Embroidered illustrations by Lucky Jackson.

Every now and again when i'm randomly browsing the web i'll come across something that is completley brilliant. These hand stitched textile frames by Lucky Jackson really make me smile :) They're right up my street, they look cute and also have a very strong collage/illustrative feel, at first i thought the figures were drawn but when you look closer you can see they're actually stitched - amazing ! And what's more - this artist has set themselves up to produce one of these textile pieces everyday for a whole year ... 365 unique works of art, all in the same format which realy makes a lovely seires :)

The art of Zak Smith

I think it's about time i posted about Zak Smith, he is (and has been for a long time) one of my most favourite artists. His portraits are the thing i like the most about his work, although pretty much everything he draws makes me wow :) Bold lines and blocks of colour amidst crazy amounts of detail make his punk inspired images really unique. His website is packed full of his artwork, but here's a few of my favourite pieces by him... 

Valerie Vargas Tattoos

Valerie Vargas is a tattoo artist that I came across a while ago, and I think it is fair to say that she is an EPIC artist. I love her designs, they all seem to have such beautiful compositions with just the right amount of detail. Pretty girls with flowing hair, detailed jewellery, keys and locks, animals and bold roses are just a few of the things that appear in her designs. I would love to be tattooed by her some day : ) Here is some of her stunning work...

ScribblerToo

ScribblerToo is an online application that lets you create amazing images with just a few simple lines. It connects the lines you draw and makes them look really technical and sketchy - line colour, density,canvas colour and the amount of connections can be changed. It's brilliant to play about on and see what can be created :) I love the way the black lines look on a white background. Here are a few things i have drawn using it... I want to learn to draw like this with a normal pen on paper !

Marvellous molecular patterns

This website is an amazing place to go if you're looking for patterns for inspiration. The site is loaded with images of different drugs and chemicals 'under the miroscope', some of them are just mindblowingly colourful and intricate, and look as if they could be works of art that have taken hours to create.  I could spend days looking through them all ^__^  Here's a few of my favourites...they remind me of stained glass windows and looking through a kaleidoscope.

Iori Tomita - Colourful Specimens

I came across these images on the website Lost At E Minor (which by the way is a brilliant website for creative inspiration and just for a good old nosey around too ) and was so amazed by them i felt i had to share them on here :) Iori Tomita creates these translucent and vividly coloured creatures by preserving and dying animal skeletons in an array of crazy chemicals. The result is quite astounding, little works of art that don't quite seem to belong on thi planet - but they do!

Creative quotes

I have come across a lot of quotes on the internet about creativity and art, a lot of them make sense but a few of them manage to be funny too, and as a bonus are well designed (seems appropriate) :) Here's some of my favourite ones...

Polly Becker - Tactile Illustrations.

I recently came across this artist/ illustrator and i am totally baffled by her work :) She creates little characters (or assemblages) from all kinds of odds and ends, old dolls, collage, textile elements, jewellery etc. and photographs them against a white background - in a way that makes them seem as if they could be real.

 It's not just the figures she creates that really interest me but also the concepts - on looking through her gallery (link) you can really see the connection between the pose, or expression of the figure and how that represents an issue or explains the article the piece was comissioned for. Here are some examples of her weirdly brilliant creations...

Mechanical birds

Here are some birds i have been drawing for a current project at uni.The project title is 'Power', we have been allowed to illustrate this word/theme in any way we want to , so I have chosen to draw these little birdies ( which are usually seen as being fragile/delicate) and give them a sense of power by making them all mechanically machine-like :) These illustrations are based on real types of birds...

Nightingale

Chaffinch

Wheatear

Carrion Crow

I googled images of steampunk and clockwork creations while i was drawing these for inspiration... I think Steampunk imagery is so beautiful :)  I may draw some more of these and go into more detail with the whereabouts of the mechanics ( hinges on the parts that would move etc.) i vaguely did this , giving each bird a little rib cage and hinges on the legs but i think it'd be cool if the mechanics could be more correspondant to the anatomy of the birds.

Old book doodles

A small post, thought i'd upload these doodles i did today on an old book I bought from a charity shop.I deliberatley chose a book with slightly yellow pages, I thought this might create an interesting background. I'm quite proud of how they've turned out... I did 2 of random female characters, and one of Travis Barker, my all time favourite drummer :)

The Decorated Octopus.

I came across a spare piece of wooden board today so I thought i'd use it to make a collage. I've been pretty interested in octopuses recently ( weird? ) so I decided to make an octopus collage, and a little story to go with it. I made the image and story kind of child-like, but not too much as I wanted the story to have a meaning.

The decorated octopus- collage and pen on board. Hard to photograph due to reflection , may update with a better pic sometime :)

And here's the story behind the image...

Every day the octopus would stop and look up at the surface of the water she lived in – she knew people existed on the land, walking with legs instead of swimming with tentacles. She wished she could be more like the humans, wear fancy clothes and jewellery, and read colourful magazines. She envied the way people could decorate themselves , as she thought life under the sea was pretty dull.

One day, as she was going about her usual octopus business, she noticed a shiny heart – shaped necklace floating by her in the water. ‘One of the humans must have accidentally dropped this into the water’ she thought to herself. She reached out for it with her tentacle, and as she held it she caught a glimpse of her own reflection. She was amazed – dazzled by what she saw! She realised that she no longer needed to be jealous of the humans, as she too had been decorated and fancy all along!

You see, the ocean is like a huge mirror to those who can look down upon its surface - but the animals that live in the water may never get to see their own reflection. To this day, the decorated octopus wears the necklace around her tentacle, and shares it with all the other animals in the sea, letting them look into it, and see how beautiful they are, too.

Detail of the collage, still not the best of pictures haha.

 

The meaning behind this story is that you shouldn't judge the way you look in comparison to others, or be jealous because everyone is beautiful and sometimes people just lack the metaphorical heart - shaped reflective object needed to see themselves and love themselves for what and who they are :)