This is British artist Banksy sneaking out at night to deface a wall that has a security camera. It think in general that it’s a pretty neat idea to deface, destroy, disable, or demolish any wall that has a security camera. This artist is unidentified because he probably likes it that way, makes [...]

Some abject fool of an artist named Jack Mackie made a deal with the city of Seattle to embed an artwork called Dancers’ Series: Steps into a sidewalk back in 1979.  Then a photographer named Mike Hipple went and did a logical thing; he took a photograph of a public sidewalk with the artwork in [...]

Artist and animator Theodore Ushev created this poster for the purpose of spreading the word about helping victims of the Haiti earthquake. They need enormous help very quickly to prevent even more deaths than have already been suffered. He told me there was no need to ask permission to use the picture. [...]

This is an odd post and I’m not entirely sure I can pull it off. The film above is called Montparnasse. It was made in 1929 by Eugene Deslaw.  I watched the film and want to write about it cold, without looking up Mr. Deslaw on Google.  I’ll check up on him after [...]

Art Director Tommy Kane went to Lebanon and made a film about his wanderings. He also drew magnificent illustrations of what he saw. Those are in the film too.  The combination of the beautiful street scenes and the cheerfully expressive drawings make me want to get on a plane and go visit [...]

We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.
Pablo Picasso

The Rumpus has short article by Julie Greicius about her favorite book by biographer James Lord who recently passed away.  His book, A Giacometti Portrait, chronicles the effort by Alberto Giacometti to paint a portrait of Mr. Lord.  The work goes on for days with the artist constantly destroying the previous day’s work and [...]

More finger sketching from the iPod.  The major problem I see with drawing on an iPod or an iPhone is that it doesn’t work well in the sunshine.  You can’t see the screen well enough to draw.  Paper works better on a beach.

Drawn on my iPod with the Brushes app.  This one’s an ocean from memory.

During my vacation I took a few opportunities to sketch with the Brushes app on my iPod. Here’s a bottle with flowers on a windowsill.

I’ve been having fun with my iPod Touch today.  I got inspired to draw with the excellent Brushes app but my fingers are big fat and clumsy, so it required lots of zooming to make the view big enough so my painting wasn’t just a bunch of gigantic blobs.  I drew the umbrella against a [...]

UCLA pediatrician James Yamazaki has put together a very powerful and disturbing collection of artworks by survivors of the atom bomb explosion in Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.
See the Pictures by Atomic Bomb Survivors

Jorge Colombo draws this week’s New Yorker cover with an app for the iPhone called Brushes.

This video is from a PBS Independent Lens documentary about the Ferus Gallery that shaped much of the Los Angeles art scene in the early 1960s.  It’s short but it conveys some of the sense of LA’s wild, nervy, uncontrolled art attitude that is still in force today.  I love the zoom in on Andy [...]

Photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant took many pictures of subway graffiti during the 1970s and 80s.  Their book, Subway Art, became the bible of the graffiti art movement.  Chronicle Books is now releasing a deluxe 25th Anniversary edition of the book.
Subway Art: 25th Anniversary Edition