Hyper-realistic Painting by Omar Ortiz:




A beautiful hyper-realistic painting by artist Omar Ortiz (nsfw). Such an incredible use of paint to create depth of focus and the reflection of light on skin. (via cosas cool)

Delightful Paper Pop-Ups by Jenny Chen:

Portland-based designer and art director Mengyu Chen is currently working on a new comic book and has mocked up some experimental pop-ups of her own design. The ideas and execution are really quite spectacular and I can’t wait to see the finished product. (via tuh dah)

[WTF. -egg]
Sugar ad: your diet is depriving your kids of vital sugar!:

Here’s an undated ad from “Sugar Information, Inc” (our old friends), warning mothers that if they include their kids in their sugar-free, dieting lifestyles, they will be depriving the poor kiddlees of vital sugar and exposing them to “exhaustion.” Obviously, this was before the cancer scares and other stuff about artificial sweeteners, because surely that’s the major reason to keep your kids away from artificial sweeteners. I love the fact that they recommend sugar for dieters, too: “gives you the va-va-voom you need for all those exercises!”

Sugar!

Ballerina by Banksy:

Banksy recently updated his website with a number of new works that have been making the rounds the last day or so. My favorite new artwork is this simple piece depicting a spray-painted ballerina delicately traversing the string on the back of a picture frame like a tight rope. What fun and thoughtful execution.
Also, a number of people emailed and tweeted me a few weeks ago suggesting that the origami bird I posted was not actually done by Banksy because it wasn’t his “style”. Well, case: rested. (via the fox is black)

Rainbow Origami Street Art by Mademoiselle Maurice:








Some fresh new street art out of Paris today by french artist Mademoiselle Maurice who creates stunning geometric figures on urban surfaces using rainbows of folded origami figures. If you like this, don’t miss these paper geodes by Paige Smith.

[OMG this is gorgeous. I particularly like that it combines classic SanFran psychedelic flyers with a really punk rock spirit. -egg]

Critical Mass 20th anniversary poster:

Hugh sez, “San Francisco muralista Mona Caron has created a stunning to poster to mark the 20th anniversary of Critical Mass in San Francisco this September.”

Critical Mass 20th Anniversary Bike Angel Poster by Mona Caron

(Thanks, hughillustration!)

First Contact:

There’s nothing like the awe of a child encountering a new life form, but in this fantastic shot by Christopher of CMGW Photography it looks like the feeling radiating from this enormous old manatee might be mutual. (via stellar)

Crowdsourcing: