1. I recently saw a few of Richard Baker‘s painted facsimiles of vintage paperback books. In these realistic paintings he leaves no detail unnoticed down to the tattering on the paper covers or the wrinkling from age. I also love the visible text block edge on the tail side.
2. This raw and distorted, geometric portrait is apart of a larger series of work from Boston-based painter Josh Jefferson.
3. I love these lush and whimsical illustrations from Helsinki-based designer Eero Lampinen.
4. Photographer Chris Buck is best known for his celebrity portraits until recently when he had a 10″ figurine of himself 3D printed by start-up Doob. Now he’s taking dozens of pictures of his miniature self in the most unlikely places. Check out the PetaPixel article.
5. Sarapes are blanket-like shawls worn in Mexico and are often woven with brightly colored threads and fringed at the ends. In his series called Sarapes, artist Adrian Esparza has been exploring his own Mexican heritage by deconstructing these blankets and transforming them into large scale geometric string art.
6. This is by far the weirdest motion sensor device I’ve ever seen. PomPom Mirror was created by Daniel Rozin and includes over 900 faux fur pom poms, which are manipulated by 460+ motors to create a reflection in real-time. Check out the mirror in action in this video.
7. Papers for Characters is a wonderful series by design studio Atipo, in which a single sheet of paper is manipulated in a simple way to represent a famous movie. The one above is… Dracula!
8. Every Monday Elvira Johanna Duives uploads the next “portrait of the week”. Her fantastic miniature portraits are sized at 5.5cm x 4cm and are not painted (nor are they latch hook as I thought), but created through the use of Copic markers and colored pencils. The fat markers offer the desirable soft edges that she gets with each portrait. I love them and apparently she does commissions!
9. The Getty Museum put together this concise, yet informative video on how manuscripts were made. The video includes the production of parchment and how it is transformed into a workable surface for the scribe before finishing off with one way the parchment signatures would have been bound. The binding demonstration is done by the great William Anthony.
10. Idiot Box is a photography series from Donna Stevens capturing the glazed expressions of children while watching television. Their zombie-like stares are glowing from the light of the screen; some are caught in mid-expression. But overall the portraits are quite chilling.
