I’m extra jealous today.

I’m jealous of Sidney Pink and his lovely/weird watercolour illustrations of Japanese school girls, but I’m also pretty frickin’ jealous of the art + design blog that I found him on… Design for Mankind. Hm. That’s a bit too much jealousy for one person to handle on a Tuesday afternoon. Don’t worry though, I should be fine by tomorrow.

{If you like Sidney Pink’s work you might also like the posts I made about Alyson Fox and Nicole Kita.}

Oh Martha Rich, as if your sketchbook didn’t make me jealous enough you had to go ahead and paint this. This piece is acrylic on wood and titled All Men Like Long Hair. I’m not sure what I love the most. Is it…

a. the witty (and true) title

b. the jiggly woman in sassy underthings

c. the jiggly jello-mold with cream

d. all of the above

I’ll have to go with ‘d’.

Not only do I love sandwiches, turtlenecks and butter, but I also LOVE Martha Rich’s sketchbook.

Promise to self: Later today, I will go out and buy a brand new sketchbook that I will then fill with thick paint, crazy creative imagery, and beautiful colours. No really, I will. Martha Rich, you have inspired me.

There are so many things to love about this painting by LA based artist Nouar. Let’s start with the title shall we ~  All the Girls Love Ketchup… ah, so true. I’m a sucker for vintage advertising, so this colour palette and highly stylized illustration is next on my list. And last but not least, these two very sexy, pinup worthy, tomatoes in heels.

This piece is from her solo show called You Look Good Enough to Eat! that was hung at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York from February to March 2009. {I have mentioned, and linked to, the Jonathan Levine Gallery at least four or five times now. I should probably write a post called “I’m jealous of the Jonathan Levine Gallery” because, well frankly, I am.}

I changed this image four times because I couldn’t decide which of Ashley G and Drew‘s pieces to show. Painting? Illustration? Painting? Illustration?… Ok, an illustration. I picked this one, titled Incognito, because of the colour palette and, well let’s be totally honest, for the moustache.  Ashley and Drew are a team from Portland Oregon who do both paintings and digitally coloured ink illustrations. They seem to have a thing for moustaches and beards, and clearly, so do I.

Yet again I couldn’t choose just one piece, so here’s nine.

Leah Giberson is my kind of gal. She says, and I quote, “I search for personal meaning in the most ordinary of surroundings.” I don’t know what it is about everyday places & things that appeal to me so much. It feels familiar and comforting I suppose, a common experience that most of us can relate to. Because, come on, who hasn’t played at least one round of “Go Fish” in a musty camper trailer?

I’m not a vegetarian, but I’m thinking about it thanks to Mark Ryden. His beautifully painted, bizarre subject matter is a perfect balance of creepy and cute. I wish my mind worked this way, but alas, I never would have come up with this scene.

ps. If you get an invitation to “Rosie’s Tea Party“, think carefully before you RSVP.

So a few posts back I said that I wasn’t a huge fan of photo-real painting, but here we are again. You have to respect anyone who can paint like this. Could you do this? Nope, me either, but Anselmo Swan can.  Just like Holly Farrell‘s painting of a couch that I posted a few weeks ago, what I love about this is the everyday subject matter. It could also be that I am now thinking about eating a Krispy Kreme doughnut, and that makes pretty much everyone happy.

Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light… the architecture, the vast mid-west horizon and the brush strokes of American painter Mark Bradley-Shoup all come together to create this lovely, but lonely, landscape titled “Vacancy (Used Car Lot)”. I love the simple shapes, plains of muted colour, and amazing composition.

While reading about Mark I found a site that has images of him hard at work in his studio in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I always like getting a glimpse into where/how the work actually happens.

Simple, beautiful.

This painting is by a young Japanese artist named Yasuhide Kunimoto. At first glance his work looks like screenprints, but it’s not. It’s very meticulous acrylic on canvas. His subject matter ranges from sumos to landscapes to everyday people, but my favourite pieces are the swimmers.