Storm troopers mow the lawn, Jesus rides a Segway, Ceiling Cat lurks in the sky and the Stay-Puft marshmallow man gazes out over a nonchalant 19th century crowd in dusty, unwanted thrift store paintings altered by David Irvine. The Toronto-based artist inserts characters from contemporary pop culture into unexpected settings, like bucolic rural pastures and traditional religious imagery.

Irvine picks through yard sales, secondhand stores and sidewalk piles destined for the landfill to find rejected paintings to alter, rescuing them from obscurity and placing them in the hands of collectors all over the world. According to his website, “David will never paint over the existing signature and depending on the project will adapt the traits of the original (coloring, lighting, brushstrokes etc.) or will go in a complete opposite direction and achieve a high contrast in imagery.”

Characters from Star Wars and comic books are some of Irvine’s favorite subjects, with Darth Vader enjoying a relaxing afternoon fishing on the lake and Jabba the Hut getting his portrait painted. In a painting entitled ‘Not the Gardener,’ Leatherface raises his bloody chainsaw in a rose garden. An otherwise unremarkable painting of a dirt road becomes the backdrop for a 1970s car chase.

The pieces have become so popular, he can’t keep them stocked in his Etsy shop, but if you want your very own romantic beach scene of Batman and Wonder Woman or Spock appearing to an angel on an oversized donut, you can keep tabs on Irvine’s work at his Facebook page. Prints are also available at Society6.

Blood streams from Ted Lawson‘s arm into a CNC printer, which uses it like ink or paint to robotically create the Brooklyn-based artist’s image. ‘Ghost in the Machine’ is a life-sized nude self-portrait rendered in just about the most graphic way possible, the whole process captured on video as an alarming amount of blood is applied to a blank white surface.

Visibly drained by the process, Lawson sits beside the machine as it works, replenishing himself with juice as his blood streams out in little squiggles. At first, the image is abstract, slowly coming together as the robot follows the guidelines of the illustration.

“I’m generally not into doing selfies, particularly nude ones, but when I came up with the idea to connect my blood directly to the robot (CNC machine), it just made too much sense to not try one as a full nude self-portrait,” Lawson told the Associated Press.

“In this series I’m really just trying to make a good drawing, which requires a lot of process and spontaneity to achieve. I do consider these works to be drawings and not prints, in that I allow the robot to make certain mistakes or leave in certain glitches on purpose.”

The final print will be on display at the Joseph Gross Gallery in New York City from September 11th through October 4th as part of Lawson’s solo exhibition, “The Map Is Not the Territory.”

Have you ever wondered how 19th century artists were able to produce such incredibly realistic drawings? It isn’t just because they were unusually talented, though it’s hard to argue that they were. Many of them benefitted from the use of a ‘camera lucida’, an optical device that reflects real-life images onto a drawing surface so they can be traced. A new version of the tool, called the ‘NeoLucida,’ aims to bring this drawing aid back, with a few modern updates.

Essentially a prism on a stick, the camera lucida was once a very popular drawing tool, making it easy to create realistic drawings. A portable version hasn’t been manufactured in nearly a century. Antique versions sell for hundreds of dollars, but Pablo Garcia and Golan Levin, the makers of the NeoLucida, aim to sell theirs for just $40.

“We want to make this remarkable device widely available to students, artists, architects, and anyone who loves to draw from life,” say the pair on their Kickstarter page, which has already raised nearly half a million dollars – far over the original goal of $15,000. “But to be clear: our NeoLucida is not just a product, but a provocation. In manufacturing a camera lucida for the 21st century, our aim is to stimulate interest in media archaeology—the tightly interconnected history of visual culture and imaging technologies.

The NeoLucida is made from a combination of mass-manufactured and custom-machined parts. It has a clamp to fit onto the edge of desks and tables, and a goose neck for adjustability. It’s lightweight, non-electric, and compact enough to fit in a handbag. Get more details at the project’s Kickstarter (via notcot.org.)

Insect wings, grape seeds, cactus needles and thumbtacks are among the tiny objects that become canvases for stunningly detailed works of art by miniaturist Hasan Kale. The Turkish artist works on an incredibly small scale, often painting scenes from his native Istanbul, complete with reflections of the city’s characteristic architecture on rippling bodies of water and microscopic seagulls.

Kale’s works are so small, he doesn’t even need a palette – he mixes the minuscule amounts of paints required for each piece right on his own finger. The 53-year-old painter has been creating tiny works like these since the 1980s.

Using extremely fine paintbrushes, Kale faithfully renders these scenes with a remarkably steady hand. Many of the paintings are ephemeral, painted on perishable items like breadsticks.

Kale adds many more photos of his work on a regular basis at his Facebook page.

Moss has gained a reputation as one of the best natural art mediums, a living swath of vivid green with an irresistible texture that can be coaxed into various shapes and patterns. While most moss art involves either gluing sheets of preserved moss to a surface or painting on a mixture of live moss that will adhere to the surface and grow, this method – illustrated here by Stefaan de Croock – takes the opposite approach.

Rather than adding something – like spray paint –  to a surface in order to create a design, subtractive graffiti strips something away. That ‘something’ might be dirt on a sidewalk, or soot on a wall. In this case, it’s moss.

Using a pressure washer, de Croock (a.k.a. Strook) carefully removed moss growing on a wall in Leuven, Belgium. As the moss was stripped away, urban scenes full of giant robots were revealed. The mural was created outside the STUK art center, and likely grew back over within a few weeks.