It’s made out of paper!

This shirt, the Eames chair, that bench – all of these items are made out of paper. Vincent Tomczyk crafts them by hand, creating amazing details and textures that completely disguise the paper, making you think you could wear it or sit on it – the jean shorts even have functioning pockets. As amazing as the clothes are, we kinda get them. It’s the furniture that’s mind-blowing. It has such weight & substance to look at.

Shelving the human body

In 2012, Darragh Casey began a series called “Shelving the Body”. In it, he experimented with using people’s bodies combined with specially placed shelves to support or counterbalance objects on those shelves. He was inspired by his dad who used to put up a shelf every time he got bored. Casey uses family members in the photographs of his shelving arrangements and appears himself in “shelf portraits.” There’s a nifty time-lapse video of how the photography end of it is done.

Does this city make you laugh?

Here’s a new spin on street art that you can count on seeing more of in 2013 – the interactive variety, adding a narrative to an urban setting. The French artist OaKoAk uses crumbling city environments and breathes life into them with quirky humor. The Berlin-based art collective Mentalgassi created the two pieces in Spain shown at the bottom. Mentalgassi may have had a bigger budget than OaKoAk and a bigger scale to work on, but they share the same approach. Adding humor to the mundane is something that everyone can appreciate – we often do it ourselves in our own day-to-day lives. Do you classify works like these as “Art”?

Draw Something makes your smart phone frameable

WARNING: If your smart phone can get apps and you’ve got a friend with the same, it’s only a matter of time before you’re addicted to Draw Something. At least that’s what early statistics would indicate. The pictionary-style game was released on February 1st and there’ve been 20 million downloads – altho’, keep in mind that it takes two to play. This is certainly part of its viral nature – the more games you’ve got going, the more often you can play while you’re waiting on a response from each player. Think about this: on Monday there were 2,400 Draw Something pictures being made per second. OMGPOP, the app’s producer has spent zero money on marketing since the launch. Sounds like a pretty solid business plan to us! So far, users have produced over 1 billion drawings. We’ve probably contributed half of that since the infection got hold of us wannabe artists here at Big Picture. Some of us are a little doubtful about the inclusion of proper nouns in the word choices (Seriously, “Jordan”?! – there’s only so many ways one can depict the New Kids on the Block or the Middle Eastern country with these primitive tools!) Woe be to those with fat fingers – time to up your game with a bigger range of colors. But look out – that’s gonna cost you some of the coins you scored. Or you could always spend real money on the bigger palette choices. We’ll leave that to the *ahem* real addicts.

We can’t take credit for any of these masterpieces, but they’re some good examples of how the game works, as well as the time & effort that people are investing.

You oughtta be in pictures

Spring is in the air – it’s staying lighter later, temperatures are warming, birds are singing – that can mean only one thing. The Hollywood blockbuster season is upon us! Y’know it’s summer when you find yourself plunking down $12.50 to see the latest superhero/wizard/animated/alien 3D eye fest.
But we’re watching movies at home more and more. Thanks to multiple venues like Netflix and On Demand, we don’t have to go out or spend big bucks at the box office to get our film fix. So while you’re enjoying movies on your home screen, don’t forget that movie posters on your wall make a great design choice. They look great in a casual living space or a full-blown home theater. But if a poster of “Toy Story” or “Star Wars” doesn’t sound like the right pic for you, it might be perfect in your child’s bedroom. Now, where could you easily get said movie posters at super-affordable prices online? Hmmm…
Alright, you wore us down. Go to our website here to take advantage of our 60% off posters and custom framing offer. You can choose from an enormous inventory of images.
If we order it for you and custom frame it, you save 60% off the price of the poster and 60% off the framing! Not only will you have some slick new wall art, but you’ll have money left over to actually go out to the movies. Here’s just a small sampling of what’s available –

The best part of your body to paint with…

… is not your tongue. Seriously, folks, we can’t stress that enough! C’mon, the toxicity of oil paints that contain cadmium or zinc or even titanium would be awful for your innards. We shouldn’t have to explain these kind of- wait, what? There’s a drawing teacher in India who paints with his tongue?! What the heck?! Alright, geez – let’s have a look.

via Oddity Central

Impressionist Insider: Renoir caught on film

Have a look at this amazing 16mm film from 1917 of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the French impressionist painter.


The film was found in a closet at the Comparative Literature Department’s office in Harvard University’s Boylston Hall, where it had been sitting for 44 years. No one had known that it was there or even what it was until 2001 when it was identified during an expansive inventory effort. There’s some doubt as to who shot it, tho’ many guess it was Renoir’s son, French film director Jean Renoir. The other two people in it are Ambroise Vollard, a well-known art dealer and writer, and “La Boulangère,” Renoir’s servant and sometimes model.
Renoir passed away two years after this was filmed. You can see in the video that his hands have been deformed after decades of rheumatoid arthritis (more on that below). Harvard Film Archive Curator Bruce Jenkins says, “It’s undoubtedly the only moving image that exists of Renoir painting … or any of the great Impressionists, for that matter. There are some motion pictures of famous generals and members of royalty from this period, but movies of painters are extremely rare.”
We can’t know what he’s painting, but here’s an example of his work from that same time.
Now consider this painting done in 1881, before the arthritis would’ve become quite so crippling.

What kind of animal would a pencil be?

Jennifer Maestre sculpts pencil creatures. They were originally inspired by the form and function of sea urchins while she was attending the Mass College of Art.

The spines of the urchin, so dangerous yet beautiful, serve as an explicit warning against contact. The alluring texture of the spines draws the touch in, in spite of the possible consequences. There is a true fragility to the sometimes brutal aspect of the sculptures, vulnerability that is belied by the fearsome texture.
To make the pencil sculptures, I take hundreds of pencils, cut them into 1-inch sections, drill a hole in each section (to turn them into beads), sharpen them all and sew them together. The beading technique I rely on most is peyote stitch.

Yikes, sounds tedious. But the result is unforgettable. Some of these look as tho’ they could stretch their legs and jump away. As well as the sculptural aspect, we appreciate the different shades and shapes of color that the pencils allow. There’s the color of the wood itself, the color of the tip/center, the outside of the pencil, and in some cases even the color of the eraser and it’s brass neck. Amazing!

When a tree is wrapped up, does anyone see it?

Even a good piece of art gets a little better with a smile and a wink to the viewer. These “constructed photographs” by Zander Olsen make that impression. Zander is toying with a few ideas – there’s some “tree line” word play, there’s some blatant manipulation of the composition, etc. But his description sounds a lot more grand –

These works, carried out in Surrey, Hampshire and Wales, involve site specific interventions in the landscape, ‘wrapping’ trees with white material to construct a visual relationship between tree, not-tree and the line of horizon according to the camera’s viewpoint.

We like how the very last one actually looks like two separate photographs pieced together. But he uses no photo trickery other than his positioning of the camera.

They stuck it WHERE?

Are you sitting down? Good – today’s post gets a little graphic. Here, let’s clean up a bit before we get started…
Alright, if you spend half as much time online as we do, you might recognize today’s artwork. It got shared quite a bit last December, and you’re about to see why. We didn’t get around to posting about it due to the anxiety attack that it brought on.
Artist Yayoi Kusama created a giant indoor environment for the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art that was entirely white – a huge canvas, essentially. Over the course of two weeks, children who visited the gallery were given stickers – wait for it – and invited to fill the space with color. The horror… the horror. Such a simple idea, and yet so effective. Now grab that bottle of Goo-gone and let’s go!

The calm before the oncoming storm…

And so it begins…

Take note of the height challenges in this pic, because –

– this photos prompts us to wonder if there were ever ladders introduced, or were some adults brought in to cheat?

Oh, the humanity!

My gosh, it’s full of stars! stickers!