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  • Girl swimming
    Girl swimming - Corwin Prescott
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    Reed Young - women in shop window
  • Get off the phone.
  • Titillating Tank Sculptures - Fan Xiaoyan's Half Woman-Half Machine Artwork (GALLERY)
    Sculptor Fan Xiaoyan has created several part woman, part metallic warrior pieces that I would not want to run into in a dark alley.
  • Jethro Haynes
    ‘The Amorous Octopus’ The one that started it all. First shoe diorama, with Hudson-Powell. Made for a Vans custom exhibition but never exhibited. Mixed materials on Uk size 8 Vans slip-on shoe. 2005

Links:

• The Book Design Review – I’ve always imagined any Silicon Valley complex full of faceless, like-minded programming drones, and I assume that’s what most other people imagine as well. So, it’s not a far stretch of the imagination to go with pixilated peeps.”
• Playpen » Blog Archive » Playing Word Games in Blog Comments – Word-association and other games going on in the comments of Fail Blog posts.
• 100 Must-See Art Blogs (of Every Form) | Art Career – These blogs can help keep you in the loop and provide inspiration for art of just about any kind from illustration to performance art so you don’t miss out on a single opportunity.
• lines and colors :: a blog about drawing, painting, illustration, comics, concept art and other visual arts » Larry Roibal – Roibal’s blog is often devoted to portraits of another sort, chronicling his practice of sketching character studies of people currently in the news directly on newspaper articles about those people.
• http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/25/trainset-in-a-pocket.html – Pocket-watch that’s also a miniature train set
• Matt and Fred the Moose « Cardboard Safari – Moose Head by Cardboard Safari. It comes flat-packed and you assemble it yourself.

Links:

• Ana Serrano » Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog – Playful paper sculpture work of Ana Serrano. I love this piece, Cartonlandia, a vibrant cardboard microcosm of perfect little houses and vehicles.
• New Art: Fly Me to the Moon – Line drawings of complex fantastical architectures.
• Esc Clock won’t let you be tardy – Designlaunches.com – Another alarm, this time fashioned as an Esc key.
• Book illustrated with type: Victor & Susie » Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog – Victor and Susie is a cute illustrated book in which the illustrations are all created with typography.

Image Credit: © Veja.com     Source planetperplex.com

• How to make money with free software…(not what you think) – I approached the subject ‘Netherlands and Architecture’ from two points of view. On one hand I paid tribute to the rich Dutch architecture history and on the other hand to the contemporary quality of Dutch architecture.
• Text-adventure game award-winners of 2008: Everybody Dies takes bronze! – Boing Boing – The 14th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition and keeper of the old-school text-game torch, recently declared its winners.
• Artsy Games Incubator » Games – Some of the games created during the Artsy Games Incubator

 
Image Credit: © SPE IDE – Stani’s Python Editor

I had real trouble selecting my favourite image of Michael Samuels’ art for this post, since I like it all so much. Michael’s work consists of small scenes, reminiscent of those on a model railroad, but with some twists. The first thing you notice is that the scenes are out of context – no attempt has been made to conceal the fact that these are models. The tables and shelves that the works are displayed on haven’t been finished neatly and the models haven’t been blended into the display units. This lack of boundaries and the atmospheirc lighting makes you feel like you’re actually in the scene. I can imagine myself in the image above, walking home late at night, along a deserted street with just a pool of light illuminating the overflowing skip. I can almost feel the fog just beyond the puddle of light.

Image Credit: © Michael Samuels

Links:

• Naughty Jewelry – Provocative Pendants and Risque Rings (GALLERY) – This collection of sexy, risque jewelry includes raunchy resin rings from brune-woehlke.de
• 3D printer uses office paper – Hack a Day – A brand new rapid prototyping machine. The Mcor Matrix forgoes the standard of expensive and rare build materials by using A4 office paper. The machine selectively deposits glue on the sheet of paper: more glue on the cross-section, less on the waste.
• Ponoko! | Illustration Friday – Ponoko is a very cool service from New Zealand that takes your designs and laser cuts them on demand into a variety of materials like acrylic, felt, wood, and cardboard.

 Image Credit: © brune-woehlke

Since I’m fascinated by miniatures as art, I thought I’d do a small series of the artists and web-sites that I’m drawn to and try to explain (mostly for my own benefit) what it is I like about the work. Here’s part 1.

Little People – a tiny street art project- The artist started this project by posing miniature people in various public places around London, photographing them and then leaving them to fend for themselves. The images suggest a tiny parallel world that exists alongside our own and occasionally intersects with tragic or amusing consequences. In this world where the gigantic meets the tiny, a real world bee becomes a monster to be killed with a rifle, and a snail serves as public transport. Even though each image creates an atmosphere and stands alone in its own right, it’s easy to string these images together in your mind and imagine the entirely alternative miniature world exisiting alongside our own.

My personal favourites are the pictures from the Nuart Show, where an entire scene has been modelled in a gallery. I particularly like the scene of the accident where a framed (real-world-sized) picture has come crashing down into the world of the little people and one unfortunate victim has been impaled by a gigantic shard of glass.

Image Credit: © slickachu

Links:

• Mattias Inks: Canary Town – The most canaerial link this week – Mattias Adolfsson’s moleskine sketch of a canary town. Click on the image to see it in full-size on Mattias’ site, and while you’re there have a look at some of his other fantastic work.
• Hanging Around With “A l’Heure de l’Apéro” – The tiniest people are definitely having all the fun. Her one-of-a-kind creations incorporate miniature handmade figurines (less than 0.8″ each) captured in graceful, chain-wrapped movements.
• Watches: Hiranao Tsuboi Minimalist LED Watch is, Sadly, Just a Concept – The LED lights forgo the need for a watch face by being interwoven with the links on the wristband.
• Your source for all things wicked and awesome: Bela Borsodi – Bela Borsodi’s work is equal parts caricature and vanguard, and products that stand on their own. Instead of models, he resorts to all sorts of objects to aid in the spotlight, be it balloons, wires, collages, illustrations, and all that you can think of.

Image Credit: © Mattias Adolfsson

This restaurant features a logo design that looks like a model car kit still on the sprue. I don’t know the story behind this picture, apart from the fact that Brandon Shigeta added it to his flickr set called Tokyo auto salon. The sprues in the design  obviously made an impression on him since he tagged the image with the word “sprues”.  Unlike the other pieces in the series, this design is flatter, but still clearly recognisable as a model kit. I notice that the designer of this piece didn’t make the same mistake as the cover of The Blind Watchmaker, where some letters aren’t actually attached to the sprue and are left “hanging”.

Links:

• Scaffolding: Not just for construction workers anymore on Flickr – Photo Sharing! – In complex systems science, “scaffolding” are those structures necessary to move from an initial state to an emerged form… Once the new state has emerged, the scaffolding comes down… BUT, without the scaffolding, no change would have occurred.
• 10 Writing Reasons To Take More Photographs | Confident Writing – What’s the relationship between taking photos and writing with greater confidence: realising the power of our words?
• PingMag – The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” » Archive » Yay! Best Of Design Week Tokyo 2008 – All the new hot stuff in artful design and designful art, includes “The Most Delicate Irony By Porcelain Figurines” and “The Simplest Practicability” – a stamp calendar where you tear off a stamp each day.
• need ideas? | Illustration Friday – A fun little sheet on Ways to Get Ideas.
• 51JapaneseCharacters – “51 Japanese Characters” is an insightful collection of figurines showcasing several typical members and cultural phenomena of Japanese society – an easy and playful approach to Japan.
• Jolly Good Then | Writer Dad – I’ve also dreamt of earning a living by creating things of value, and then inserting them into my own agenda.

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