A few years ago I featured the street art of El Mac, and he has continued to work on large-scale murals.

Notes about the artist (from bio):

Born in Los Angeles in 1980 to an engineer and an artist, Mac has been creating and studying art independently since childhood. His primary focus has been the lifelike rendering of human faces and figures. He has drawn inspiration from the surrounding Mexican & Chicano culture of Phoenix and the American Southwest, religious art, pin-up art, graffiti, and a wide range of classic artists such as Caravaggio, Mucha, and Vermeer. He began painting with acrylics and painting graffiti in the mid ’90s, and has since worked consistently towards mastering his signature portrait style.

Photos © El Mac

Link via Cindy Weaver

Japanese designer Nendo had a recent solo art show entitled ”Think Black Lines” that featured 29 unique furniture pieces. His creations were minimalist yet freaky how they appear to be two-dimensional and three-dimensional at the same time.

Photos © Masayuki Hayashi

Link via Mighty Optical Illusions

“A Momentary Rise of Reason” is a painting series by Dan Voinea. “Time is suspended, the characters are ageless, the backdrop [is] minimal.” ^[1]  The image at top of the couple actually resembles Rene Magritte’s artwork such as “The Mysteries of Horizon” (1955) and “Decalcomania” (1966).

1. "Momentary Rise of Reason." Danvoineagallery.blogspot.pt. April 25, 2012.

Artwork © Dan Voinea

Link via Booooom

Artist Nic Joly creates miniature sculptures that narrate his thoughts and observations about life. His work reminds me of the art of Akiko Lda and Pierre Javelle, and Lisa Swerling.

Top: “My Dream.”

“Filthy Habit.”

“Stuck.”

“Waving Off.”

“The Pen is Mightier than the Sword.”

Photos © Nic Joly

Link via Beautiful Decay

Digital artist Joana Garrido has worked on visuals for films such as “Iron Man” (2008), “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (2008), “Star Trek” (2009), and more. Her personal art allows her to be more experimental by taking photographs of flowers and paint in water, as well as creating cool computer graphics of a skull and butterfly.

Images © Joana Garrido

Link via Behance Network

Although this looks like a regular illustration on paper, it is actually an amazing large-scale painting on a building wall in Brest, France. There are three murals that were photographed by Michele Quemeneur and featured at Street Art Utopia.

Photos © Michele Quemeneur

Link via Street Art Utopia

I have always enjoyed trompe l’oeil, and artist J.D. Hillberry has dedicated a full section of drawings to this illusion technique. He says: “This entire image is drawn including the background, tape, and string.” ^[1]

1. "A String of Memories." Jdhillberry.com. Retrieved on May 12th, 2012.

Artwork and photo © J.D. Hillberry

Link via Donya D.

Chilean artist Carlos Zuniga has drawn 135 portraits directly on phone book pages. His art series entitled “Next” has been exhibited in galleries in Paris, London, and Santiago.

Artwork © Carlos Zuniga

Link via Devid Sketchbook

The collage art of Jordan Clark.

Photos © Jordan Clark

Link via Marcela Alverez

By using UV technology, Cara Phillips “set up her studio on the streets of New York City and photographed whoever was willing to sit in her chair. The idea was to offer pedestrians a chance to see their possible future and reconsider the fear of flaws that pervades our society.” ^[1]

More notes about this photo series: ^[2]

Her first body of work explored the psychological experience of the cosmetic surgeon’s office. In photographing the interiors of these places of beauty, she was able to create a visual representation of the emotions they invoked in her. While researching that project, Cara came across UV images of patients.  Many medi-spas and dermatologists take ultraviolet photographs to show patients their ‘future’ skin. Even though there is no guarantee that this unseen damage will ever appear, beauty professionals and doctors still use these images to sell treatments to their clients and patients.

[...] New York is known for having photo shoots on its streets, and for being the beauty capital of the world. But in this shoot every person who sat for a portrait, was given their moment under the lights. The results were surprising—however not so much for what they revealed about the subject’s skin damage—but for the questions they raised about the revelatory expectation of the photographic portrait.  What can a two-dimensional representation really capture about a person’s interior being? And in a culture populated by artifice, retouched images, scripted reality television, and set-up documentary art photography, how do we measure the truth of a photograph?

 

1/2. "Cara Phillips." Aureus Contemporary. Retrieved on May 9th, 2012.

Photos © Cara Phillips

Link via iGNANT