Awesome Paintings

Artist Dito Von Tease creates amusing portraits of famous pop culture icons by dressing up and manipulating close-up images of fingertips. The collection includes Steve Jobs, Mr. T and Pikachu.

It’s quite a sight to watch the beauty spill out of Agnes Cecile’s brushes in this sped up video of her painting a captivating face. There’s more clips of her great work on her Youtube page.

Marlin Peterson was asked to paint a huge mural on the roof of the Seattle Center Armory and decided to paint giant 3-dimensional spiders on it – perfect for freaking out visitors to the Space Needle.

Artist Shin-Young An paints mundane tasks over collages of newspaper articles about serious issues, evoking either one’s powerlessness to affect or indifference to the effect of the world at large.

Like Marcus Levine, artist Chen Chun-Hao uses nails in his art. But instead of using large nails to create portraits, Chen uses fine “mosquito nails” to emulate traditional Chinese ink paintings.

Paintings of old vans and trucks in New York by Kevin Cyr. The vehicles are peppered with graffiti, dents and other signs of wear and tear, tangible metaphors of obsolescence.

Australian painter Jeremy Geddes often uses space travelers in urban environments as a motif in his hyperreal/surreal work. The results are amazing dreamlike images like these.

We’ve seen OhiseeRED use a basketball to paint. This time she uses a coffee cup, making ring-shaped stains to paint a portrait of Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou. It took her 12 hours to finish it.

Using only a basketball and bucket of red paint, artist OhiseeRED paints a rather impressive likeness of Yao Ming – though she doesn’t have enough paper to render all 7 foot 6 inches of him.

Using a similar technique to Mark Khaisman, Zorn creates scenes of light and shadow using strips and cut pieces of brown packing tape. If you travel, here’s where you can find his work.

Riusuke Fukahori creates incredible depth in his artworks by painting a layer at a time onto acrylic resin, until a 3-dimensional image is formed, sort of like how 3D printers work. More photos here.

Berkley Illustration is the same team that gave us Strelka the Space Dog’s portrait. Their other portraits are not based on real animals, but they’re awesome nonetheless. Badass cheetah is badass.

It’s not the only edible medium ever used, but we’d rather eat Jason Mecier’s paintings made from licorice ropes. Though we’re only eating the Red Vines, and leaving the black licorice behind.

We’ve seen how awesome a drawing made using a ballpoint pen can be. Artist Shane McAdams shows that it’s also possible to use the simple writing instrument to make stunning paintings.

Send Amanda Wolfe a picture of your pet and she’ll make a charming and funny mugshot, using gouache – an opaque watercolor – on cardstock. Available in different sizes – 3×3, 5×5 and 9×9.

Now you can view and learn more about each of the 17 “works of art on wheels” of the legendary BMW Art Car collection online, from Andy Warhol’s BMW M1 to Olafur Eliasson’s H2R prototype.

Toronto artist Bashir Sultani creates unique artwork using a salt shaker, a sharp-edged piece of paper and an iPhone to record the moment. You can see a lot more salt portraiture on his YouTube channel.

Brands are quick to point out if their wares are hand-made or hand-painted, but sometimes we take that boast for granted. This craftsman helps us appreciate that premium touch.

(Slightly NSFW) Pin-up paintings of female Team Fortress 2 characters made by UK-based illustrator Assim Heetun aka Agent Melon. Screw the hats Valve, we’d rather pay for these.

Crude, grotesque and surreal, these hand-painted posters were made in the late 80s by mobile cinema operators in Ghana, whose offerings were mostly horror, action, kung-fu or Bollywood flicks.

Chris Parks’ irreverent ode to The Last Supper is redone cleverly: on a set of 12 skateboard decks painted to resemble the famous painting, but with Mexican wrestlers, tacos, burritos and beer.

We can’t imagine how much “research” went into UVA students Ross Thomas and Elizabeth Farrell 8000 piece, 7′ x 9′ beer bottle cap rendition of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Want to buy it? E-mail them.

If you thought Microsoft Paint was for drawing ugly pattern-filled rectangles and saving them as .BMPs, think again. This insane image was created entirely with MS Paint and a Logitech Laser Mouse.