Came across Dangerdust; anonymous students at Columbus College of Art & Design. Each week they make a new piece of art on a blackboard. Head over to their Bēhance page, and take a look at their stunning work.
Here is a quote from Paul Klee and classic from Calvin and Hobbes.
Yisela
Beatriz Aurora calls her drawings “painted stories”, and her subjects definitely have a lot to tell.
The Chilean artist had to exile to Spain during the 70s. She knew she couldn’t go back to Chile, but there were other places in Latin America that could use her art, so from Spain she travelled to Nicaragua, then to El Salvador and finally settled in Mexico.
In the 90s, and when some stated we had reached the ‘end of history’ and the ‘end of ideologies’, others decided that a different kind of society was possible. From 1994 the Zapatistas had been building a self-sufficient community based on equality, respect for nature and love. Beatriz quickly joined them, and soon she became the brush and color of the EZLN*.
Her stories tell about the men and women of Chiapas (the birth place of the movement), mostly of mayan descent. They are simple, cheerful and positive, like the Zapatistas like to describe themselves, and usually include messages written in a beautiful semi-childish calligraphy: ‘We can produce without destroying the world’, or ‘Come dance with us’.
When asked if she is calls herself a revolutionary, Beatriz answers: “Anyone who loves nature has to be a revolutionary, has to be against multinationals that destroy our world“. Beatriz Aurora gave the Zapatistas a colorful voice, one that is only theirs. A beautiful reminder that freedom, independence and dignity are still something worth fighting for.
* Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional, or Zapatista Army of National Liberation
@BakabakaDesign
tracing of Tropaeolum majus — Indian cress
Being interested in learning Art Nouveau and similar styles, I ended up placing one of the scans in Illustrator to try and trace it. Imitation is the greatest flattery, isn’t it?
Turns out that our modern illustration tools make it even easier to make things rigidly symmetrical. Boot’s art was all hand-drawn, and although he seemed to be a huge fan of his ruler and drafting compass, his symmetry is sometimes a bit off.
Oh, and: Hi! I’m Bakabaka, and a great many thanks go to benteh for inviting to post my inspiration and doodles on this wonderful blog. I hope to entertain you with some of my modest musings among her great art.
@benteh
So. 56 moleskine pages later I had a pile of doodles. Turns out, to pull this off you need to be a little more obsessive than I am, so the whole thing is on ice, as I am not sure what to do with it. Drawing, scanning and fiddling in photoshop, I cannot make up my mind as to what I want to do with colours. And 50-something individual cards is a big job. Here is a gallery of where it stands now, unfinished. Maybe I will never actually make a deck of cards, but it is a himalayan practice to come up with over 50 different doodles.
@benteh
Orange is a tricky colour: when pale, it can be seen as yellow, when dark, it is seen as brown.
Bizarrely, orange did not get its English name until 1512. It was named after the fruit, though you could have thought it would have been the other way around. Even in the middle ages, English had no word for orange. Chaucer described it as:
bitwixe yelow and reed
Before importing the word orange from french, the colour was referred to as ġeolurēad(yellow-red). So orange was a really odd thing. To quote Alan Fletcher in his book The art of looking sideways:
Colour words are acquired by cultures in a strict sequence according to anthropologists who analysed 98 widely differing languages:
So there is orange, with an identity crisis amongst purple, pink and grey. That is not to say that the colour did not exists or that it was invisible or utterly unappreciated. It just did not have its own name.
Saffron is a spice and a colour that comes from the purple saffron crocus. It is the most expensive spice in the world for good reasons. One evening the sun goes down, the field is bare. Then the flower appears overnight, lasts a day, and is gone. If you are not ready to harvest at any time, your crop, and possibly your livelihood, will be gone. It is a delicate, vulnerable thing, and to grow them takes a good deal of effort. It is the bright red stigma that gives the dye and the spice, the rest of the flower, the 
stamen and leaves are useless. And here is an oddity: the flowers are sterile. They cannot reproduce by pollenating, only by bulb offsets. So you will never find a saffron crocus in the wild.
In 2007 Buddhists monks were at the forefront of the 2007 Burmese anti-government protests, the uprising has been referred to as the Saffron Revolution. It is worth noting though, that their robes are not dyed with saffron, but with turmeric or jackfruit.
In 2013 the prices for certain spices (USD for 1ounce):
@benteh
I bought a watercolour set to replace my measly pocket one. This one, in contrast, has 45 colours, as opposed to 12. I was never a painter, but playing is good. I have tried some “realistic” stuff that turned out far from just that. Nevermind; doodles are good too. There seems to be no doubt though, that pen and pencils are more up my street.
@benteh
For the geo-geeks out there, I have finished my geologic timescale brush; now better and more accurate than the previous one.
Included is a swatch folder with all the colours as per the instructions of the International Commission on Stratigraphy:
You are welcome to use this in any way you like, the only thing I wish for is that you let me know/show me the context. You can reach me on twitter; @benteh
Since it is a brush, it can take on any shape, and it can be scaled to be as big as a house.
The text needed have to be added manually. It is possible to incorporate it automatically in the brush, but this might not be so sustainable. This is an ongoing project of mine; creating a geologic clock from the formation of the earth to today. When finished, this will have key fossils from each period, maybe a number of millions/billions of years plotted around the clock. Other possibilities is to add ice-ages etc.
@benteh
Jack Horner is a paleo-dude of the purest water. He is funny, knowledgeable and loves dinosaurs so much he wants to build one. And it is actually feasible. Chickens are basically altered dinosaurs, and fiddling with switching on and off genes will give you a chickenosaurus. See the TED talk. Best dude around.
@benteh
Any mental occurrence simultaneously associated with two habitually incompatible contexts. Arthur Koestler
That moment of insight becomes the creative act as a joining of two previously incompatible ideas. Lyall Watson
The association of two, or more, apparently alien elements on a plane alien to both is the most potent ignition of poetry. Comte de Lautrémont
Perceiving analogies and other relations between aparently incongruous ideas or forming unexpected, striking or ludicrous combinations of them. Rem Koolhaas
Invention or discovery takes place by combining ideas. Jacques Hadamard
The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony. Heraclitus
Where the imaginative and the functional fuse and finally become indistinguishable. Milton Glaser
How such connections spring to mind are guesswork but they seem to favour those who have a promiscuous curiosity and chronic attraction to problems.
@benteh
William Buelow Gould (1801 – 1853) was an English artist convicted for stealing a coat, and was sentenced to seven years of labour in Van Diemens Land (Tasmania). He constantly got into trouble, also in the penal colonies, and was regularly punished for offences such as drunkenness, petty theft and forgery.
His talent however, got him assigned as house servant to colonial surgeon Dr James Scott who made use of his abilities. Later he was also a servant of another amateur naturalist, Dr William de Little (“amateur” meaning something a little different then than now).
He painted still life, portraits, botanical specimen, native flora and fauna, sea life collected on the beaches and landscapes. He continued painting after having been granted his certificate of freedom in 1835, but the quality was faltering, and he seems to have spiralled down into poverty, drunkenness and prison sentences.
His work is greatly acclaimed, and his Gould’s sketchbook of fishes was recognised as a document of world significance by UNESCO in 2011.
My absolute favourite is the leafy sea dragon.
The visual squirrel 