At Share Some Candy, a delicious smorgasbord of illustration and design, I stumbled upon Brent Couchman's work. Brent is Senior Designer at Fossil, and has posted a few work samples on Flickr. I hope he won't get mad because his foot is now on my desktop. I borrowed it for wallpaper. See his retro-flavored art right here.
Ready for more stunning work? Erik Johansson is a Swedish photographer whose retouching skills put my jaw on the floor. Most clients ask me to change the wood finish on a product from cherry to oak, or smooth down some stray hairs in a headshot. It's like performing a card trick at a kid's birthday party, while Erik makes the Statue of Liberty disappear. See more of his work right here.
While happily browsing at Happy Mundane, I bumped into Cheeming Boey's work. Boey lives in California and draws on foam cups with Sharpies. And we're not talking stick figures. Waves, birds, vines, Japanese motifs. I contacted him to get permission to post some photos and asked if he had anything to say about his cups. He replied, "I would like to show people that canvases can be anything... just because it says disposable doesn't mean it has to be." Right on.
To see more cups, click here. Read interesting articles about Boey here and here.
Sorry for the sporadic posting this week, guys. I'm a bit swamped with work. But that hasn't stopped me from enjoying some quirky desktop wallpaper by Lena Corwin for Design*Sponge (detail above). I keep losing files on this background of little objects, but who cares. It's fun. Get yours here, in tan or blue.
Stumbled upon artist Yoshihiro Moritake's online sketchbook, where you can download a desktop wallpaper version of each painting. Lovely! Click "Gallery", and then the arrow in the lower left to flip through the illustrations.
And with that, I say goodbye to you for a week. Mr. Jones and I are taking a road trip vacation.
Feed Your Soul is a little site offering free illustrations you can download, print, and frame. Contributing artists include Amy Ruppel (designer of Target's 2008 Christmas decorations), Marcy Davy, Gemma Correll, Tara Hogan, Jessica Gonacha, and Samantha Hahn. 
For a cheap way to display your pictures, try printing them on cardstock and hanging them on a clothesline like this from Olive at Etsy.
I thought it would be fun to pick out some affordable prints to coordinate with my fabric colorways, for anybody who wants to sew something or get slipcovers and pillows from JCaroline Home. I've included some ideas for both grown-ups and kids' rooms. Be sure to poke around the sites where these come from; there are tons more options.
Spa colorway
Clockwise from upper left: Nancy Ortenstone, The Poster List, LuAnn Ostergaard, Corrine Ellsworth, Rand McNally, Stefania Ferri.
Earth colorway
Clockwise from upper left: Rob Dunlavey, Kristen Stein, Matte Stephens, Brent Nelson, Laura George.
Candy colorway
Clockwise from upper left: Matasaburo Kazeno, Ron Jones, The Poster List, Bryan Collins, Lauren Hamilton, Jen Oaks.
In the Fallen Princesses project, photographer Dina Goldstein explores alternate outcomes for Disney's princesses. What if "happily ever after" didn't pan out? JPG Magazine publishes more of her thoughts and a preview of the series here. Poor Rapunzel.
The girls at Kindred have released another batch of free wallpapers with a summertime theme. Enjoy!
I'm enjoying this site called Share Some Candy. It's a "curated collective of inspiring design finds and art." Pretty cool. And for any designers thinking about starting your own firm, the funny Name My Design Company Machine will help you out. It's inspired by the zillions of design studios who have named themselves after colored animals. Seriously. Just start Googling a color plus an animal plus "design." Red dog. Blue cow. Purple elephant. Try it.
I'm enchanted by this tilt-shift helicopter rescue film! It's called Bathtub IV by Keith Loutit. (Thank you, Jennifer!)
Ugallery.com is an online store selling original art from top collegiate artists. Ugallery realizes most people can’t afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars for original artwork, so they've created a curated gallery with prices from $20 to $5,000. You can search for art by genre, color, size, medium, and price, and try out your favorite piece on the Virtual Wall to see how it will look before you buy it.
And good news! Ugallery is offering a $100 credit to two lucky How About Orange readers. To enter, just leave a comment here with a way to contact you. Two winners will be randomly selected and sent a coupon code for $100 toward any purchase. Contest ends Friday, 4/3/09, at midnight CDT.
UPDATE: Contest is now closed. Commenter #538, Leanna, and commenter #205, Megan, are the lucky winners. Congrats, ladies!
(Images from Ugallery.com artists)
Test your art history knowledge with this little quiz. It will help you kill about one minute while you're waiting for the weekend to start. (If you need to kill more time than that, see other posts in the time-wasters category. Maybe you could waste up to an hour, even. Good luck.)
I stumbled upon a Korean artist named Yeondoo Jung (via Craftzine) who has turned a collection of children's drawings into whimsical photos. I think they're amazing and crazy and delightful. See them here. Also go see the Bewitched series and make sure to read the captions.
(Images from Yeondoo Jung.)
Rex Ray is a graphic designer/fine artist based in San Francisco. The first time I saw his work was at art.com, oddly enough. I have a thing for circles and curves, and I think his collages are beautiful. Originals are available exclusively through Jonathan Adler, whose manifesto makes me so happy. Alas, when it comes to Rex Ray, art.com is more my price range. (And I see you can get 25% off there for the next two days.)
(Images stolen from Rex Ray's website)
We went to the The Old Town Art Fair the other day for bit and walked through as briskly as the crowd would allow (i.e. at a snail's pace). Alex has pointed out that I get very crabby in crowds, and it's true. So we tried to keep moving, but here's where I had to stop and seriously look: Heinrich Toh. My favorite of the day. To see more, visit his website.
All images by Heinrich Toh.
