Secret Still

Wendy MacNaughton is a minor miracle worker. Flipping through her “Meanwhile” series has made me enjoy living in the Bay Area just a little bit more, and for a homesick southerner, that’s really saying something. Plus, who doesn’t love to see stories and pictures from places that they’ve been in/on/past? She keeps her pictures loose, warm, and personal, like a Maira Kalman for the West Coast. Even if you’ve never set foot in San Francisco, you can still connect to the pure humanity that shines through in her work. See, minor miracles.

Wendy MacNaughton found via Drawn!

In my experience, with most street artists there is a disconnect between the style of their outdoor work and their works on paper. Both can be equally amazing, but they usually look very different, and rightly so. One is being drawn larger than the artist themselves, usually quickly due to the illicit nature of the work, and on a rough wall surface, the other is being drawn very small on smooth paper with very precise instruments. Of course they’re different. But somehow Spanish maestro ARYZ makes them the same. And I’m not talking about a burner on a brick back alley, I’m talking about a 40 ft. high multi-color masterpiece. I’ve never seen anyone with that kind of consistency before, maybe he should get some kind of crown or at the very least a scepter that is also a paint roller. Long live King ARYZ.

ARYZ via Juxtapoz

If you haven’t remembered to check out the work of the always fantastic Luke Pearson lately, consider this your reminder. You’re probably overdue for your annual marvel at how awesome his work is. You should probably double your dosage, just to play it safe.

Luke Pearson

As a long-time listener of Metal and enjoyer of all things associated with its evil, there wasn’t even a question about whether or not I would like Florian Bertmer’s sinister mastery of ink and graphite. It was a foregone conclusion. The guy made his own evil Ouija board for fuck’s sake, and called it the Hexenbrett. The detail of every piece literally makes my mind boggle; I can feel it boggling right now. It’s not pleasant. I tell you this more in the way of warning, because you’re going to want to see his work, and when you realize how many fine lines there are, how small he gets, and how well considered everything is, your mind will boggle. At the very least. If you’re on the bus, you will probably hurl on your seatmates. So the warning is more for them than it is for you. Gird your loins for evil in its most righteous, put a little Dimmu Borgir on the stereo, and click that little guy down there. Prepare for boggling.

Florian Bertmer

Just the kind of weird drawings that I needed to get my Thursday going. Or every day for that matter. Internet, I can’t remember what I did before you were around to wake me up with weird, wonderful things. Wait, I do remember: Mousercise, I did Mousercise. Been weird since day one.

Keaton Henson

I’ve been sort of doodling type in the margins of notes and things at meetings recently. I’ve always held pretty firmly that if I’m in a meeting, I should be paying attention, and it’s rude to doodle. Opinion changed. If I’m gonna sit through meetings where I’m needed for about 5 minutes of the total hour, then I’m going to be using that time to make some pretty/interesting/gross/blasphemous. Possibly all of those at the same time. Not possible? A flower with an E8 sequence in the middle shitting on a baby Jesus. That’s just off the top of my head. But none of what I’ve casually been doodling is close to being as wonderful as the work of Dana Tanamachi. Of course, she isn’t doodling, she’s making fully-formed, kick your teeth out through your eyes works of awesome. But she is making them in chalk, a very impermanent medium. All it would take was one drunken Kiefer Sutherland to bump-slide his way past that wall, and whammo, all fucked up. It’s like sculpting with soap bubbles. “But Brad,” you’re saying, “couldn’t she just seal it with something?” “Readers,” I reply, “go fuck yourselves; I don’t have to take that kinda crap from you.” Here’s to hoping that someday my shitty doodles even resemble Tanamachi’s work. Should take me another five or six straight years of meetings.

Dana Tanamachi

I feel like, given enough cough syrup and enough time, these are the kinds of drawings I would produce. Let’s hope I have some paints around at the time, otherwise I’m going to revolutionize “mucus painting.” That idea actually just made me gag a little. Well, you can’t have art without suffering.

Emilio Santoyo

Maybe you’re well-versed in the world of Street Art and Graffiti, can tell a Sever piece from a Revok in two fat cap lines or less, or maybe you have no idea what I’m talking about, but a thing you should know if you don’t already is that the Broken Fingaz crew is one of the all time greats. With that basic knowledge, and the fact that Unga is one of them, you can draw the conclusion that Unga’s work is tip top. You see what kind of joys the Transitive property can bring? That and using your own eyes to see for yourself.

Unga

Ok, aspiring comic artists out there, and some established artists, too, take note of the work of Nick Edwards; this is what you should be working toward. Edwards is creating new creatures, new worlds complete with their own ecosystems and biodiversity. And every world is cleverly constructed, beautifully rendered, and primed for your imagination to run wild across its surfaces. If looking at his work doesn’t give you at least a little inspiration, then you might want to call an ambulance, because you’re probably dead. And frankly, as my sworn enemy, I’d prefer if you’d keep your damn zombie eyeballs of my web content, ya filthy brainsucker.

Nick Edwards

If you think about it, the ads for x-ray glasses that used to grace the back pages of comics had a very specific audience. 11-15 year-old guys were old enough to want to see naked women, but young enough to be afraid to actually touch them. As someone who grew up with HBO, naked women were old news to me when I was 7, but I still wanted x-ray specs because they revealed secrets. It wasn’t so much the nudity, but rather the seeing what someone was trying to hide, it was all about the reveal, the humanizing of strangers as the same kind of awkward animal as me. Artist Michael Reedy goes much further, revealing the anatomical structure of his subjects, breaking them down into their component parts, but hinting at the miraculous nature of being this massive and complex system of life. Jeff Mangum probably said it best, “How strange it is to be anything at all.”

Michael Reedy via LowArt