Awesome Art

Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had beautiful paintings in urban areas instead of ads? That’s exactly what Etienne Lavie did. The street artist covered advertisements in Paris with prints of classical paintings.

That’s not bokeh; those are stickers. Yukino Ohmura uses the scrapbook staple along with acrylic backdrops to mimic urban landscapes at night. It takes her two to three weeks to complete a piece. Watch her at work here.

Artist Jitish Kallat used resin, paint and steel to make what appear to be fossils of vehicle-shaped monsters. According to Designboom, Kallat is referencing his own photographs of vehicles that had been set on fire during riots.

(NSFW) Takayo Kiyota aka Tama-chan talks about her sushi art. Amazingly, she is not a trained chef. The humble and funny artist started her hobby because “very few Japanese know how to make sushi these days.” More here and here.

Similar to Mike Mitchell’s Super series, Butcher Billy’s American Psychos combines Christian Bale’s famous photo as Patrick Bateman with other characters and celebrities. You can get the Capt. America mashup from Society6.

Artists Sainer and Bezt teamed up under the name Etam Cru. They make amazing large-scale murals, usually on the sides of multiple story buildings or long segments of walls. You can get a print of the Moonshine mural from Art Whino.

Thomas Cian is a Milan-based artist with a lot of great sketches to show but it’s these incredibly life-like graphite portraits that he’s done in his Friendsbook, a moleskine dedicated to drawing friends, that really show the depth of his talent.

Artist Rebecca Yanovskaya drew these two pieces using ballpoint pens, gold leaf and shell gold. Ascent of Man and the Destruction of Magic and Descent of Man are part of her three-piece series Winged, with the third one coming soon.

deviantART member Unrellius has only a single artwork on his page, but he made it count. Unrellius spent around 14 months drawing this 5056 × 3576 poster, which he claims features all the characters that appeared in Futurama.

(NSFW: Language) After paying homage to New York’s hip hop scene, artist Jay Shells gives a massive shout out to West Coast rap. Animal NY once again followed Jay around as he posted rap lyrics in the areas they referenced.

Eclectic Asylum Art spent a total of 50 hours making this realistic portrait of Santa Claus on Microsoft Paint. It’s not as jaw dropping as Kyle Lambert’s iPad finger painting, but come on. It’s freaking Microsoft Paint.

Artist Yuken Teruya is a master at cutting intricate paper shapes. For his latest exhibition Notice – Forest Teruya cut tree shapes out of cheap paper bags and then assembled the trees inside of the bags to a dramatic effect.

A wonderful series by comic book artist Mike Holmes (Bravest Warriors) in which he draws himself and his cat Ella in the style of different artists, cartoons and video games. He’s going to release a compilation soon.

Brian Lai drew a couple of sketches of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, but with a neat twist. Lai drew color negative sketches, which means his “actual” drawing will only be seen on an inverted photo of the sketch.

Phillip K. Smith III turned a 70-year old dilapidated cabin into a light-based installation that embodies the word reflection in more ways than one. By day it mirrors the desert, by night it shines with LEDs. More here.

Artist Kyle Lambert used the Procreate app on his iPad to make an incredibly realistic painting. It’s a replica of a photographed portrait of Morgan Freeman taken by Scott Gries. It took Kyle over 200 hours to finish the portrait.

Artist Tobias Gutmann travels around the world with his portrait-making booth. The cardboard booth has levers that people can move to indicate the style of their portrait, then Tobias draws it Face-o-mat prints it out. More here.

As we already know, an abandoned building, graffiti artist Sofles and videographer Selina Miles make for an awesome time-lapse video. Also featuring artists Fintan Magee, Treas and Quench. The songs are by DJ Butcher.

Gilles Azzaro used a desktop 3D printer to make this voice print of a portion of President Obama’s 2013 inauguration speech about a new industrial revolution. Regardless of the audio, the sculpture looking like a cool alien landscape.

(NSFW: Language) Poet and professor Mark Grist reveals his taste in women, explaining it with such clarity and sincerity that posers would be daft to cite this performance in their favor. Presented by Roundhouse London.

The full version of Anders Ramsell’s Blade Runner: The Aquarelle Edition, a hazy re-cut of the cyberpunk classic made using 12,597 hand painted frames. Made for and by someone who’s seen the film multiple times.

Have some CDs lying around? Don’t just use them as coasters! Revamping a classic form of animation, frames were printed onto 189 discs to produce a very cool and appropriate effect for the video of Life is Music by Japanese band SOUR.

For the 25th anniversary of his legendary comic book series, Neil Gaiman worked with artist J.H. Williams III to make Sandman: Overture, a 6-issue miniseries that reveals the events before the main storyline. More here.