Renaissance Paintings with a Modern Day Touch - A Pope Riding a Scooter?

A friend who knows my taste in graphic art, digital art, vector art etc, turned me on to Scottish artist Alan MacDonald's website with the promise that I was going to love the man's work. She was 1000% right! I surf the net looking for this sort of thing! MacDonald's paintings blend the subject and style of the European Renaissance masters with modern day consumerism and pop culture. You will see many of his subjects drinking popular beverages, eating junk food and riding on scooters, etc. MacDonald also pairs his old Europe subjects with other out of place items such as fantasy box carts that look like they may have come from a century ago. The second image which shows a Renaissance lady holding a red cellular phone is one of my favorites. This work is really genial!

p.s there is a tattooed pig included in the gallery. I thought it was kind of apropos what with the swine flu scare going on right now.



















"There is a cool, quiet elegance to Alan Macdonald's paintings, which belies the disequilibrium at their heart. His figures, grey eyed and dreaming, might be time travellers, drawing distant cousinship from the portraits of Rembrandt or Frans Hals. His bucolic northern landscapes lay claim to an equally venerable artistic heritage. But if an accretion of the art historical past informs his imagery, it is transposed into a world where confidence has been lost, where the spiritual beliefs and myths which once bound man to nature, and through nature, to the divine, fail to connect.

The otherworldly characters in his series of portrait heads have the look of forgotten pilgrims, bonneted and constrained by cords like the followers of some perverse form of Puritanism. Each is neatly titled according to a state of mind: hedonist, altruist, sadist. We read the titles and search their waxen features, hoping to discover their soul in the curl of a lip, or the tilt of a chin. Despite this attempt at self assertion the figures remain isolated, pinned down by their cords, as if by the codes and strictures of society.

These are beautiful paintings, all the more potent for their distilled sense of calm. Macdonald gives us no answers, but the questions he raises about the search for faith and identity in a difficult modern world touch a nerve, and in the faces of his pilgrims, we recognise ourselves."

JANE BURTON





































Alan MacDonald

Gorgeous Still Life Digital Paintings with Weapons: Guns and Roses, Plants, Fruits...

Talk about irony. Weaponry such as machine guns, grenades, gas masks, bazookas, etc side by side with beautiful flowers, fruits, green plants, cheese, wine, etc. Gorgeous still life paintings with instruments of death mixed in. A haunting but electrifying and beautiful collection.
























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Fun CGI Renditions of the 'Alien vs. Predator' Monsters Chillin' and Playing Games

Magnificent work by 3-D artist Benjamin Parry for an ad campaign for Sky Digital New Zealand.






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Manuel Albarran's Fantastic Futuristic Metal Couture

Manuel Albarran is an artist whose "works includes collaboration with diverse artists, exhibitions and projects in cities around the world, publicity, periodic works in cinema, video art, video clips and important publicity campaigns, aside a notorious specialization in corset and metal art.

At present he dedicates to research a new artistic concept of metal: METAL COUTURE, developing through the careful combination of metal and different materials and techniques for fashion, art and cinema."

This series of quirky and delicious photos come from the Lavazza Gourmet Coffee 2007 calendar.












Manuel Albarran

Oi Va Oi's Fantastic Music Video Made from Shredded Paper

This is a very cool music video by a group I had never heard of called Oi Va Oi. The great looking and innovative vid for their song "Everytime" was made from shredded paper. The video was made by Katarzyna Kijek and Przemysław Adamski. Check it out.



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"The Bear Buttes" Running Camp - Run Naked for the "Nike Free" Sneakers

Nike released a new and very interesting promo video for it's Nike Free kicks. The action supposedly takes place at a boot camp called The Bear Buttes where a whole bunch of people run in the nude to experience, I suppose, how unburdened it feels to run while wearing nothing but the Nike Free sneakers. Ummm. Okay





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More Deliciously Fantastic 3-D Body Art

Those of you who've been following Lunatica for a while must have noticed that I really dig body painting; I mean, I just can't seem to be able to come across gorgeous images of the beautiful art without wanting to post them here. Hence all the fantastic body paint posts. Take a look at Lunatica's latest 3-D body art posting after the jump.



















Via Get Made Up and Body Art Lounge

Harper's Bazaar's Fascinating Beijing Olympics 2008 Issue - Olympic Fashion

I love the cover and the spread of this Harper's Bazaar Beijing 2008 Olympics issue called "Olympic Fashion". But the cover is my absolute favorite because of the fantastic styling with it's simple minimalism.



















Photographer: Chen Zhun
Magazine: Harper's Bazaar
Date: September, 2008

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Fun Interactive Pencil Illustration of a Mean Chef Threatening his Creator with a Meat Cleavage

I really love this moving illustrations! I am trying to get some more but so far no luck. If somebody knows where I can get more moving images, please gimme a shout out via the comment section. Incidentally, Lunatica published several of these cool drawings a couple of months ago including the one seen below. The drawings are static but are still pretty amazing. You can go and check them out Here



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Tiger "Woods of Wisdom" for Gatorade Cool Cartoon Commercials

"A new commercial campaign from Gatorade agency TBWA\Chiat\Day touts a newly reformulated version of Gatorade Tiger with an animated youthful Tiger Woods.

Gatorade Tiger Focus has a new formulation with theanine, which is found naturally in tea, and when combined with advanced hydration and carbohydrates, helps people stay mentally focused. The new product has half the calories of traditional Gatorade Thirst Quencher and 25 percent more electrolytes as well as the added nutrition benefit of a good source (10% Daily Value) of vitamin E.


The spots are executed in Disney-style animation, a la Jungle Book. The wise Grizzly bear, Colonel, who is actually based on Tiger's own father, Earl, is voiced by Samuel L. Jackson."

The spots feature original music composed by Boosty Collins of Parliament Funkadelic fame, and includes voice overs by Tiger's swing coach Hank Haney and caddie Steve Williams."





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Absolutely Dazzling Star Wars Couture!

Let's take a little trip down the Gamma Quadrant at worp speed 9 or some shit like that...Anyway, I just adore these ensembles from Vogue USA 1999. Shot by Irving Penn, the images are so vibrant and so gorgeous and the styling is just tremendous !









Photographer: Irving Penn
Magazine: Vogue US
Date: April, 1999
Model: Audrey Marnay

Paranaiv

Tatiana Parcero's Amazing Ancient Human Anatomy Maps

"Mexican artist Tatiana Parcero’s marvelous series entitled “Interior Cartographies” consists of constructed photos (transparency overlays) in which anatomy diagrams and ancient Aztec codices adorn parts of her body - her face, hands, feet, mouth, and pregnant abdomen. In Parcero’s powerful icons, physiology and individual memory are embodied expressions of very ancient cultural lineage".

Somewhat haunting and very visceral but absolutely astounding work!

My work starts with my biography and personal rituals of daily life. I explore sensations and emotions, which, even though they are intimate or individual, are included in the more ample sphere of the feminine and the human. With this idea I move from the specific to the general. My experience is transformed into the thought of what other women or human beings might live through.

I started with the exploration of my external body as a way of knowing myself. Later, I included objects which would help me to define visually, individual and social metaphors. After that I went beyond the boundaries of the skin to start the exploration of my inner body.

The images to be found in "Cartographies" are the continuum of a project which I started three years earlier, by the name of " El Mapa de Mi Cuerpo" ( the map of my body) in which I brought together the notions of identity, memory and territory.

By means of combining pictures of fragments of my body with diagrams from anatomy as well as old codices, I have constructed maps - metaphoric/rituals- and reinvented my history. I explore inner and outer spaces guided by such maps as a starting point. With these images, I try to see through the memory of my body that which goes beyond the boundaries of the skin.

Tatiana Parcero

Rihanna's Beat Up Face as Pop Art? WTF! Really Dude?

Rihanna's police photo with her face all messed up by Chris Brown's alleged attack circulated the internet for days on end. Now pop artist Shaim Ibrahim has drawn a series of portraits based on the photos in question for no apparent purpose. Ibrahim tells E! Magazine Online: “I thought the bruises in the police photo were interesting shapes to draw. And it was cool to color them pink and blue. Those are two of my favorite colors.”

And when asked about the meaning behind his work, Ibrahim stated: “There is no message to any of my art. It’s meant to look cool hanging on your wall and that’s it! I’m not into deep meanings.”

So this guy sees that image of a woman who just got the shit beaten out of her and he says, "Why let this very interesting photo of a major bitch-slapping go to waste? And then he proceeds to go all Andy Warhol on the pop artist's battered face. Don't know about you guys but that's what I call a major asshole opportunist!

Meanwhile, here I am posting the dude's work on my blog. That makes me a complicit asshole opportunist.

















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