Awesome Art & Design

Hone your artistic skills with this series of six online courses that include drawing and painting in various different medium, along with lots of tips and techniques. You’ll learn about composition, color, shading, as well as working with oils, acrylics, and watercolors.

Evebot’s tiny, battery-powered printer works wirelessly with a smartphone app to print designs up to 1″ tall on just about any surface, rough or smooth, flat or curved. It works with three types of ink: permanent, invisible, and skin-safe for temporary tattoos.

Today’s computers are largely solid state devices, but some of the earliest examples of computers were mechanical. In this clip, you’ll get an up-close look at Charles Babbage’s 2.6-ton metal computer, a machine its 19th century inventor never got to see, but was eventually replicated in 1991 to prove that it works.

Mechanical model company UGears presents one of its most complicated designs, a vintage-inspired cash register. Once complete, the 405-piece wooden machine can ingest paper currency or coins, locking them away until you enter the secret code and turn its key.

An amazing new addition to the LEGO Ideas line-up, this fan-submitted piano design has 3662 pieces and is actually playable. Its 25 keys move, its dampers work, and its bench height is adjustable. Plus, it works with a companion mobile app to play different songs as its keys move up and down. Here’s SleepyCow’s original concept.

German designer Xalipha makes these unique, see-through pendants from old, unusable electronic waste like circuit boards, connectors, and wire. Each one is handmade by casting the parts in clear resin. They basically look like what would happen in LEGO made Daft Punk minifigs.

After a great kickoff for the graphic novel Code 45, the second and third issues are now available for order. The story follows Vanessa, a subway driver in Montreal who hears rumors that there are ‘dragons’ in the tunnels. This mega-issue journeys into the night shift and closer to the monsters that dwell beneath the surface.

This retro-style electromechanical flip clock comes housed in a handsome and substantial stainless steel enclosure. It runs on two “C” batteries (not included), so you can use it on a tabletop, or wall mount it without running wires.

Artist Simon Stålenhag is known for his incredible vision of dystopian, hyper-commercial worlds. Ilya Plotnikov
a fan of his, has brought a small slice of his work to life by animating images from the book The Electric State, accompanied by music composed by Stålenhag himself.

Carbon fiber is a very versatile, strong, and lightweight material. But it’s not the easiest stuff to work with. Matthieu Libeert shows us just how much work went into making this slick looking version of Pokémon’s carrying container, using carbon fiber, resin, and fiberglass.

New York designer Thom Browne is known for his high-end, avant garde fashions. Among his many creative ideas is his Trompe L’Oeil neoprene wetsuit, covered with imagery that looks like a skin-tight business suit with a shirt and tie. Before you get your wallets out, the $3,900 wetsuit is already sold out.

Now that you’ve loaded up on colorful crayons, keep them neatly organized with this handmade wooden crayon holder from Wildman Design. It holds up to 48 of your favorite colors without need to keep around the old cardboard box. They also make a version for colored pencils.

Forgive the punny title, but artist Keith Williams‘ description of his wooden geodesic sphere is factually accurate. Watch as he takes a bunch of pieces of knotty wood into an impressive sculpture. They also briefly doubled as dominoes.

Packed with over 400 pages of artwork and historical artifacts from the Transformers franchise, author Jim Sorenson’s coffee table compendium is sure to delight any Transformers fan. The deluxe edition includes a collector’s box and five ready-to-frame prints.

Max and Dave Fleischer’s 1940s Superman cartoons are beloved. But the quality of the public domain videos online isn’t very good. Jose Argumedo ran the episode “The Bulleteers” through Waifu2x, a neural network upscaling application that recovered an incredible amount of detail, especially compared to the source video.

This playful interactive desktop artwork transforms between a pine cone shape and a helix structure depending on the direction you spin it. There’s also a wooden “executive version” because bosses don’t like colors, and like to spend twice as much money.

From webslingers to high-voltage Wolverine claws, The Hacksmith’s arsenal of superhero gadgets is approaching that of Stark Enterprises. This time, his shop put together a piece that combines Iron Man’s arc reactor with Captain America’s iconic shield, a weapon you can find in the game Marvel Contest of Champions.

Artist Benjamin Berg designed a series of throw pillows covered with pixelated imagery that resemble the graphical glitches we encounter in computers and video games. Some patterns are also available as throw blankets, clocks, tapestries, and wall murals.

Working in collaboration with Wallpaper* Re-Made project, men’s apparel brand Vollebak comments on electronic waste with a unique timepiece. The colorful Garbage Watch is made from recycled components taken from old circuit boards. Vollebak is accepting waiting list requests for its 2021 release now.

Nursing homes have been on a lonely lockdown for months. Robert Speker, activities coordinator for the UK’s Sydmar Lodge care home, decided to entertain residents by recreating famous LP covers with their photos. All funds from their GoFundMe campaign benefit Alzheimers Society, Age UK, and Dementia Friends.

Video technician Denis Shiryaev of Neural Love took some early 20th century film footage from Tokyo, Japan, and processed it to increase its resolution and frame rate, repair damage, and add colorization. The result is sort of a living postcard of the time and place. The ambient sounds were previously added by Guy Jones.

Nervous System is known for their unique, mathematically-generated designs. After making a seashell puzzle out of sea creatures, they made a cat puzzle out of cats. The vibrant, 224-piece wooden puzzle features 43 tiny cats hidden within its otherwise abstract pieces. Also available as a 114-piece version with larger cats.

Photographer Eugene Belsky shows off the kind of incredible close-up images that can be captured with the Venus Laowa 24mm probe lens and a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6k. The razor-sharp 4K footage gets intimate with a variety of edibles, and looks even more spectacular if you’ve got a display that supports HDR.