Category: Art

Cartoon film collector Joe Busam recently posted a slide show of his progress painting a nursery, in the style of a generic early-1930s cartoon, for his soon to be born grandson.

I think it looks really cool! When I worked at the YMCA swimming pool I’d spend a lot of my time thinking about how great it would be to create a masterpiece mural for their wall. (Hey, I can think about artwork and make sure people don’t run at the same time).

Joe gave Cartoon Brew the backstory on this home project:

When daughter Susi asked me to paint a mural for the nursery, she requested 1930s cartoon characters. Specifically she wanted the style of the Harman & Ising WB cartoons. We both have always love them for their style and unique energy. However she didn’t want recognizable characters. Once we established a theme I went to work researching the cartoons for barnyard animals. I then put together the farm kids who are actually the two main characters from Pagan Moon in disguise. Originally the colour scheme was going to be based on two strip Technicolour. As it turns out Susi liked the original B&W layouts so much that when I added colour it seemed anti climatic to her. Full spectrum colour turned out to be too much. In desperation, I added a tint to the original B&W art and that clicked with both of us. Now that I see it enlarged on the wall I think it was a wise choice. More colours would have been pretty overpowering.

Check out the collection of images of Joe Busam’s 1930’s Style Cartoon Mural.

Another fantastic mural I came across lately is this Super Mario World creation that includes green pipes affixed to the walls and ceiling and other Marioworld objects that add dimension.

This is pretty cool whether or not you are a fan of the game.

And to wrap up this post on murals, check out Lindsay’s Satellite Map Mural, a neat “reverse” going-away present by a young artist that wanted to leave something behind for her friends to remember her by.

One of the interesting decisions Lindsay made was how to orient the map on the wall. Instead of doing it with North facing up, she [put] South at the top. At first this is highly disorienting because of how accustomed we are to looking at maps North-up. But then, once you realize that up on the map is the direction you’re facing, everything seems to fall into place.

It’s neat stuff, and it’s got me thinking about a future mural project of my own.

Lizette Greco creates cool plush toys based on her children’s drawings. She’s got a neat photo collection of her work on flickr.

She also makes custom softies with illustrations sent to her by clients.

http://www.lizettegreco.com/.

Halloween 2005 Originally uploaded by bcompetent.

I’m not sure if the Von Dutch trucker hats are still considered trendy, but somebody certainly still thinks Von Dutch is pretty cool. Recently on Ebay, Von Dutch’s personal paint and pin striping box sold for $270,000.00!

From the description on Ebay:

Von Dutch – The Personal Paint and Pin Striping Box

Without question, the all original Paint Box we have the pleasure of offering here is one of the most important personal pieces of Von Dutch memorabilia ever offered for sale to date. This is the actual paint box carried by both Von Dutch and most impressively, his father throughout both their legendary careers. The story begins in the 1930s with Walker Howard, father of Kenneth Howard aka Von Dutch, who was one of the most respected sign painters in all of Los Angeles. The young Kenneth Howard was said to accompany his father on many of his jobs, and legend now relates that Howard could paint and letter at a professional level at the age of 10. Though the paint box first belonged to Wally Howard, it was passed on to his son, Kenneth Howard now known as Von Dutch, who continued to use and treasure his paint box and family heirloom for the rest of his painting career and life.

This got me thinking, I should develop a “Milner” font-face and paint into onto a box like this. Who knows, if I become famous then maybe one day my descendants can sell their valuable family heirlooms for oodles of cash too.

Future descendants you have my permission to sell any personal artwork you inherit from me if you can get at least $270,000.00 for it (adjusted for inflation of course).

(via Hypnotik Eye)