WebUrbanist » Graffiti & Drawing

Trash Can Art? 28 Garbage Cans That Belong In A Gallery

Marc — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:00:57 +0000

Dump that dirty old trash can into an even larger one, because it’s time to upgrade! Artists are not content to sit on their hands while the world turns into garbage. Their response? Turn the garbage cans into art.

(Images via thenewecologist, happytiler, egotvonline, foodbeast)

Garbage can modification covers a huge range; from dumpster vehicles to art gallery domes with ecological motives. The real lesson is that nothing in this world has to be boring, not even one of the most mundane objects in our everyday lives.

(Images via crookedbrains, kickapoofart, squash, seattlepi)

Give an artist the right supplies and they’ll turn the most boring trash receptacle into a creative experience. It’s easy to tell which garbage cans would win my trash.

(Images via marshalladams)

Smashcans are the wave of the future! They are normal disposal units that have been transformed into a dysfunctional new member of the family by the Baltimore, Maryland based artist Marshall Adams.

(Images via tumblrbot, 4nitsirk, offbeathome)

Home bins can be turned into something festive. Become the most popular home on your block for the garbage collectors by adding a touch of style.

(Images via nerdnirvana, urbanprankster, oddee, neatorama, randommization)

Trash cans are people too! Well, some of them are, at least. Be sure to feed them. The simple addition of giant eyes to a garbage can is enough to turn them into a fun bit of street art.

(Images via jalopyjournal, americantrails, presurfer, bcx)

A little paint and creativity can go a long way into turning the streets into a more vibrant and exciting place! Go out and make some change.

(Images via walyou, walyou, geyserofawesome, sharegoodstuffs, crookedbrains)

A little style in design could go a long way in making more interesting garbage cans. Be sure to support the movement by refusing to purchase a plastic molded can!

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34 Bad Tattoos: The Awful, The Weird, and The Misspelled

Marc — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:00:09 +0000

In carpentry they say to measure twice and cut once. In tattooing it’s “choose your tattoo artist carefully, and bring a dictionary.” These mistakes will haunt their owners, and everyone who has to look at them, for a lifetime.

(Images via chrocodiles, aimlessdirection, designstattoo, bad-tattoos, defunctonline, awfulink, asheperception)

Portraits are difficult no matter what medium one is working with. This is why it’s very important to check out the previous work of any tattoo artist before letting them memorialize a loved one…

(Images via photobasement, flickriver, mark72, eurotattoo)

Doodles are fun to draw as a distraction while one is on the phone, or bored. They are not necessarily meant to be tattooed across large sections of one’s body, however. Something scribbled on a pad of paper does not look as great across an entire back.

(12ozprophet, thelmagazine, teamjimmyjoe, strangebeaver, theberry, listoftheday, mamapop)

Double check the spelling before letting the needle hit skin. Do not assume the tattoo artist is a spelling bee champion, or there may be hilariously awful consequences.

(Images via guidespot, patrishka, freshpics, cityrag)

Head tattoos can be hilarious, but they don’t have to be permanent. Let me introduce everyone to the permanent marker; a great substitute to a life-long commitment to a dumb joke.

(Images via mypointless, mogoel, madmadtattoos, sassystreak)

Some people take the concept of a “third eye” literally, with creepy results. Hiding a mid-class nap with tattooed eyelids is a stroke of genius, however.

(Images via yourdailychum, cooltattoosdesigns, slipperybrick, geekgirlonthestreet)

We all appreciate gamers who get nostalgic, videogame-themed tats. Everyone wants to like your art, so please make it easy to do so. These examples make it very hard.

(Images via bitrebels, bypassfanpages, thesharebears, getbig, datehookup)

Content is king. Do not follow the example of this group and be sure to pick a tattoo that holds some meaning beyond covering every available surface… or that next tattoo might show up in a post like this one.

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Transcending Tags: 16 Typographic Works of Urban Art

Steph — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:00:40 +0000

Street art began with names, letters and symbols scrawled on public surfaces, and those markings have become more and more complex over time. Today, artists explore the beauty of lettering itself, bringing typography into the streets in fresh and unexpected ways, from complex calligraphy to words written in string and tape.

Typography String & Grass Art by Sean Martindale

(images via: sean martindale)

Multimedia artist Sean Martindale brings text to the city in at least two highly unusual ways: with his string art installation, ‘FREE’, and ‘PARK’, a grass installation at a bare construction site.

Of the latter, Martindale says, “For some time now, the spot in has been relatively empty aside from mud, waste and strewn garbage. There’s an application to build condos on the site. It has remained undisturbed since Monday and I watered it yesterday because there hasn’t been any rain lately… Grass is pretty resilient, so it should survive and take root unless/until somebody removes it. Joe Clement assisted me with the install”

Bold Letters by Eine

(images via: einesigns)

Big, bold letters are artist Eine’s M.O. Known for painting them on shutters all over the world, Eine expresses his love for letters in nearly all of his works, including those he does on canvas for gallery exhibits. According to Time Out London, “His shutter pieces developed out of a mistake: he ran out of room while painting his name and realised that single letters raised fascinating questions: ‘Why? Who? What does it mean? Is it an advert?’ He takes pleasure in that lack of clarity, using his super-sized alphabet to trace a personal, interpretative trajectory across the city.”

“By the Time You Read This” by Above

(images via: go above)

This cheeky message on a wall in Guatemala City refers to the artist’s hyperactive travel schedule. ‘Above’ explains that he completed the work in two hours in between having three beers with his local Guatemalan friends.

Moss Lettering by Anna Garforth

(images via: crosshatchling)

Letters carefully carved from sheets of moss are glued onto urban surfaces for one of the prettiest, most natural forms of graffiti we’ve ever seen. UK-based artist Anna Garforth takes her experiments with typography into a range of media, including some extremely awesome edible posters.

Rero’s Messages in Abandoned Paris

(images via: rero)

From WebUrbanist’s ‘Art in Abandoned Places’: “Rero, a conceptual artist with a graffiti background, applies minimalist typography to gritty abandoned surfaces in cities like Paris, London and Berlin. This series, ‘Image Negation’, was carried out in the latter. See more at Rero’s Flickr stream.”

Calligraffiti by Greg Papagrigoriou

(images via: greg_papagrigoriou)

Artist Greg Papagrigoriou approaches graffiti in a familiar, yet fresh and unexpected way: instead of the traditional form of tagging, Papagrigoriou takes a calligraphic approach. From Graffuturism: “My experience with wall painting started about a year ago but somehow I was always attracted to graffiti. Within this framework, calligraphy provided the best opportunity for me to start bringing my ideas to practice and this is how I ended up combining the three, i.e. typography, calligraphy and wall painting. The letters on the wall I make are not intended to pass a message but they function as decorative elements – patterns on my compositions.”

Cropped Typography by Faust

(image via: faust)

New York-based visual artist Faust is inspired by “the perpetually changing image of the city.” His work includes this cropped typographic piece spelling out his name on the facade of the White Box Gallery in the lower Eastside.

Wild at Heart Masking Tape Typography

(images via: this is colossal)

A chain-link fence in Catalunya, Spain becomes a nearly-invisible canvas for artist Anna Garforth, known for her work with moss and edible mediums. The temporary work is striking and evocative, bringing text into a very unexpected place.

Brick Lettering by SpY

(images via: spy.org.es)

Urban artist SpY, from Madrid, loves to confuse people with surreal and unexpected imagery like sky-high basketball hoops and ‘Don’t Walk’ LED pedestrian symbols that escape from their confines. One such project was these stacked letters, made of bricks.

Billboard Typography by Robert Montgomery

(images via: robert montgomery)

Taking over billboards and other public spaces, Robert Montgomery’s thoughtful typographic art brings surprisingly poignant messages to urban spaces. One reads, “The flood will lift the ghosts from the Hollywood Lawn Cemetery and they will disappear like ether in the new dead air. All the names will be erased from the billboards and the theaters and the piers and the magazines and the monuments. You live by myths of immortality, and your myths are not safe.”

‘HELLO’ 3D Text Installation

(image via: vi.suialize.us)

In this clever work by Dopludo Collective, three-dimensional shapes that stand up on their own in a parking lot reveal themselves to be a word when viewed from a certain angle.

Public Typography Experiments by Francois Chastanet

(images via: vormplatform.nl)

After making their own gigantic calligraphy brushes measuring up to three feet long, a group of artists led by Francois Chastanet went out intuit he streets to write messages onto the pavement with water. Chastanet is a graphic designer specializing in typography, and is especially inspired by “Cholo writing”, the graffiti of Latino gangs in Los Angeles.

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Art, Not Ads: 13 Creative Billboard Takeovers

Steph — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:00:39 +0000

While billboard advertising can occasionally shock us with totally unexpected visuals, by and large, these massive champions of commercialism are not exactly pretty or interesting. Enter artists from around the world, who – with permission or not – come in and replace those ads, whether to subvert the original message or just to make passersby smile.

Double Happiness Billboard Swing

(images via: didierfaustino)

A billboard becomes a place for interactive play, made into a swing set with incredible views of New York City by artist Didier Faustino. Entitled ‘Double Happiness’, the project “responds to the society of materialism where individual desires seem to be prevailing over all. This nomad piece of urban furniture allows the reactivation of different public spaces and enables inhabitants to reappropriate fragments of their city.”

“They will both escape and dominate public space through a game of equilibrium and desequilibrium. By playing this “risky” game, and testing their own limits, two persons can experience together a new perception of space and recover an awareness of the physical world.”

Artists Take Over Whitewashed Billboards

(images via: animal NY)

Not only did Public Ad Campaign‘s New York Street Advertising Takeover whitewash 120 illegal advertisements located throughout the city, it also brought in over 50 artists to transform these new blank canvases into works of art. Instead of displaying an onslaught of commercialism, these spaces became interactive spaces for messages of peace and local pride. See more at Animal New York.

The Billboard Art Project: Taking Over LED Displays

(images via: billboard art project flickr)

Based in Richmond, Virginia, the Billboard Art Project has spread across the United States as artists take over those massively distracting digital billboards with LED displays. Though it’s not totally subverting the advertisements – they still run as usual – the art appears momentarily in between each ad, perhaps prompting onlookers to wonder exactly what it is that they’re looking at. Many of these works were captured by the organization’s Flickr group.

The Urban Land Project

(images via: the anthropologist)

Rather than an ad for yet another local bond company or huge international bank, locals in urban Los Angeles and Philadelphia got to view soothing images of the nature that can be found right within their own cities. Photographer Tim Simmons captured images of each city’s hidden natural wonders and displayed them on billboards for ‘The Urban Land Project.’

Art In Stead of Ads

(images via: how many billboards)

21 commissioned works by leading contemporary artists were presented onb billboards throughout Los Angeles in February and March 2010 for the project ‘How Many Billboards: Art in Stead’.

“The philosophical proposition of the exhibition is simple: art should occupy a visible position in the cacophony of mediated images in the city, and it should do so without merely adding to the visual noise. How Many Billboards? Art In Stead proposes that art periodically displace advertisement in the urban environment.

Billboards are a dominant feature of the landscape in Los Angeles. Thousands line the city’s thoroughfares, delivering high-end commercial messages to a repeat audience. Given outdoor advertising’s strong presence in public space, it seems reasonable and exciting to set up the possibility for art to be present in this field. The sudden existence of artistic speech mixed in with commercial speech provides a refreshing change of pace. Commercial messaging tells you to buy; artistic messaging encourages you to look and to think.”

Hand from Above by Chris O’Shea

(images via: chris o’shea)

Chris O’Shea imagines a world in which we humans are manipulated by an outside force, unseen except for a giant hand. In O’Shea’s interactive public art exhibit for BBC Big Screen in Liverpool, pedestrians watch a live feed on a billboard as the giant hand pokes and prods them in real time.

From Gajitz: “The installation is called Hand From Above, and it’s geek art at its finest. It was created, according to the artist, to encourage people to slow down in the midst of their daily routines. By throwing something completely unexpected into their day, O’Shea is injecting a little laughter into everyone’s lives. If the video above is any indication, most pedestrians love the project. Only a few walked by without even a smile, and most who saw themselves being harassed on-screen stopped to play along.”

Thoughtful Typography by Robert Montgomery

(images via: robert montgomery)

Artist Robert Montgomery replaces advertising with profound and poignant messages about love, human interaction and the world we live in. The artist “works in a poetic and melancholic post-situationist tradition.” His typographic works bear such disconcerting and thought-provoking messages as this: “The flood will lift the ghosts from the Hollywood Lawn Cemetery and they will disappear like ether in the new dead air. All the names will be erased from the billboards and the theaters and the piers and the magazines and the monuments. You live by myths of immortality, and your myths are not safe.”

Subliminal Billboards

(images via: unurth)

Billboards throughout Murcia, Spain bore strange fragments of type that didn’t make sense until seen as a whole, revealed by the artist Sam3. “”Murcia is infected with the plague of billboards everywhere, most of them neglected. 12 altered billboards to write a word that is hiding behind all this.”

U.S. Marines: The Change is Forever

(image via: arthur tubman)

It was all too easy to subvert a billboard by the U.S. Marines, which really did bear the ambiguous slogan ‘The Change is Forever’. An unidentified artist simply covered the young man’s face with that of a stylized skull, giving it a new meaning altogether.

Rebel Without a Lung by Jorge Rodriguez Geralda

(image via: fecal face)

Artist Jorge Rodriquez Geralda is known for painting his own images onto public surfaces like street signs, the sides of abandoned buildings and even entire construction sites. One notable early work is ‘Rebel Without a Lung’, a subversion of a Newport cigarette ad in New York City, completed in 1994.

McDonalds Billboard by the Billboard Liberation Front

(image vía: camarografo)

It wasn’t too hard to echo growing public sentiment about the quality of McDonald’s fast food. The Billboard Liberation Front just made two small changes to this McDonalds billboard in San Francisco so that the text reads ‘You have about 10,000 tastebuds. Kill them all.’ At the bottom right corner, the company’s slogan ‘I’m lovin’ it’ becomes ‘I’m sick of it.’

Banksy’s Los Angeles Billboards

(images via: design boom)

Graffiti artist Banksy notably altered a billboard in Los Angeles prior to the Academy Awards in February 2011, likely to call attention to the nomination of his documentary ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’. A rather lecherous Micky Mouse, cocktail in hand, was painted onto an existing billboard along with a drugged-out Minnie Mouse and a banner reading, ‘Living the Dream.’ It was quickly removed.

The East London Decapitator

(images via: the decaptitator)

More than a century after Jack the Ripper, London has a new killer on the prowl. This one may be taking the heads of billboard and advertising figures rather than living humans, but the works are still pretty gory. Not only are the heads painted out of the ads, but there’s lots of spattered blood left behind.

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These Are Not Photos: Realism by Steve Mills

Steph — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:00:41 +0000

These images appear to be mundane photographs, capturing scenes that we all see in our daily lives. Jumbles of newspapers, peeling paint on a wooden gate, jars full of marbles, glass bottles shining in the sun. Look closer, and you still may not even realize that they’re not photographs after all.

Down to unimaginable details like stamped-on ‘best-by’ dates, tiny snippets of text, drops of dew and wood texture so well realized you can almost feel it, these hyper-realistic paintings by Steve Mills leave no doubt as to the talent they take to produce.

Early in his career, Mills “had collectors literally airing in line outside the gallery before an opening; creating such a frenzy, one show sold out in 10 minutes. However, with the time it takes to paint in the photorealist technique – some paintings taking over 500 hours – it has proven impossible to do more than one gallery opening a year.”

At his website, Mills not only displays dozens of these paintings, but offers high-resolution images of them that allow you to get a practically microscopic look. Even then, it’s hard to spot brush strokes or any other signs that they’ve been created with a human hand.