While perusing through our flickr group, I stumbled upon the art of a Russian artist who goes by uncle_cat on flickr. Not much other info has been found, so any other tidbits about the artist remain a mystery.

Their art is vivid, playful, and infused with child-like whimsy. Some pieces look like something a proud parent would pin up on the fridge. Others show a glimpse of a crazy, fantastical world that is full of details. It's tempting to hop right into this colorful place populated by critters with character, geometric geography, and slanting cities.

Friend of DA, Jangojim, dropped me an email with a heads up on his friend, Alex Warble and a recent video he posted of the process of going from doodle to digital (youtube link). I watched the video, and then spent some time on Alex's quirky and off-the-wall website, where links and colorful images are sporadically laid-out across the page. I quickly got lost in his world of imaginative and almost child-like highbrow meets lowbrow art. He's a music/mural/painting loving mad man and I'm happy to have discovered him. You should too, and if you reside in Memphis you're probably already quite familiar with his murals spread across town.

Sometimes you stumble upon work that's so mesmerizing it's difficult to explain. Benjamin Edmiston's pieces are that kind of work. And as I struggled to find the correct adjectives to describe them, I succumbed to the eloquent way as to which the artist did so himself.

Bejamin explains: "My compositions feature unusual or fantastical settings inhabited by ominous characters depicted in a flat and decorative style. My bold, and often symmetrical, drawings offer a plane of floating heads, half-skinned snakes, and bodiless arms. Building a personal vocabulary with such imagery recalls for me the tension of an early, crude Mickey Mouse cartoon, or a misplaced folk sculpture standing eerily on a dusty shelf. The creation of a familiar but askew world — the sensation of the unheimlich is what fuels my work."

This music video for We Cut Corners by Kijek / Adamski is a must see. I've already watched it three times while waiting for my coffee to brew. The entire two and a half minutes was done with markers on paper, that's it! Well, that, and a whole lot of talent ;)



Found via BOOOOOOOM!.

Each page of Zsolt Vidak's sketchbook feels like an explosion of color perfectly accented by bold and interwoven strokes. His lines make faces, expressions, letters, animals and gestures that culminate into vivid and psychedelic scenes.

And I must say, the above sketch of the 1950's Chevy-looking car (with the sobbing headlights) has been engrained into my memory since I've discovered it. KABOOM!

Here's a trash bin like you've never seen, drawn by Jacob Livengood for Coachella 2011. He's turned the overworked and under-appreciated trash bin into absolute gorgeousness, with thousands upon thousands of colored marks and dots that adorn all 365 degrees of the container. Ha! Anyone else want to march down to city hall to turn all our public trash cans into works of art?

Welcome to DA Jacob!

One can tell that when Zé Otavio opens up his sketchbook, he holds nothing back. And that is exactly how a sketchbook should be used. His pages are layer upon layer of dirty, rough scratches, scribbles, tearings - you name it. I say we all open up our sketchbooks today and let ourselves go.