The world's newest and most grueling endurance competition will be held in the United Kingdom next year.

No, we're not talking about the Ironman Triathlon. We're talking about the first ever World Watching Paint Dry Championships:

A spokesman for the organisers LocalTraders.com said: 'We’ve all heard the phrase, "I’d rather watch paint dry" and so we have decided the time has come to give people the chance to do so, for as long as they can bear.

'You don’t need to be physically fit or participate in a vigorous training regime, what’s more important is mental strength, concentration and endurance.

'Previous paint-watching experience isn’t essential, but a bit of practice might help prepare contestants for the mammoth task ahead of them.'

Link

Once a week, Cake Wrecks takes a break from humorously awful cakes to post a roundup of great cakes. The latest collection is about painted cakes.

Cake-painting is just like regular ol’ painting, except the artist must work extra quickly when using food-grade paints, and must also be ok with the fact that his or her masterpiece will surely be sliced up and devoured by the end of the night.

This gorgeous African wildlife-themed cake is from Rising Flours. See a bunch more artistically painted cakes, including cake reproductions of famous works, at Cake Wrecks. Link

You can spray a coat of gold (or silver, or red, or blue) on your food, and still eat it! Each can of this tasteless color coating will cost you €24,80, but hey, that covers shipping, too. Link -via Buzzfeed

The Facebook bra is a great way to boost your self confidence or a great way to show your lady that you like what she’s packing.

Link Via BuzzFeed

Take a bunch of skateboarders, attach remote-control spray paint devices underneath the boards, and let them loose in a an empty pool. The result resembles a human Spirograph! -via Dangerous Minds

If corporate sponsorship can save beleaguered sports teams, arenas, and schools, why not houses? Adzookie is offering to sponsor your mortgage in return for turning your house into a colorful billboard! You get an extra bonus if your home already needs a new coat of paint.

Adzookie launched the offer on its website Tuesday — and by late afternoon, the company had already received more than 1,000 applications, according to Adzookie CEO Romeo Mendoza. One even came from a church.

“It really blew my mind,” Mendoza said. “I knew the economy was tough, but it’s sad to see how many homeowners are really struggling.”

Adzookie intends to paint its logo and social media icons onto participating homes. Houses must remain painted for at least three months, and the agreement may be extended up to one year.

Link to story. Link to website. -via Consumerist

This project has something for everyone: those who enjoy gadgets, bicycles, graffiti, overthinking, steampunk, art, and/or rainbows! Creator Akay calls it a “complicated technical solution to aide in simple acts of vandalism.” Read more about it at Underwire. Link -via Laughing Squid

A Peruvian inventor named Eduardo Gold has got an idea – brilliant to some, daft to others – that may just work to "regrow" the glaciers. He’s painting the mountain top white:

Four men from Licapa, the village which lies further down the valley, don boiler suits and mix the paint from three simple and environmentally-friendly ingredients: lime, industrial egg white and water. The mixture which has been used since Peru’s colonial times.

There are no paint brushes, the workers use jugs to splash the whitewash onto the loose rocks around the summit. It is a laborious process but they have whitewashed two hectares in two weeks. They plan is to paint the whole summit, then in due course, two other peaks totalling overall some 70 hectares.

Mr Gold may not be a scientist but his idea is based on the simple scientific principle that when sunlight is reflected off a white or light-coloured surface, solar energy passes back through the atmosphere and out into space, rather than warming the Earth’s surface.

The US Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, has endorsed a similar idea using white roofs in the United States – possibly more pragmatic than painting mountains.

Changing the albedo (a measure of how strongly an object reflects light) of the rock surface, would bring about a cooling of the peak’s surface, says Mr Gold, which in turn would generate a cold micro-climate around the peak.

Link

Previously on Neatorama: Zebra is a Painted Donkey

Frank Frazetta, the artist whose name had become synonymous with fantasy imagery has passed away today. For many of us, this is the passing of a true legend. Even if you don’t know who he is, you would recognize his work from his countless contributions to pop culture.

In the 60s Frazetta turned to cover paintings for the thriving pulp paperback industry and created one of the most recognizable illustration styles of all times. His covers for Conan, Tarzan and other rough hewn heroes created a visceral, violent, erotic yet somehow still nuanced visual style that has been endlessly imitated but never surpassed — Frazetta’s imagery of brawny, relentless swordsmen, seductive, fleshy sirens and hellfire breathing monsters had a gut level impact because it came from the gut — his many followers were just tracing without the passion of the originals.

Frazetta was 82.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by calebkraft.

Watch as Oliver the otter creates a masterpiece to be auctioned off for the Pretoria Zoo in South Africa. -via Unique Daily

Famulari is an environmental artist and a landscape architecture professor at North Dakota State University.

She changes the color of her snow with each new layer that falls. She plans to paint the next snowfall a purplish blue and the one after that will be black.

She chose her colors to become darker as the season progresses. When the snow melts, she expects the older layers to be revealed.

Famulari says she will not paint the snow yellow. Oh yes, she also paints her lawn in the summer. Link -via Unique Daily

(image credit: David Samson/The Forum)

Aqueous by Mark Mawson

Mark Mawson is a photographer that is always trying something new.  Of all his work, his underwater stuff is the best, including a series on different colored paints being dropped into water called “Aqueous.”   Mawson says that everyone looking at these images sees what they want to see.  Perhaps he could make a new Rorschach test based on them.

Link |  Mark’s website via ThisBlogRules

Over the next 13 months, from September 2007 to this past October, she completely covered her car in a quilt-like pattern – as a quilter, she found the multi-pattern paint job fitting, she said.

Bell said she collected between 100 to 250 bottles of nail polish, but did not have an exact idea as she simply used bottles from anyone she could get it from.

“Lots of ladies in my church donated nail polish, and lots of ladies at Weight Watchers, too,” she said. She said it would be nearly impossible for her to estimate the dollar value of all the bottles, as each brand cost a different amount – anywhere from under a dollar to $5.

Link -Thanks, Geekazoid!

(image credit: Bill Ryan/The Gazette)

Featured in a previous post, artist Brandon McConnell uses cans of spray paint along with a cooking pot’s lid and a few pages torn from a magazine to create this breathtaking piece of art. More from him on his website.

Link: Spacepaintings
Video: Youtube