Gems Sty

Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial cartooning Clay Bennett is an editorial cartoonist on the Christian Science Monitor - some of his comics (I guess this would probably apply to most editorial/political cartooning) are quite astute, and I thought his drawing style was quite nice too - refined and well-colored. My favorites are above.

The Eco-Zoo is a rather interesting website with a very light-hearted touch to be more environmentally friendly. The topic isn’t what you’d term informative or authoritative, though what I really liked is the Flash execution: whimsical, detailed, delightful and unmistakably Japanese. See it for yourself!

While we may be quite familiar with the Photoshop interface on our screen, the artist here has taken to recreating it painstakingly in real life, even including the layers and menus. Pretty cool huh?

I saved this picture but I forgot to keep the source - anyone knows who to give credit to?

Perhaps I should count myself deprived, or maybe just too young or something - when the NYTimes reported on artist Chris Burden constructing a 65-foot tower using stainless steel modular pieces, I was in awe. I’ve never seen or heard about these metal trusses before - and thought ‘Wow, these are like LEGO for grown-up engineers or something”.

It’s inspiring to see these basic building blocks stretched right to its limits:

“The fact that it is both a model and the height of a real building is bizarre,” she said. “It is simultaneously right and wrong from a traditional building perspective. And so it starts to play tricks on you.”

The pieces he used were stainless steel replicas of a toy commonly known as ‘Erector Set’s, which to my surprise was launched almost a hundred years ago back in 1913, and created history by being the very first toy to be advertised nationally.

Wish we’d see more (resurgence) of toys like these. Open-ended, as-challenging-as-your-imagination, and probably encourages kids (and adults!) to take interest, understand and marvel at engineering and construction ideas.

I need to play more.

[via momeld]

Joe, a talented (graphic artist perhaps?) guy started a a year-long project over at Toy-A-Day recently, where he’d design, construct and post a new paper toy from a basic template each day for one year.

Here are the collections from Day 1 to Day 18 - pretty cool huh? What’s more, some of them are available as down loadable PDFs for your own amusement and handicraft session. With their flat bottoms, they’re perfect for perching on top of your monitor to lift a spirit or two!

Even if the photo itself is probably carefully timed and staged, I couldn’t help but admire the vision of the original graffiti artist who plopped that UFO into that very spot - it certainly shows an eye for seeing and visualizing what isn’t immediately obvious - and with a great sense of humor too!

[Unknown origin, via Wooster]

Erik Nordenankar had an interesting idea - to draw the biggest drawing in the world using nothing but a suitcase of GPS tracking device and the ever reliable DHL:

[On] the 17th of March 2008, I sent away a briefcase containing a GPS device with the express transportation company DHL. I gave them exact travel instructions, where to go and in what order. 55 days later the briefcase returned to Stockholm. The GPS automatically recorded the briefcases’s journey around the world. The  information  was downloaded to my computer and gave me my drawing. Due to the GPS drawing technique and the magnitude of the drawing, the self portrait had to be made in only one stroke. That giant stroke passed through 6 continents and 62 countries, thus becoming 110664km long.

And here’s the device he sent on voyage:

Can’t make it more like a ticking briefcase bomb, can you?

Anyway, for more videos head on to his site here.

Emily Jo Cureton takes a few crosswords from New York Time’s crossword puzzle daily, and turn them into sometimes bizarre but wonderfully interesting doodles - here are some examples:

Very cool, don’t you think? Here’s her blog with many more entries!

Thought this hack on the street was pretty cool - bringing that Mario-gaming world into the bland cityscape. I think if there was a few pixelated turtles I’d probably be skipping over them each time I walk pass…

Apparently a village near Shenzhen, China called Dafen is responsible for 60% of the world’s reproduction oil printings. They operate by reproducing famous paintings at the request of clients, much like a factory, except that instead of factories the production is still done by hand.

REGIONAL collaborated with some of these artists to paint a picture of themselves, using the same technique and styles of the masters they reproduced:

REGIONAL productively collaborated with the otherwise commoditized community in Dafen by asking selected individuals, some for the first time, to imagine themselves in their professional medium. The final works show the technical, creative, and professional facets of the artists identities subsumed by the styles and relationships they maintain with specific famous artists. The hybrid result of original subject with derivative style comments on originality, global cultural production and REGIONAL’s cooperation with emerging enterprise forms that are internationalizing the village.

The product of the collaboration are sets of images (seen below) comprising a digital photo of the artist in his studio, an indicative painting of their usual output and an original self-portrait. While the final works contain both the creative signature of the original masters and the emergent self-consciousness of the Dafen artists, it is equally important to note that they derived great fulfillment from using their talents freely, and were remunerated at a rate commensurate with the unique international nature of the project.

If you think of a reproduction factory, perhaps the analogy that comes to mind is a photocopying machine. Painting in (original), painting out. But as these self-portrait clearly shows, there is an important but subtle difference. The artists mastered the technique to paint in a particular style, with as much skill level (painting technique wise) as Mr. Van Gogh, Renoir or Da Vinci. And it is this that gives them the ability to paint other (original) paintings such as these self portraits.

Which makes me wonder - what if these obviously talented/skilled artist came to to venture on their own? Would they be unable to paint anything that isn’t the exact derivative of the master-style that they’ve adopted? Would it probably be a question of social-connection rather than technical mastery that hinders them from being recognized as an artist in their own right?

[REGIONAL blog with several more examples]