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Mike Mitchell is no stranger to Neatorama, since his paintings of Brobocop and the Parks and Recreation cast in Casablanca, have graced our pages before. So, as soon as I saw the gallery at BuzzFeed I just had to share.
This guy knows how to paint beloved pop culture icons like you’ve never seen them before, and his images are like eye candy to me-I always crave more, and I just can’t get enough!
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The Dark Side of the force meets the darker side of cinema in these Star Wars-horror movie mash-up artworks created for the Death Star Art Show in Baltimore. Of particular note is the painting of Yoda as Hannibal from Silence of the Lambs, what a cute little cannibal!
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Tim Biskup is no stranger to the strange, so it’s fitting that his new series of paintings should feature polygonal heads of some rather strange creatures.
They look like simple 3d models juxtaposed into a Pop Art painting, with a swanky color palette to match. Their unusual, kooky, and their eyes are all over the place! Follow the link and check out this polygonal menagerie for yourself.
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Face it, most of us would sooner throw away bird feathers before we ever considered using them for an art project. Fortunately, artist Ian Davey is not like the rest of us and he has taken to using swan feathers as canvases for his lovely paintings. The results are simply stunning, as you can see by exploring the gallery at the link.
Projects like this make me wish I was a better artist, but alas, I think the best hand-painted design I’d be able to come up with would be a smiley face. Oh well, at least us non-artist types can still appreciate looking at these awesome hand-painted Street Fighter shoes.
Visitors at Stefan Da Costa Gomez’s gallery show viewed acrylic paintings of Bogey and other classic Hollywood stars through 3D glasses. He achieves the effect with anaglyphic layering, a technique placing contrasting colors on top of each other to make an image pop.
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These paintings by Laura Bifano depict animals as a bunch of squares, but this ain’t your grandma’s Cubism. This is 8-bit Cubist artworks for the video game generation, with cubic animals that look like they’ve leaped off the tv screen and into their “natural” habitats, and are having trouble fitting in with the classical art world.
There are plenty more cool paintings at the artist’s site below, take a gander and you’ll see a whole wide world of cubic critters trying to act natural.
Link -via ComicsAlliance
This is what happen when superheroes get a little long in the tooth, and grow so old that they aren’t quite as super any more. This series of paintings by Swedish artist Andreas Englund shows the fate of all non-immortal beings-wrinkles, weight gain and a feeling that tackling mundane tasks is like performing mini feats of heroism.
Link -via ComicsAlliance
Heavy pop, liquid designs and sheer surreal madness collide in Exit Man’s unusual artworks. These busy, colorful pieces use bold, curved lines to guide you around the scene, and looking at them kinda feels like taking your eyes on a rollercoaster ride. Want to hang one of these ocular amusements on your wall? Then follow the link to Exit Man’s Society6 page and support his vision!
Link -via ComicsAlliance
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Obi Wan battling the Empire via breakdancing. The classic Nintendo crowd get together for a snapshot. Mulder and Scully expose alien life forms both humanoid and puppet. Sound like strange subject matter for paintings? Then you haven’t seen the colorful works of Aaron Jasinski, a painter who’s bringing the pop culture back to lowbrow art. ComicsAlliance has a cool gallery of Aaron’s colorful works, ranging from pop culture celebration to semi-traditional portraiture, and his choice of color is every bit as cool as his subject matter.You can see more of Aaron’s work at his Deviant Art page below.
Link -via ComicsAlliance
There is no doubt that the work of Carlos Villagra is in demand. From concept art to comic book illustrations, Carlos brings originality of design and style to each piece, then renders them beautifully until you get awesomeness like this re-imagining of Buzz Lightyear. Head on over to ComicsAlliance and check out a small gallery of his works, then be sure to visit Carlos’ blog if you like what you see and want more. Will Pixar ever be bold enough to re-imagine their characters in such a way? Not likely…
Link -via ComicsAlliance
This video is an oldie but goodie I thought i’d share with you, featuring some amazing animation painted directly on walls around Buenos Aires and Baden. Graffiti artist and animator BLU is responsible for the mess, which somehow seems to clean up behind itself as the animation runs down the street, leaving a whitewash in its wake. The video even features a slick soundtrack that syncs perfectly with MUTO’s movements across the wall. Enjoy!
via BLU
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DeviantART member Bewheel painted a team picture of “Bobby and the He-man villains: ’84 state champs.” An unbeatable team! Link -via @JohnCFarrier
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Check out these textural delights by artist Daniel Kornrumpf, who has resurrected the antiquated art of embroidery and brought it into a spectacular new light. His painterly approach to embroidery adds a fresh, modern style and energy to the medium, and the fact that so much detail is worked into these relatively small pieces makes them even more remarkable.
Disney has commissioned Southern California native artist NOAH to work his airbrush magic on a painting for their upcoming D23 Expo, which will feature movies celebrating an anniversary this year, like 101 Dalmatians and Alice In Wonderland. This illuminating video shows the master at work on the classic Disney inspired painting featuring a realistic portrait of Walt and a ‘toony Sorcerer Mickey causing lots of colorful trouble. Link
Mind Your Step is an art installation in Stockholm, Sweden by artist Erik Johansson (previously at Neatorama). You know it’s an illusion, but you still cringe just a little as people walk right into the abyss. -via Geeks Are Sexy
Scientific Illustration is a Tumbler blog with 66 pages of scientific drawings and paintings from many linked sources. Find what you’re particularly interested in seeing by scrolling through the archives -keep scrolling and watch yet more pictures load. Shown is a 1904 illustration by German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Link -via Nag on the Lake
(Image credit: Flickr user Eric Gjerde)
The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.
How a lady and her hat scandalized Paris.
In 1905, a painting shown in Paris shocked the public. Critics reviled it; religious and conservative moralists made speeches against it. The artist who painted it was vilified as a “wild beast” and a victimizer of women. But the painting could hardly be called pornographic. It wasn’t even a nude; it was only a portrait of a fully-clothed woman with a hat.
THE EXHIBIT
While a group of nontraditional painters prepared for a fall exhibit in Paris, their president, Monsieur Jourdain, urged them not to show Woman with a Hat. Jourdain considered himself a forward thinker who fought against the narrow-minded traditions of France’s powerful art establishment. But he also knew trouble when he saw it. He warned the group that this modernistic work, by a struggling artist named Henri Matisse, would ruin their exhibition.
THE WILD BEASTS
When Le Salon des Independents opened its doors and Parisians got their first look at Woman with a Hat, they either howled with laughter or gaped in horrified shock. The entire exhibition was derided. Matisse’s painting became the star clown in a three-ring joke. The verdict of the public, and most of the art critics, came in loud and clear. Woman with a Hat was outrageous “barbouillage et gribouillage” (smears and scribbles). It was called barbaric. It was an insult to women as well as to art. Matisse and the rest were nothing but fauves …wild beasts.
THE PAINTING
Woman with a Hat was a portrait of Matisse’s wife, Amelie, wearing an enormous, feathered hat. Critics thought the painting looked strangely unfinished and crude. What shocked them most were those odd, clashing colors that decorated the feathers of Madame Matisse’s hat and illuminated her face. Parisians might be sophisticated, but this painting confused and repelled them. Amelie Matisse was a respectable brunette, but in the portrait she sported brick red hair, an unnatural slash of dark green creasing her forehead, and mint green shading on the bridge of her nose. How could a man paint his wife in such a fashion? Rumors began to fly that all was not well in the marriage of Henri and Amelie.
THE PAINTER
For Henri Matisse, the scandal was just another dark episode in a painful struggle. Born in Bohain, a poor unlovely, industrial town in northern France, Henri was already a lawyer when he dismayed his working-class parents by deciding that art was his life’s true calling. Painting never came easily to Matisse; he studied constantly. When he failed to break into the prestigious mainstream of French art, his family labeled him an embarrassment with no talent. But Henri, as uncertain and depressed as he was, had bigger worries than rejection. By 1905, he was 35, a married man with three children -and he was broke.
He’d pinned his hoped on the 1905 exhibition. A hardworking perfectionist, Matisse believed that at last he was bringing something new and valuable to art -the joy of bright color. He painted Woman with a Hat to communicate his emotions and, he hoped, the soul of his subject. Matisse didn’t portray the true colors of nature because he was determined to paint the colors of his heart.
THE MODEL
Amelie Matisse was a rebel with a cause, and her cause was her hubby’s genius. Madame Matisse might not know art, but she knew Henri; whatever he did had to be great. Born in Toulouse in southwestern France, Amelie took Henri to he birthplace. When she showed her husband -a child of the cold, gray north- the hot colors of the south, she changed their lives, and the future of painting, forever.
Henri kept going back to the exhibit, fretting over the jeers and insults. But Amelie stayed at home. She never lost faith in Woman with a Hat. The world must change; she would not! And sure enough, slowly, the world changed.
THE BUYERS
Two American art lovers, Gertrude Stein and her brother, Leo, visited the exhibition again and again, mostly to see Woman with a Hat. They knew it was a complete break with tradition, but while others were horrified, they were impressed. A week before the exhibition closed, Leo offered to buy the painting for 200 francs. Henri could hardly wait to get rid of the unlucky canvas. His morale and his funds were very low. But Madame Matisse held out for 500 francs. The extra 200 francs would buy their daughter’s clothing for the winter. She told her husband to sit tight.
Amelie’s faith in the painting proved justified. Woman with a Hat became a turning point for Matisse. Leo Stein not only paid the 500, but he and Gertrude also promoted Henri Matisse among the people they knew (along with another artistic upstart named Pablo Picasso).
THE LEGACY
The artists of Le Salon des Independents eventually took on the term wild beast with pride, calling themselves the fauve movement. The fuss over Woman with a Hat made Matisse famous as well as notorious, and he became a leader of the French avant-garde. In time, the world became excited by Matisse’s revolutionary vision of art. Critic praised him as the creator of modern painting, the liberator of color. In fact, Matisse was so famous and so well loved, that some young artists found him too respectable, too bourgeois.
As for Madame Matisse, she later said that she was at her best in crisis, “when the house burns down.” It never surprised her that the world came around to her point of view. Years after her death, visitors at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art still cluster around her portrait, the delightful Woman with a Hat.
______________________________
The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.
The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John’s first plunge into history was a smash hit – over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute
Duane Keisler painted a tangerine, but couldn’t resist peeling it and helping himself to it …which he also painted. Link -via Metafilter
Illustrator Sam Spratt puts rich detail into subjects you already know and love. In this picture, we see the world of Angry Birds from the poor pig’s perspective. The painting is available as a wallpaper. Link -Thanks, Rosa Golijan!
Taking the concept of watercoloring literally, this unnamed artist creates wonderful images by painting directly on water. (Bonus: Trippy flute music)
Link [Embedded YouTube Clip]
Note: Some of you may know this as the traditional Turkish painting technique of Ebru (also known as paper marbling in other cultures)
"Self-Portrait With Gun" by Chris Trueman
What’s so interesting about the grainy painting above by San Francisco-based artist Chris Trueman? It’s not the image of his younger brother as a little kid in a cowboy outfit holding his dad’s rifle – instead, it’s what he used to paint it: ants. More specifically, 200,000 dead ants.
How does one go about getting 200,000 ants? David Moye of AOL News tell us:
"I found a guy who raises ants and sells them as horned lizard food," he said. "The lizards need the folic acid. It’s an artificial food source. If the lizards were in nature, they could get them from their own diet, but many of these lizards are kept as pets in cities like New York and San Francisco where they are hard to come by." [...]
True to the theme of the painting, Trueman said the idea of ordering the ants was different than when they actually showed up.
"The ants arrived in a large peanut butter jar — just this huge mass of rising ants," he said. "It was weird. I couldn’t set them free. They weren’t native to the area and if they bit someone, they would leave welts, and I couldn’t feed them, so I had to kill them."
Link | Chris Trueman’s Website
In an essay at The Telegraph, photography critic and picture editor Lucy Davis muses about the palettes used by well-known artists.
Some artists mix every gradation of colour they will need for a painting before they start, others as they need them. “My freshly arranged palette, brilliant with contrasting colors, is enough to fire my enthusiasm,” noted Delacroix in his Journal in 1850. The French artist was meticulous in his arrangement of colours, and when unwell, would take his palette to bed and spend the entire day just mixing new shades.
The actual palettes of Renoir, Seurat, Degas, Delacroix (above), Moreau, Gauguin, and Van Gogh are illustrated, accompanied by commentary on how the physical layout of colors on the board may influence the figurative “palette” of color choices used by the artist for his work.
Link.
At the Rosenthaler Platz, an intersection in Berlin, artists poured paint on to the street to see what images cars, buses, and bicycles would make with it:
The various colours of paint were dumped onto the road in large puddles at different locations throughout the intersection. As traffic drove through, the paint was spread around creating lots of colourful lines. The whole action took only a few seconds: bikers had poured paint from big boxes in front of cars that waited for green lights. So the cars and their wheels, if the driver wanted it or not, became the brush tool for this guerilla public art piece.The creators of the project posted signs on post nearby explaining that the paint wasn’t harmful and would simply wash off with water
A small 12 x 16 oil portrait long thought to be a copy in the style of the Renaissance master Rafael was recently discovered in a palazzo storeroom in Sassuolo, northern Italy. Art expert Mario Scalini found it as he sorted through more than 25,000 works stashed in the palazzo’s vaults. He thought the painting might be worth more than previously thought, mainly due to the quality of the frame.
Using infra-red and ultraviolet ray “multilayer” technology, they were able to see through accumulated layers of paint.
The institute’s Lisa Venerosi Pesciolini, one of Italy’s most respected art restorers, said: “Underneath the layers, it was possible to see the original painting. This is an extremely important find.”
Mr Scalini, acting supervisor of fine arts for the provinces of Modena and Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, said: “The results of the investigation allow us to assert with reasonable certainty that the work was painted by Raphael.” It is thought the portrait was started by Raphael, but finished by one of his most prominent pupils, Giulio Romano, after Raphael’s death in 1520.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
Xiao Qiang is a Beluga whale living at Qingdao Polar Ocean World in China. This whale has learned to paint pictures, and his paintings sell for big bucks!
“He showed a lot of interest in painting right from the start so now all we have to do is give him the brushes and hold the paper while he paints with his mouth,” said trainer Zhang Yong.
“His favourite colour seems to be blue and he’s best of all at seascapes. His people always look like seals.”
Link -via Fortean Times
What do you do if you are a member of a band and someone keeps sending you emails claiming to the the artist known as Banksy, and asking you to change the name of your band? That actually happened to the band Exit Throught the Gift Shop. The emails were from Banksy! The artist hoped to convince the band to change their name in order to prevent confusion with his movie of the same title, and offered original artwork as an incentive.
It turned out that the mystery man was the elusive graffiti artist and the band agreed to change their name.
They have now rebranded themselves as Brace Yourself.
Keeping his promise, Banksy then sent a huge painting to his home featuring a black and white Grim Reaper driving a dodgem car.
The Banksy painting has been valued at £200,000 but the band plan to display it at a gallery rather than sell it.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by sagest.
Dave Devries takes children’s sketches of monsters from their imagination and renders them in paint, while keeping the scary details.
The process is simple. I project a child’s drawing with an opaque projector, faithfully tracing each line. Applying a combination of logic and instinct, I then paint the image as realistically as I can. My medium is mixed—primarily acrylic, airbrush, and colored pencil.
Link – via worldoddities
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
Food artist Jojo Krang of the blog Eye Candy provides step-by-step instructions on how to paint a picture with chocolate. First you create a reverse image, then apply dark tones, midtones, and light tones, in that order, and then flip the product over.
Link via DudeCraft | Photo: Jojo Krang | Previously on Neatorama: Too Cute to Eat
Artist Kiersten Essenpreis painted her vision of He-Man getting his distinctive haircut maintained in his spare time. She also shows what He-man’s nemesis Skeletor does on his day off!
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
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