Surreal Photographs and Illustrations

Natalie Shau is mixed media artist and photographer based in Lithuania.  Her work spans from portrait photography, to creating artwork for theatres, fashion magazines, writers and advertisers.  We have picked a few, from her numerous photographs and illustrations, to show to you today. Amongst our favourite are the Alice in Wonderland inspired photographs, which is yours?

Drawings with Polyes Cool-Ink 3D Pen

Future MAKE have embarked in a Kickstarter Campaign (this is a crowd funding company where product makers can go and raise money for their products and people can pay in advance for them). Future MAKE were asking for a minimum of $50,000 and so far, they have raised more than $100,000 with more time to go.  This 3D Pen is different from the ones on the market, as they don't use heat to cure or solidify the coloured polymer, but a Blue LED light.  Future MAKE are producing different types of ink including, different colours, aromatic ones, glow in the dark, temperature changing, transparent and all are eco-friendly.  No fixed leads, USB charger, battery life between 1.5 hours 4.5 hour depending on the mode, 2 hour charge time.  Early birds will be able to buy them for $59 but the fixed price we think, will eventually be $79.

Understated Cardboard Sculptures

Bartek Elsner describes himself as a multi-disciplinary designer, with a focus on digital communication and interaction.  Amongst the his creations we have chosen his cardboard ones, with which he uses a certain level of understating and irony when it comes to giving them titles, you will see below.  We have added Animations to better show some of the details of the various sculptures.

Paintings of Dream-like Cities of the World

Kal Gajoum is a traveled Artist that started in Tripoli, where he was born, moving to Paris, then Britain and is now living in Canada.  His Oil Painting and palette knife techniques give his art a beautiful dream like feel to it, where you don't quite get to focus on the details like the people or their surroundings, but you get a perfect sense of what the picture is trying to convey.  As you would expect from his love of travel, his paintings cover many cities around the world, concentrating on the cities where he lived.  Lovely paintings that leave you with a serene feeling.  Enjoy...

Architecture - Begich Towers a Town Living in 1 Building

Begich Towers is a condominium with a difference, the 14-story former Army barracks, houses almost all of the 200 inhabitants of Whittier, Alaska, making it a self-contained structure.  Within its walls, there is everything a town needs to function, accommodation, a B&B, laundry facilities, health clinic, police station and detention area, a church, 2 convenience shops, a hydroponic room to grow vegetables, a recreation area for the kids, that in the winter commute to school trough a tunnel, because of the cold.  The reason for everything being so centralised is the the incredibly harsh winter the town experiences.  More information and a bit of the history of the Building, below.

Vintage Black and White Photo in real Life

We have posted drawing cut-outs in real life situations before, but this is the first time that we have seen this done with vintage Black and White Photographs.  Yorch Miranda cleverly positions them in funny or interesting situations, using them to tell as story for which he gives a title and the image, the rest is for us to imagine.

Massive Detailed Drawings and a Guitar

Artist Samuel Gomez working out of New York, sees his style as a hybrid of Surreal - Steampunk.  His drawings are created using Graphite, Ink and Acrylic.  He is a Creative Designer & Illustrator, working with some of the top agencies and the biggest brands in the world.  Gomez's drawings are not only beautifully detailed but are enormous, making it some times difficult to take into the entire drawing at once.  For all the drawings we have added an Animation with all the details of that drawing.  For the Deadpan Comedy Tryptic this was not enough we had to split this drawing in 3 Panels and each one has its own Animation and static image.  The guitar is at the end. 

Self-contained Architecture, Apartments, Market, Shops, Catering, Parking

This is the Markthal in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, it opened its doors in October 2014 and combines an enclosed Market, Accommodation / Apartments, Shops and Catering and Car Parking.  There is too much to put into this first part of the post, so we will list the numerous facts and specifications here and go into more detail further in the post, below.  There is a Video, GIF Animations and more Information that will hopefully give you a fuller picture.  Here goes, the Markthal contains 100 booths with fresh products, 15 Food Shops, 8 restaurants, 10 Storey 228 apartments and 1,200 parking places.  The internal wall is covered by the biggest painting in the world.  It is the first indoor market in Rotterdam and it is open 7 days a week till 20.00.  More below...

Baby Terrors Drawings of Horror Movie Villains

Currently living and working in Chicago, Artist Alex Solis came up with the lovely idea of depicting the scariest horror movie villains as babies, in a collection he calls Baby Terrors.  This is the second time we feature Solis, the first time was when he created a fantastic way of learning and remembering sign language, using the sign gestures and images to imprint them in our memories.  The link is below, just press it and it will take you there.
Sign Language Doodles Drawings.

Maker of Mythical Creatures and Pet Dolls

Lisa Toms Doll Maker from Barcelona Spain, constructs these beautiful and very realistic faux fur animals.  Toms completed her Fine Arts Degree last summer and is hoping to make a living, creating dolls, original designs and commissions.  Some of her dolls are made to be floppy and other can assume poses thanks to a plastic ball and socket joint. Head and paws are casted in resin from an original sculpture, hand painted with acrylics and sealed. The body is hand sewn with quality faux fur.  These mythical creatures come with a warning from the maker, that makes clear that, although they are made with durable products, they are not suitable for young children.

Travel Back in Time - up the Family Tree

Photographer and Stylist Christine McConnell, creates photographs of herself next to her ancestors, going back almost 200 years.  It apparently all started with a dress, her mother gave her early last year that she wore in a painting, that was hanging up in their home for the last 25 years.  At the time her mother was 32 which is also Christine's age now.  She decided to recreate that photograph of her mother's and got the idea to go back in time to recreate her earlier ancestors as well.

Photo-realistic Minimalism in Surreal Paintings

Irish Artist Nigel Cox upon leaving college, embarked on a three year Transglobe Expedition, with Sir Ranulph Fiennes.  During his travels, predominately across sea and ice, he came across some beautiful but very remote areas, where there was almost a lack of detail in the landscape, where everything was quiet and any detail stood out from its surroundings.  Cox brought these experiences into his style of painting, he calls Photo-realistic Minimalism.  They almost look like, people plucked from their day to day lives and transported into a world without detail, forcing us to concentrate on the person, eliminating all of the distractions created by our everyday surroundings.  More below...

Coffee Good for Drinking and Good for Painting

With a background in Children's books Illustrations, Brazilian Artist Dirceu Veiga has now chosen as to use 100% coffee, no inks or paints, to produce his art.  He also takes bookings for live events, usually in coffee shops, where he creates portraits of the people there.  We have included a time lapse video of Veiga creating one of his paintings below.

Art from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Tribute

With The Hobbit Trilogy to an end with (The Hobbit - The Battle of Five Armies) we thought we would feature Josi Fabri aka (Esteljf) with her fantastic drawings.  We also decided to put links to all the other posts we have done, regarding both Trilogies, Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit.  We have included pencil drawings, paintings and architecture that resembles hobbit homes.  If you are a fan of these films there is a variety of Art to enjoy.  See the links in the article:

Adding Drawings in real Life Photographs

Brazilian Artist Lucas Levitan, now living in London making his living as an Advertising Creative Director.  He says he has been drawing all of his life but kept his art to himself.  After a near miss last year he decided to concentrate more on the thing he loves.  He looks around for pictures. to which he adds drawings that transform the narrative of the image into funny vignettes.

Sustainable Architecture with the $4000 Home

After graduating from Arts College, Dave Herrle started his working life with an office job, which he says "he hated".  After a hike of the Appalachian Trail he realised two things, one, this life was not for him and two, there was something very appealing in a simple life.  Actually there was a third, that he was glad he made this realisation when he was 27 and not 67.  Six years after the hike he is a full time carpenter, he has set up Herrle Custom Carpentry and built his home for $4,000 building it in 6 weeks.  Now he loves his work and his life with his wife.

Surreal Night Time Photo Manipulation

Photo manipulator wyldraven, creates these expressive images with a distinctive Surreal feel to them.  Even though there are some scenes with Death, they are full of fun or with a double meanings.  The photos seem to be very serene with no menacing protagonist looking back at you.  Beautiful scenes that make us appreciate the tranquil feeling you can just get during night time.

Travels through the word's Architecture in Paintings

Polish Artist Maja Wronska graduated as an Architect last year and now brings us on a trip around the world with her beautiful watercolours.  Watercolours have a general, dreamlike quality associated with them, but Wronska really knows how to bring it out in her paintings.  You can see she has a real love for Architecture in the quality and detailing of the buildings she chooses to draw.  Enjoy your travels through the word's Architecture and its beautiful cities...
More of her work on DesignStack here Architectural Paintings and Drawing - Sketches.

Silicone Sculptures that Look Alive

Kazuhiro Tsuji has a 25 years experience working as a special effects make-up Artist.  These are just some of the films he worked on: Looper, Planet Of The Apes, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Salt, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Ring 2, Blade 3, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Men In Black.  When it comes to his sculptures, he tries to capture the inner thought and emotion of the person, giving them an expression that is almost frozen in time.  They give you the impression that if time were allowed to continue, the face would morph into another expression and continue as a normal person that seconds earlier was just standing very very still.  Tsuji gets a kick out of seeing people interacting with his sculptures and that is what drives him to continue.

Real World Problems in Surreal Art

Some people would see this post as a very pessimistic one, but we are optimists, we think that once you identify the problem, you can start solving it.  Michael Kerbow covers an array of problems we are facing around the world, which we are sure a lot of us will identify in different ways, depending on where we are in the world and our backgrounds.  Some people understand the pictures below some people live them.  It would be interesting to hear from you and see how you relate to some or all of these pictures below.  If you want to you can use the comment section at the end of the post.

How To Draw Manga - Video Classes

American Artist Mark Crilley upon he graduation, took a series of jobs teaching English in the Far East, Taiwan and Japan.  Japan is where he got the inspiration for his Manga series and the, how to draw, Manga videos we are going to feature today.  The last video is How to Draw Elsa from "Frozen".  These videos are a bit longer that we usually have and that is because, even though Crilley uses some time lapse, he does a lot of explaining.  If you are somebody that wants to learn this style of drawing, we would suggest that you draw as you watch the video stopping and starting it, to keep up with it.  In this post you will learn very useful information, on how to set up guide lines, facial expressions, drawing hands, body proportions, shading, line work and much more.

Cartoon Drawings Interacting in the Real World

Bangladeshi Artist, Manik N. Ratan is a Cartoonist, Photographer and Graphic Artist from Dhaka.  In his spare time he likes to draw these simple, but very cute, collaborations between every day items and his designs. Have a look at the titles he gives them they really help tell a mini story putting the vignettes into context.

Living Art in Body Painting

Body Painting Artist Gesine Marwedel, produces lovely paintings using people as canvases.  It is so much more than just painting the body, poses, applications of colours used in the background to make parts of the body disappear, use of more than one person to create the shape.  To add to the beautiful images we have included 2 videos that show her process, one in normal lighting and one with UV lighting.

Photographs of Multi Mini Me Coming to the Rescue

Ari Mahardhika is a talented artist based in Hong Kong, who has been working in the design industry for many years.  Amongst all his photographs, the multi Mini Me or the large & small scale people, caught our eye.  As well as these surreal photographs, we added two more of his pictures that feature scale.  Imagine a lot of mini me running around, what kind of tasks would you have them do for you?  Let us know in the comment section at the bottom.

Rebirth of the Paintbrush into a Sculpture

Rebecca Szeto lives and works in California in the US.  Amongst her work we found this fascinating use of used Artists paintbrushes.  The portraits, largely female, are influenced by the Renaissance, that  spanned from 14th to the 17th century.  This is how Szeto characterises the elements she uses, "The materials I use are often humble, mass-­produced or discarded domestic products like paintbrushes".  Even though we really like her work, it is not about liking or disliking this kind of Art, it is about what she has done with these instruments of creativity, which by most people's definition, had reached the end of their use.  Szeto shows us that this is not necessarily right and that we have push our minds to find alternative uses for items when the come to the end of one life, encouraging them to start a new one.  The Paintbrush that has produced Art all of its life, now becomes Art.

Surreal, Fantasy and Otherworldly Art

Rolando Cyril aka (aquasixio) regards himself as having a Surreal and Fantasy style or Otherworldly.  With a background as a psychologist and no formal art education, he says to have learnt a lot form an art and design site called Deviant Art.  There, a lot of artist publish their work and their step by step progress.  We can see why a psychologist would gravitate towards Surreal Art, as an art form to pursue. In his fantastic drawings Cyril touches on a lot of themes, light and dark with fantastic descriptions and stories that accompany most of his images.

Procedural Architecture - A NEW way of Living?

Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins created a new way of approaching Architecture, called Procedural Architecture.  To do this, they set up the Reversible Destiny project.  It is all based on the the principle that the mind and the immune system of young, but especially older people, need to be challenged on a daily basis, in order to keep young and functioning at our best throughout our life, without a fall in later years.  Current Architecture seems to follow the opposite strategy.  Every thing has to be as easy and accessible as possible, not challenging to the occupier, striving for a constant state of relaxation.  More information and a video below.

365 Days of Doodles end of 2014

We have been following Gabriel Picolo, a freelance Illustrator based in Brazil, since the beginning of 2014, when he announced that he would draw one doodle every day of 2014.  We wrote one post at the beginning of the year, then one in the summer and this will be the final one.  Picolo has given us a year of beautiful drawings and we hope he will share with us more of his Art, in the future.  The first doodle below is the last doodle of the series, I am sure you agree with us it is an amazing drawing, like the ones below it.  Following, are links to the previous 2 posts we wrote about Picolo, just click the links:
"365 Days of Doodles" and "365 Days of Doodles ½ Way".

How To Draw a Realistic...

Daisy van den Berg is a Realism Pencil Artist. Her hope is to inspire people and to get them drawing. She does this by filming step by step series of videos to show us how to draw the most popular and difficult things, to build up to drawing portraits.  If you are leaning how to draw, just start and stop the video and follow her instructions as she does it.  Learn the secrets of how to approach the drawing, how to break it down,  the shading and the equipment needed to draw fantastic art like this.  We have included 2 videos of eyes, get familiar with the first one and then you can move onto the more complex one.  Once you learn the basics you can go out there and experiment by your self.

You might also like a similar post to this "Narrated Drawing Class Videos" or "How To Draw Hyper Realistic Drawings" and "How To Draw Manga - Video Classes" (<= press the link)

Beauty in 3D Anamorphic Graffiti Drawings

Portuguese Graffiti Artist Odeith creates Anamorphic Graffiti Drawings, bringing a popular style of drawing like the 3D Anamorphic to the world of graffiti.  An Anamorphic image can be seen in its intended 3D view, when observed from a specific angle.  Beautiful lines and Colours, plus incredible shading, really make these graffiti, literally stand out.  We have included a video in which Odeith creates one of his drawings, plus all the images can be enlarged when pressed, not the first one.  There is a high demand for these skills, as Odeith, has created large scale murals for major national and international businesses.  Local Authorities should think about providing walls for young inexperienced artist to practice on, the same way they provide skateboard parks, and maybe they wouldn't feel the need practice people's properties?

Galvanised Wire Animal Sculptures

Kendra Haste is a contemporary Animal Sculptor, that forms her sculptures using galvanised wire.  The amount of detail she is able to put into her creation is a testament to the research she uses when constructing them.  We have included a video of Haste, in her studio describing her work.  Her reference material include, the bone structure of the animal that she is going to sculpt, which adds a further level of realism to the finished piece.  Haste was commissioned by the Historic Royal Palaces Commission to produce sculptures for the Tower of London... More in the Video.