On first glance Buff Monster and his art present a picture that's the opposite of your typical "grown-up". Giant Mohawk, heavy metal music, graffiti, heck--even a installation of porn-related art. But there's a chink in that facade though, and it comes in the most exuberant shade of pink. It's the kind of color that's hard to hate and it dominates Buff Monster's work. Loud, cartoonish, and fun, even Mohawk-haters would have to agree. So when Buff's rep emailed me to get some press out for his fall openings, I was happy to probe a little more into this interesting artist.

We're going to outer space with NASA and Etsy as they team up for a craft / design contest; the winner will get a $500 worth of Etsy delights, a good seat at the next Space Shuttle launch, and they might even put your work into orbit. We witness three distinctly colored lobsters at The Maritime Aquarium, one of the one of the rarest occurrences in the history of marine biology, according to NBC Connecticut. We take in some soft wood tones with recycled wood flooring by Staybull Flooring. Then find color inspiration with the collage work of Jacob Whibley.

Science

1 in 900,000,000,000,000,000,000

Via TreeHugger

...one is sky blue, one pumpkin orange, and the other is calico with yellow spots. Lobster shells are normally blackish-green while they are alive, but genetic abnormalities can cause them to turn different colors.

The three lobsters together in Norwalk are probably something never seen before or will ever be seen again... Continue Reading

Home

Recycled Wood Flooring by Staybull Flooring

Via Inhabitat

Recycled flooring manufacturer Staybull Flooring is working to cut out the waste cycle in the flooring industry by salvaging over 20 species of discarded lumber from mills across the world. The strips are fused together with VOC-free adhesives and finished to create an eco-friendly flooring product with many benefits. The material has an extended lifespan compared to concrete installations and features a unique, mosaic-like aesthetic.

Read more: Staybull Makes Recycled Wood Flooring Out of Lumber Scraps | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World

Contest

NASA + Etsy

If you've ever been inspired by astronauts, black holes and zero gravity, you're in luck! Etsy is partnering with NASA to host an exciting contest.

After 50 momentous years and over 130 missions to the cosmos, NASA's Space Shuttle Program will draw to a close in 2011 as it reaches its long-term goal of completing the International Space Station. To honor the program and celebrate its many accomplishments, we're calling for designs inspired by NASA, its programs and the wonders of space exploration. Invigorate your inner maker with all that is known (and unknown) about our universe.

So get on board! There are three categories under which to enter your design(s):

2D Original Art (painting, drawing, hand-pulled print, mixed media or flat collage)
2D Art Reproduction (photographic or computer-generated print)
3D Art (any size or material — this includes anything not 2D, wearable art and soft sculpture are acceptable)

With the whole cosmos for inspiration, the contest prizes are beyond stellar:

Grand Prize Winner (1): The Grand Prize winner will receive a $500 Etsy shopping spree and an all-expenses-paid trip with a guest to attend the shuttle launch at Kennedy Space Center in Cocoa, Florida in February as NASA's VIP guests. Includes a VIP tour.
Best in Category Winners (3*): Best in Category winners will receive $250 and swag from Etsy and NASA.
*Please note: the Grand Prize winner will be taken out of the running for Best in Category.
Winning designs (or photographs of designs) may even be flown up into space on the shuttle!

More Contest info can be found here.

Art

Collages by Jacob Whibley

Via but does it float

Today we look at an interview with the artist Francisca Prieto from Insideout, take a tour of Dave Chihuly's boat house with shelterrific, ponder the visualizations of race and ethnicity in cities across the U.S. by Eric Fischer, and take a step back with vintage inspired print series by Blue Art Studio.

Interviews

Francisca Prieto

[Insideout]

Have you always been creative, even when you were a child?
When I was little, I asked for the same birthday present over and over again: the Staedtler box of 40 felt tip pens; and instead of writing in my diary, I would create a different pattern for every day of the year. I am not sure if that means that I was quite naturally creative, or if it was a good exercise to become creative.

Studio Tour

Dave Chihuly's Boat House

[shelterrific]

Infographics

by Eric Fischer

[Race & Ethnicity]

"I was astounded by Bill Rankin's map of Chicago's racial and ethnic divides and wanted to see what other cities looked like mapped the same way. To match his map, Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Gray is Other, and each dot is 25 people. Data from Census 2000. Base map © OpenStreetMap, CC-BY-SA"

Posters

by Blue Art Studio

Header Inspiration

Color Warp by COLOURlover mavel

[Color Forum]

Music & Color

Brad Laner - Eyes Close by Josh Laner

From the album "Natural Selections" available from Hometapes home-tapes.com/​Hometapes/​HAUS_HT031.html | Video by Josh Laner. Dedicated to Dad.

Light Drive by Kim Pimmel

Lighting: Kim Pimmel | Sound: Tron Legacy trailers

Stop motion form and colour, using light painting techniques.

I've been interested in taking my Light Study photo series and evolving them into motion pieces. So I edited together those stop motion sequences, mashed up some audio from the Tron Legacy trailers, and out came Light Drive.

To control the lights, I used an Arduino controlled via bluetooth to drive a stepper motor. The stepper motor controls the movements of the lights remotely from Processing. The light sources include cold cathode case lights, EL wire, lasers and more.

Just Colour by Jesper Kirkeby Brevik

Notcot | Alessandro Loschiavo Design

A visualization of an orchestral piece, using just colour to convey the unique character and aesthetic feeling of the different instruments in use. The musical track I have chosen is The Sound of Magic, composed by DJ Dreamland. For furter information on the film, visit the blog site just-colour.blogspot.com

Words & Thoughts

Richard Feynman Talks About Light

Via the COLOURlovers Forum

Words and Thoughts in RGB

*This documentary has two serious factual errors: the visible spectrum wavelengths are between 400nm and 700nm, not 300-700nm, and blue is close to 430nm, not 700nm.

A mini-documentary about color. Narrated by Joana Vieira da Costa.

It won a number of awards - Ovarvideo 2005 Jury Prize, FEST 2006 Audience Award for Best Documentary, Tom De Video ACERT 2007 Best Documentary, Arouca Film Fest 2007 Best Documentary - and was present at a number of important events including the Vila do Conde International Short Film Festival 2006, Videoevento Turin 2005 and Jovens Criadores 2006.

Note: I had cut so many corners (in the making of this film) in fact, I am ashamed to admit, the documentary has two serious factual errors: the visible spectrum wavelengths are between 400nm and 700nm, not 300-700nm, and blue is close to 430nm, not 700nm. (more info in this blog post: asseptic.org/​blog/​823). That is fixed in the second version of the documentary, for which I don't have distribution rights. Contact Andar Filmes - andarfilmes.com - if you're interested.

This week we're taking a look at a new installation from Jen Stark at the Carol Jazzar Gallery; a collection of inspiring of patterns and textures randomly emailed to the editors of notcot.org by Alessandro Loschiavo Design; we find the answer to getting color back on iTunes 1; and we look into a thread on fluther.com which ask the question, "Is there still color when it's completely 100% dark?

Photography

Andalusia by Alessandro Loschiavo Design

Notcot | Alessandro Loschiavo Design

Art

'Sunken Sediment' by Jen Stark

Jen Stark | Carol Jazzer Gallery

Technology

How to Get the Color back in iTunes 10

ISmashPhone | iTunes 10

When iTunes 10 was released, it came with a very new look. The buttons to minimize, close and maximize windows were now vertical instead of horizontal, and they were grey. What happened to the color? - Continue Reading

Color Questions

Is there still color when it's completely 100% dark?

Fluther Thread

"At first thought, I would think everything still has a color, but if you take the scientific point of view, color is really a color because of light reflecting off your eyes. Another thing, I’ve read that bees can see 7 colors that people can’t. How can the scientists know that for sure if they can’t see the colors in the first place?" - Check the thread to see the answers

Russian graphic designer & graffiti writer Aske wants to keep a low profile like most street artists, but lately his work has been making the rounds on design channels, and with obvious good reason. Even a new site showcasing his brilliantly colored, irreverent and witty typography pieces and other design projects has appeared. Aske's work runs a gamut of clients from Nike to Beautiful Decay, not to mention his Russian graffiti magazine, Code Red.

"In the ‘Sunset’ series, the spectrum colors were originally printed from one single negative. This image has no real object to provide an anchoring point for true grey. Therefore no substantial evident to what was ‘true’. The result is whole spectrum of colors being printed in a desperate attempt to circumscribe the truth within a mass of imagery."

Found through Golden Age, Ann Woo's 'Sunset' series is simply stunning. Those subtle gradients just wrap my color lovin' heart with warmth. For more about Ann Woo check out her PS1 Studio Tour.

Palette Challenge

Step right up and take a shot at capturing the colors of Ann Woo. The best palette will forever be remembered and praised in this blog post :) you can see a few of mine accompanying the images.

Much loved the world over, Ed Emberley has been inspiring illustrators, young and old, since the 1970s. Either with crayon and a coloring book, or a more formal artistic approach, his incredible influence is clear.

Art

"Perfectly Flawed" New Work by Stina Persson

Exhibition @ Hanahou | Porfolio

September 9 – October 1, 2010
Opening reception September 9, 7-9 pm
RSVP info@galleryhanahou.com

In her new solo show “Perfectly Flawed,” Stockholm artist Stina Persson abandons her digital safety net to create unaltered works that are beautifully imperfect – or imperfectly beautiful – as a response to the increasingly flawless images with which we surround ourselves.

Over the course of 10+ years working as a commercial illustrator, Stina has found herself conforming to trends of narrowing hips and ever-smoother skin by digitally altering her original watercolors, often without prompting from a client: edges have gradually become cleaner, features more defined, and the painterly more photographic.

Fully conscious of going down this “slippery slope of adjusting, fixing, and retouching,”  Stina is ready to see the handmade, crooked, and flawed gain appeal, an aesthetic inspired by the 1970s, when social and environmental issues didn’t take a back seat to Botox in the public consciousness. For her newest work, the artist asked herself what would happen if she didn’t scan, didn’t retouch, and didn’t work digitally at all. The result of that question is a series of more than 30 new works on paper, watercolor pieces of women with running paint, unconventional color choices, and skewed perspective – imperfections that are natural, unsettling, and beautiful.

Hand Lettering by Daren Booth

Porfolio

Darren uses his collage pieces to determine the color palette for his work.

Video

True Colors

"Four month exhausting hard work in an abonded area, no sun just artificial light. The final result, a stop motion movie with no digital effects at all, everything is handmade. About 5000 pictures are processed with an average by 15 pictures per second. The music is by Pretty Lights from Denver, Colorado, thanks Derek!" - YouTube

Via our friend in common, PureForm.

Design

Work of Schmitz und Wiesner

Porfolio

Header Image Inspiration

Photo by BNF.

Collective funding, crowd funding, community funding,... whatever you want to call it it's great, and these micro-financing sites are allowing people to find support for the smallest of projects related to their businesses and dreams.

The idea is simple: communicate your idea and set it free allowing it travel through the cloud collecting support along its way. Creative projects deserve creative funding, and what better way then to tap into the creative community at large for support. Not only do supporters get to see projects come alive they become a part of the project, without their support it would never happen. Supporting and seeing all these great projects takeoff can be just the bit of inspiration you might need to get your project off the ground too.

Having experienced working on a project (Designing Obama) from 'KickStart' to finish I can say that while the ultimate goal of course is to raise the money you need, connecting with people who are as excited about something as you are, and seeing a community form around a single project is the ultimate aspect of the support that can be found on these sites. In my mind, raising one million dollars from one person is one thing but having one million different people give one dollar each is quite another.

Creative Funding Sites