Brilliant Corners

Jen Renninger’s fantastic “Everything is Going to be Okay” print is just one of the many beautiful prints available in her Etsy shop. I love the collage style she uses in just about everything in the shop.

I came across this print from an announcement on the fragmented blog concerning the availability of works from UPPERCASE Gallery’s Old School show (where many of the works are still available for sale). I love the show’s focus:

The “Old School” theme celebrates the aesthetics of twentieth century education through an art exhibition and companion book, as well as curated objects. It is inspired by vintage flash cards, old desks, biology class, science fairs, crayons, card catalogs, textbooks, class photos, teachers, yearbooks, lunchboxes, gym class, maps, lockers, report cards, film strips, recess, spelling, chalk… and the list goes on!

Lots of neat stuff highlighted and book of the collection is available too.

creativescrape is a neat (just in its infancy) online tool for catching inspiration. (via)

Hannah Stouffer’s art is something to behold. The line art illustrations (paintings? prints? I'm not sure what this style would be called) she makes are mesmerizing and beautiful. I would love to see these in better detail as the image sizes available on her site just aren’t big enough to see all the intricacies.

She has several prints and canvas bags available in her store (some also available on Little Paper Planes), but I wish there were more prints available (like of the piece I included a small sample of above). And, in addition to the neat illustrations, you can see some of the commercial work she has recently completed on her professional site hannahstouffer.com, all of which is just as lovely as her non-professional work.

Scott Teplin has been posting some images from his new “Crash” series on his weblog. The color version of the one above is awesome, but I love his initial sketches just as much; the details are excellent. Don’t miss his Alphaville series either. You can even see how his work progressed on the whole series on his Future Trash weblog.

Cathy Cullis is creating a kind of art that I've never seen before. She calls them “mixed media textile works” on her Etsy shop, but I've never heard the term before. I love the faces and people she’s sewn into all the pieces.

There is more to see in Cathy’s Flickr photos, including some great landscape-like paintings.

It was a hard choice of which of Laure Nollet’s sketchbook drawings to include in this Inspiration post. So many colors and drawing styles and subjects. Some seem freehand, while others use a pasted-in photo as a starting point. Many more in the “pen” set at Flickr and on her website: volume

Flickr user hine has posted some images of her newest crafted digital camera case. The idea is great, but it’s the execution of the camera case that puts it over the top. All the small details were thought of, including a button on the top to signify the shutter release. So, so cute!

This is just one of the excellent items that hine has crafted. There are loads more neat things in her crafted set. Some of the items, including (at the time of this post) one of camera cases, are for sale on her Etsy shop.

Another watercolor and ink piece by Wil Freeborn. I love his sparse use of watercolors in his sketches. He’s not trying to cover everything, but instead picks a few things here and there to highlight. I love the effect.

A while back, Wil offered to send some of his Moo cards to anyone who emailed him. I occasionally come across the cards he sent and keep telling myself to make some for myself.

Mattias Adolfsson recently posted the final version of a large piece he’s been working on. If you look through the archives on his site, you can see how he’s been posting its progress over the last month or so. It’s interesting to see how others work. He’s also quite prolific and seems to post a new drawing every other day or so.

And if you haven’t seen Mattias' baroque Star Wars series, it mustn’t be missed: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. I think my favorite is Boba Fett from the fourth post. Wonderful stuff.

This “strange map” of the courses of the Mississippi river was the impetus for redesigning my weblog (for the 50th time). I wanted to start posting illustrations, art, photos, or whatever I come across that inspires me in some way. I can’t recall if this map appears in any of Edward Tufte’s books, but it certainly belongs in one if it’s not.

Here is a little more information about the map, from the site I linked to:

When looking at this map and seeing the jumble of ancient riverbeds – imagine all those shifts sped up: the Mississippi is like a shifting snake, twisting to find its easiest way down to the Gulf. These shifts occur every thousand years or so, especially in the lower parts of the river, through a process known as delta switching, or avulsion: when the river flow is slow, the sedimentation clogs the river channel and it eventually finds another channel. This process is by no means ‘historic’ (i.e. ‘over’) – from the 1950s onwards, the US government has worked on the Old River Control Structure, meant to prevent the Mississippi from switching to the Atchafalaya River channel.