Handmade Holiday Gifts

Haven't posted much on the ole' blog lately as I just finished off a book and have been working on various other random projects over the holiday season. Took some time to wrap up some projects around the house along with making handmade gifts as shown below. The first couple pics show a bread box that I built and painted for my sister in just her style, the second group shows an incense holder I sculpted and painted for my wife which depicts Kirby the moose fishing in the same color kayak as my wives, the third group is of a jewelry cabinet I made for my wife, the fourth is a set of silverwear I made for my dad in the hopes they would make it a bit easier for him to eat (he has parkinsons), and the last couple of images show a bird feeder I built for my dad. Can't wait to get it put up to see how it looks with snow on the roof!

                                    

Weird Mediums Three

I started this series called "Weird Mediums" as I learned of a couple of artists doing some very unique and entertaining art that I wanted to share with others. I've previously done two posts HERE  and HERE . Below are some of my more recent discoveries I'm sure you'll enjoy.

Xiaonan Sun is a fantastic portrait artist who I first learned about in viewing his time lapse video of him doing a portrait in salt. Since then I’ve seen a couple of other artists use that technique but I think Xiaonan is worth a mention because he’s younger than me and does amazing portrait art which I know from experience is difficult to get a Likeness. His video on YouTube



His personal website http://www.theportraitart.com/about.html

The first book carver I ever heard of was Brian dettmer. He uses old books as his medium and carefully carves images and sculptures into the books in great detail and precision. You can view a ton of his work on his website at http://briandettmer.com/

For some other weird uses for books check out this website which shows books used to make a building, a chair, a kindle case etc.http://www.neatorama.com/2011/04/27/cool-non-literary-uses-for-books/

I first learned about this next fellow through his video in which he paints on a black board with glue and then throws dirt against that in the end to reveal the image. Kind of reminds me of those sand art images I used to do as a kid. Michael Raivard also does various other kinds of performance painting with great flare and energy. Fun to watch!

This next one is also quite fascinating to watch and has an a stounding result. This artist drops paint into water to create water paintings, a process called “ebru”, and then captures the final image on paper. Unfortunately I can’t figure out who the artist is but here’s a video of him at work on YouTube.

Just yesterday I was reading James Gurney’s blog and he posted a very interesting series of talks by various artists. One was Vic Muniz who uses tons of creativity and weird mediums in his art. Everything from doing line drawings of cartoony clouds in the sky with a plane to a skull of a clown which of course has a bulbed nose bone.

I found him entertaining to listen to. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/vik_muniz_makes_art_with_wire_sugar.html

This next one I’m not sure qualifies for weird mediums as it’s fairly typical to use found objects in sculpture but none the less I loved his work and it certainly is weird! So here’s a video of some of Daniel Proulx’s steam punk jewelry.

Weird Mediums II

For a previous post about weird mediums go HEre

Often times I am painting and get frustrated in trying to paint the whites of a characters eye with a brush that won't cooraperate or trying to get the fingers on a hand painted just right at a small size. Those frustrations are nothing compared to the sculpture art below!

How awesome that someone would think to turn trash into art. It's been done plenty before with old hubcaps, found stuff murals and such but this is waay cooler!

Since the first time I saw sand art it amazed me. SO simple looking and yet so beautiful when pared with music and story and animation. The light shinging up behidn it reminds me of when I would put my oil paintings against a windo and see the light shinging thorugh creating unexpected patterns of light and a brightness and life in the art.

I've posted about eclectic asylum art before but he's worth anothe rpost because he has some great stuff.

well, time for lunch, that's all for now.

Weird mediums

Weird mediums
This is a blog post I have been meaning to write for a while now. I just haven’t been able to find the time. Since I still have not time I’m just going to post a bunch of photos and links from various artists using weird mediums to create art and not say much about each one. Some of these artists have really done some terrific art and it’s worth the time to go check out more of their work.
For some great painted hand art and optical illusions check out http://visualfunhouse.com/body_paint/painted-hand-optical-illusions.html

Won Park makes some amazing money origami. http://orudorumagi11.deviantart.com/gallery/

Scott Wade makes art using dirt smudged around on the back windshield of cars. This is just one sample of his. Check out more at http://www.dirtycarart.com/

A guy on youtube by the screen name of Eclecticasylumart makes are with his food. One sample below shows an image draw with his fingers and BBQ sauce. It’s way more impressive when you watch him make the art before your eye so go check it out. HE uses other food too! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3pz2VgIM7E&feature=related

Eric Daigh was recently featured on the morning news for his pushpin art. Initially I found this to be pretty darn cool but then they showed his process and it kind of ruined it for me since he takes a photo and breaks it into pixels which he follows as a guide to place the pushpins. So I think I’ll stick with monet and van Gogh . http://daigh.com/

Nathan Sawaya sculpts with legos. You may have seen his art on the news as well as he was featured a couple of times over the past two years. http://brickartist.com/

Liu Bolin is known as the invisible man. He actually paints on his clothing and face to match whatever is behind him then spends hours getting a photo of him in just the right position to make himself blend into the background. One sample below, can you find him? Check out http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/5886805/The-invisible-man-Liu-Bolins-camouflage-artwork.html?image=17

Julian Beever uses chalk and concrete for his creations. At least two people have sent me a link to his site so far so I figure he needs to be included in this post. Below is one sample but you deff. Don’t want to miss out on the rest so check out http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/batman.html

Eric Grohe does murals as well but uses brick Walls for his canvas. http://www.ericgrohemurals.com/projects/diamond.html

And of course Edgar Mueller. (ice) http://www.metanamorph.com/

I plan to do separate blog posts on Sand castles, snow sculptures and Pumpkin carving when I find the time later down the road.