The quality of his finished work varies greatly based on who was finishing/inking/embellishing over him, from Ernie Chan to Alfredo Alcalla to others he probably worked with just about everybody and did a lot, though I've seen some of the layouts he was giving out and how loose they were. Its amazing he was able to keep the volume of his work still feeling fresh and not to repetitive.
Whilace Portacio is another guy you have to find in the right time period his work is all over the place, from terrible to amazing and it seems it changed about every 3-5 years. Though my favorite period was his stuff on X-men (around the time Marrow was created) and Avenger Forever when Liquid coloring really came in big.
Also apparently the Kubert brothers were just stepping out of the shadow of their father in the 80's but I saw them do everything from coloring to inking to penciling etc on various books, mostly DC at the time. Really liked Adams work on Johnny Quest though you can tell by the brushy inks it was very heavily influenced by his father at the time, who I also love. Joe's layouts always amaze me how he's able to fill the page in an interesting way, like it'd be hard to find a boring Joe Kubert page and at the same time he leaves things fairly rough and undetailed. He puts just enough detail in to let you know he knows what he's drawing and you can identify it but not enough that he couldn't ink it with a brush.
Steve Lightle is someone I need to find some more stuff from but I saw a 1/2 isue of Marvel Comic Presents Ghost Rider/Wolverine that blew me away.
Also made a big fool of myself on Deviantart confusing trying to praise both Tom Palmer and Bill Reinhold on their respective pages on the same day and mixing eachothers work up with one another and being called out on it by them - yikes! Speaking of which I appologize about all the name misspellings on here, this is half an "inspiration Journal" for me so I don't forget some of these guys and 1/2 wanting to let you guys find out about them. Though I've heard these names 1,000 times I never made the connections so I'm probably the last to know, but now I know.
Lastly the IF anthology from Alterna is just about out, though it feels like I did those pages a year ago or more - will have a story called "Signs of Life" in it, alongside artwork from Novo Malgapo - who I liked a great deal.
Here's basically the layout "blobs" I do before putting down my final lines. Also a few comparrisons from the cover, which I haven't shown yet of some redraws - had to work on an outstretched 4 finger claw hand and on Ashini and her hand on the hip pose in the background.
And here's the sketch out for the Shadowpact commission - to show about how far I go before inking when I'm my own inker.
Here's the final http://xaqbazit.deviantart.com/art/Shadowpact-543604560
