Super 7 designer toys

Stumbled upon this great group selling really good designer toys.

Great selection of new and vintage Japanese toys and Kaijus (strange beasts)
They even have a store category solely dedicated to Godzilla action figures.
Lots of nice art prints too starting at $40.00

the perfect fridge for room mates

This would be perfect for our house. There are three small families where I live sharing a single large fridge (which recently ran out of freon)

It get's confusing sometimes, you don't know which family owns which food item unless you were the one who actually bought it.
With this innovative fridge, eggs and random pieces of vegetable will no longer disappear mysteriously

"Stefan Buchberger created this innovative fridge for Electrolux's Design Lab 2008. Consisting of a base station and up to 4 seperate stackable modules, each section is removable and customizable with various skins, a bottle opener and a whiteboard."

Found via 2modern design talk

nature-inspired design: The Origin by Jin-woog Koo

The Origin is a washbasin inspired by the flow of water. The design mimics the movement of a stream filling up a little pool or small body of water.

It uses a round piece of stone that acts as the tap and also doubles as a plug for the sink.

mmmm soothing

Via mocoloco

LEGO camera, boombox and mp3 player

Saw this a couple of weeks ago so this is relatively new. Thought it would make a good follow-up to the earlier LEGO post.

LEGO has teamed up with digital blue to come up with some really great functional stuff: A camera, an mp3 player, a boombox and walkie talkies. Click the links to see the specs for each product.
They haven't released the walkie talkies yet so no specs for that one.

These products have a great LEGO feel to them but I don't think assembly is required.



Prices are around $40-$50, not bad for a camera and an mp3 player.

Found all of the LEGO stuff I've seen previously and then some, so more LEGO inspired gadgets and house things to come in later posts.

Manilart 09

As much as I would like to post art events from around the globe, I think it's better to just post the local ones for relevance or the ones in and around Asia for now at least until this whole thing picks up.

Manilart will be the first major international art fair to be hosted in the Philippines.
This art fair will be held on July 16-19 at the NBC Tent, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig.

40 of the country's leading galleries have signed up and will be exhibiting 500 works from their collections. A bunch of other Southeast Asian/Asian galleries are expected to participate so if you're an artsy fartsy individual residing in the P.I. don't miss this chance to rub elbows with fellow enthusiasts, collectors and, of course, some of the big names in local art.

Admission will cost php200.00 or around US$5.00
Students and older folk get a 50% discount





Check out the official page for more details

LEGO lamp

Being a LEGO fan my entire life I've seen a lot of LEGO inspired designs from salt shakers to cameras but this is probably one of the best out there. Very nice (Borat voice)

I'll try to re-locate some of the things I've seen over the years and post it here soon.

"BLOCK is a small night light full of child’s taste, warm primrose light passes through the white toy bricks with three degrees of brightness adjustment that can meet your different demands to light, and the attached second brick allows you to place it on the main product of Block Light freely and experience childishness again."

Wish I had this night light growing up.

You can get the lamp here.

Michael Jackson's Dangerous cover album and its occult symbolism

Someone should print this on a shirt, I would definitely sport this (but then again its probably on eBay already or it has been for a long time)

Regarded as one of the most intricate album covers along with The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is Michael Jackson's Dangerous album cover designed by Mark Ryden.

A fitting tribute to the King of Pop who just now became the first artist ever to sell 1,000,000 downloads within a week.
You're never really a legend if you don't die prematurely just like John Lennon, Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix for example.
On the bright side, the man's legacy won't be tarnished any further.

mmmmm trippy

"The cover of his Dangerous album had some interesting features on it. The Freemasonic symbol of the One Eye can be found and also the picture of a watery lake behind which laid burning flames. It seems as though anyone entering into the water would really be entering into the fire.

The cover also has on it a picture of a bald headed man well known to the occult as Alistair Crowley. He himself was a Freemason and wrote the book "The New Law of Man" which stated in it that it would one day replace the Qur'ân as the law of man."

That bit taken from prisonplanet

Another good image I found of Michael Jackson rendered in the pop art style, just thought I'd share it, this is an art blog after all:

Image via the National Portrait Gallery

Creative Workspaces

Found a blog called On My Desk a while back showcasing the workspace and home offices of your average creative person.

I think this blog was the first to ever touch on the subject, what a great idea. Very useful to people who want to spice up their own desks and work areas with lots of links to their respective owner's homepages and blogs.

The blog started in 2006 but they stopped posting new stuff in November of last year. Also of interest is the Flickr photo pool called Workspaces - No Computers!

Yulia Brodskaya's paper typography

One of the things I've been fascinated about lately is paper. Ever since I started playing around with papercraft I've realized the potential of paper as a medium for creating wonderful things from paper toys to high art.

Yulia Brodskaya's concept is simple, but the resulting work is highly detailed and brilliant.

Hard to pick images for this post, everything looks equally good so be sure to check out all her stuff.

Found via drawn!

genius meets flashlight: Picasso's light graffiti

A series of photos taken by LIFE photographer Gjon Mili in 1949. Inspired by Mili's photos of ice skaters skating in the dark with lights affixed to their skates.
Found via Today and Tomorrow




The complete set can be found here

street typography: the A-Z of change

Some great visuals via woostercollective by London's leading typography guy, Eine. You really can't go wrong with revolutionary images, it's just the sort of thing that can spark some inspiration in a person. Add to that some fancy typeface lettering and you're all set.

I like the way they put it here: "The trademark typography is still in place, but in The A – Z of Change, Eine's incorporated into the work images from archival photographs that champion the actions of those who stand up against the status quo and create cultural and political movements that make change possible"

Pacita Abad

While channel surfing last week, I saw a 10 minute clip about the life and work of Pacita Abad. I have always been fascinated with her work, too bad I've never had a chance to actually see any of her paintings from up close despite practically living in an art gallery. I learned about Pacita Abad through a coffeetable book I saw lying around a few years back and was immediately captivated by her colors and her style.
Her art is really my kind of art: abstract, colorful, intricate and bursting at the seams with passion. One of my favorite local artists. It's funny how much she has in common with my other favorite artist, Nena Saguil (more on that later). Both females, both having done a considerable amount of work on just circles.

Anyway here's some of her work, be sure to check out her site also. "She is a volcano of color" (that bit taken from her website)

Self Portrait

Pink Sherbet from her Circles on My Mind series

Bright Spark

water color techniques and resources

Like I said, watercolor really is the best medium in my opinion. Better than acrylic and oil paints combined. The fluidity, and honesty of watercolor is truly an amazing thing. When I was in art school, I only brought with me a compact watercolor kit by Winsor & Newton and it was all I really needed. A few fine brushes and 8 basic colors. After discovering Geninne's Art Blog, I immediately felt the need to look up some watercolor techniques for further inspiration.
After googling for a little while I found this great site solely dedicated to watercolor and its many wonderful applications. A great resource filled with excellent tutorials for anyone who wants to give this medium a try. This site also has some advanced techniques and exercises for people who want to improve on their water coloring skills.

color grid exercise for beginners

alcohol texture for the more advanced user

wax resist

and now, the first official papercraft post

I'm not on crack or anything (despite the fifth post in as many hours) , just trying to get things going. Blogging is fun, I should have started a long time ago dammit.

In an attempt to make up for lost time here's another entry, the first official entry about papercraft (expect lots more in the very immediate future, say in a few hours?)

Just today, I came across a wonderful blog which aims to produce one papercraft model a day. This blog, aptly called Toy-a-Day is producing some wonderful paper toys. From Optimus Prime to He-Man, Stephen Hawking to Bruce Lee. Awesome, instantly recognizable pop culture icons we know and love.

These characters are all based on a simple box template which is easily customizable, enabling the creation of some excellent user-submitted designs.

Here are a few favorites:

berserker barrage!

prose before hoes, William Shakespeare

the Fab Four dressed in their favorite Yellow Submarine attire

Michael Jackson
I don't care what you think, the man is a legend.