Although this wood sculpture looks basic enough, it’s actually quite remarkable.  You see, artist Ron van der Ende creates works like this out of found wood – and makes bas relief sculptures.  So while you’re correct in deducing the width and height, the depth is only a few centimeters.

Inspired by working in his father’s woodshop as a young man, Ron went to art school where he studied painting.  Dissatisfied and longing for working with wood again, he opted for sculpting, and soon found a knack for off-beat bas relief.

I collect old doors and stuff. Old painted wood that I find in the street. I take it apart and skin it to obtain a 3mm thick veneer with the old paint layers still intact. I construct bas-reliefs that I cover with these veneers much like a constructed mosaic. I do not paint them!

This one took me a while just to figure out what I was looking at!

Link to Interview on diskursdisko.  Ron’s website. via The Donut Project.

An Amazon search brought me to Ivan Bunin’s Collected Stories.  The first story is called “The Scent of Apples,” and I learn on the first page that antonovka means autumn apple:

“I remember a fresh and quiet morning…The big garden, its dry and thinned out leaves turning golden in the early light.  I remember the avenue of maples, the delicate smell of the fallen leaves, and the scent of autumn apples — antonovkas –that mix of honey and fall freshness. The air’s so clear it seems there is no air at all…”

There is a long  history of miniature books in Russia, and you can read more about it here.

Via Nag On The Lake.

You’ve probably heard all about the art of drinking coffee, but Karen Eland took that to a higher level and made an art of painting with coffee. Have a look at some of the world’s greatest masterpieces, such as Mona Lisa, or the scene from the Sistine Chapel expressed in espresso! Eland also talks about her technique and how it came about.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by sanela.

Will at A Journey Around My Skull asked readers to create bookplates in the style of the early-20th century magazine Der Orchideengarten (previously at Netaorama) for a contest. They were to include orchids and other flowers, corpses, giant insects, monsters, or diseases. The entries are quite interesting! Memphis artist Michelle Duckworth was the overall winner. Pictured is the bookplate by Ellis Nadler. Link

If you took a look at the larger version of this sculpture (left), you’d immediately conclude that it was made out of Styrofoam.  As impressive as that would be, the real mind-blower here is that it’s actually marble.

All of Fabio Viale’s creations from marble have a deceptive quality to them, prompting the beholder to utter “No way,” with each new sculpture.  From paper airplanes, to actual working boats, to classic renderings of the human form, they all inspire.

For instance, these seemingly impossible tires linked together? Black marble.

Link

This is called anthropomorphic taxidermy art. It is a real squirrel dressed as Queen Victoria mounted in a shadow box perfect for hanging on your wall. Crafted by Etsy seller lovedtodeath, this could be yours for only $495.00. Link -via Everlasting Blort

Artist Nakisha Elsje VanderHoeven paints animals, most often rabbits. Her latest project is The Rabbit Tarot, consisting of 78 images of the classic cards featuring bunnies. She sells decks of them in her Etsy shop, along with a Tarot book and other Rabbbit Tarot merchandise. Link -via Metafilter

A few people were lucky enough to be pan pals of a sort with Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh often added sketches or paintings to his letters, to illustrate what he wrote about. BibliOdyssey has a collection of these letter sketches, along with the letters that accompanied them. Link

Posters by Matt Needle

Remembering to keep it simple, Alfred Hitchcock fan/artist Matt Needle re-imagined a series of posters for the films of Hitch.  As you can see, the only differences are an iconic image from each movie placed in the director’s famous profile, and the titles.

Link

Digital painting by Randis Albion

Randis Albion is an artist whose work is all over the place thematically, but constantly awesome.   As a conceptual concept artist working heavily in Adobe Photoshop, he has designed works for video games and other media.

It’s extremely tough to pick just one example of his work, but the Pikachu piece “Gonna Catch ‘em All”, above, is one of his newest.  More to see at the slightly NSFW link.

Link (Scroll down)  More, smaller images at DeviantArt here.

These terribly awesome monsters are products of the mind of New York artist Jason Hackenwerth. He makes both wearable balloon suits and balloon sculptures. Each creature takes about 8 hours to make, totally worth it in my opinion.

Link Via Craftzine

What happens when you take an ordinary piece of fruit and start to doodle on it? Banana Art! “Bananastein” shown here is just one of many examples.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Baierman.

Dale Chihuly makes some fascinating sculptures out of glass, as well as employing other odd methods, like painting with a common broom.  He’s truly a talented artist, and worth a look-see.

Link (Also, today’s his birthday!)

SpaceInvading is bringing the Neat back with four architechtural wonders today.  This one is the “Habitable Polyhedron” and it has a unique function.

The project, meant for a family house back yard in the suburbs, aimed at designing a small park or opened area where the young parents and their newborn child would enjoy a independent space from day to day house activities, a space for reading, playing, etc. Having in mind this objective, and considering the usages of the space in the long term, it was proposed the project incorporated a small building to complement and support outside activities. That way he building would serve as a shelter for the child to share with his parents and, later on, as his own personal activities and hobbies setting.

It gives the appearance of one of those cartooney buildings where the space inside is bigger than it looks from outside: Link

MagazineArt is an extensive collection of magazine cover art from the 19th and 20th centuries, featuring hundreds of different publications. You could spend hours browsing the archives here! Shown is the January 1924 issue of Theatre Magazine. Link -via Metafilter

We all know that you can use colored pencils to create art, but can a collection of colored pencils themselves be art?

Apparently so! Here’s a beautiful yet stunningly simple arrangement of 500 colored pencils by Felissimo for Social Designer, a website that aims to crowdsource designs for charity causes.

Designboom has the story:

designed by felissimo for social designer this complete set of 500 colored pencils consists of 20 units, each pencil telling its own story with a unique name.

you cannot buy the complete set of pencils all at once, but you can receive them over the course of 20 months.

four different display methods let you keep your pencils at hand, while being displayed either as an artwork, or kept aside as a special collection.

the cases have been designed especially for the 500 colored pencils and are available in a limited edition.

Link – via stumbleupon

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.

If you wondered how people actually made some of the cakes in the Threadcakes contest, previously featured on Neatorama, then you’ll love this time-lapse video of a Threadless tee shirt being made into a cake. The process is so detailed and so fascinating.

Link Via Good

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.

Flickr user Glitch Vixen got a tattoo of an embroidery her grandmother had made in high school. The result is undeniably beautiful and well-executed.

Link Via Trend Hunter

Imagine having a stroke, a severe brain injury or a tumor and suddenly waking up one day to find you’ve developed artistic talents to rival Picasso. It sounds impossible, but the brain is a mysterious organ, and sometimes, damage causes it to rewire itself in ways that reveal new talents even in people who could barely doodle a stick figure. From the engineer on disability who became a sought-after digital artist after a stroke to a woman whose dementia spurred remarkable creative output, these 10 artists were all transformed by neurological trauma or disorders.

Pictured is Alison Silva, who chose not to have a brain tumor removed because it improved her painting talent. Link -via Buzzfeed

This great needlepoint work was created by Tennessee artist, Jacquelyn Royal. If you like her work, there’s more on the site, but I don’t think any of them look nearly as real as this one.

Link Via Craftzine

Web Urbanist has a great post featuring 15 spectacular suitcases. While the one above has a distinct political message about human trafficking, not all of them do. Some of the bags are just really artistic or neat looking.

Link

This stunning castle was created by Japanese art student Wataru Itou. It took four years of dedication to bring to fruition. It is complete with electric lights and a working train. The exhibit is called “A Castle On The Ocean” and is on display in Tokyo.

Link Via BoingBoing

This apple is in the portfolio of artist Kevin Van Aelst, along with quite a few other neat visual works. The only problem I have is that he forgot Madagascar.

Link

It is fitting location for artist Jennifer Angus to show her work. Nestled within the Ballentine House, Angus has taken two rooms, the former rooms of the two Ballentine children, and covered them in insects. From a distance it looks like wallpaper, but upon closer inspection, the walls have been covered in thousands of precisely pinned bugs. Giant pink grasshoppers, perfect replicas of leaves and iridescent jewel beetles all swarm the walls in orderly geometric patterns.

Curious Expeditions visited the exhibit, and interviewed the taxidermy-inspired artist. Link

Spotting silly vanity license plates is always a fun activity, especially double-innuendo or borderline-obscene ones. But some of the best still come from those who show their geek pride on their bumpers.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geeksaresexy.

Charlie Bucket, created this beautiful sculpture where the intricate weaving with the use of colored fluids and what I believe to be bubbles/air pockets produce a hypnotic effect. Apparently, this is just a small prototype to what I hope is going to be a giant monster of an art piece that he’ll have at the 2009 Maker Faire in San Mateo.

* I highly suggest to check out the HD version of this on Vimeo.
**And I think a sound warning is needed as TronStuck has suggested. Especially, for those of you wearing headphones.

More of his stuff here – Link

Neil Wilkinson of Sacredart Murals creates fantastic 360° murals and trompe l’oeil paintings in rooms, swimming pools, bars…

I wish my room had looked like this when I was a child! (Don’t miss his  Murals Gallery)

Based now in Devon, UK, Neil has produced some truly amazing murals, trompe l’oeil and fantasy art in the last few years, and you are invited to explore his wonderful creations here at Sacredart Murals.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by oezicomix.