Creative paper sculptures by Calvin Nicholls

Creative paper sculptures by Calvin Nicholls:

Canadian artist Calvin Nicholls creates the following amazingly beautiful sculptures using sheets of paper. Calvin has been creating his paper sculptures since 1986 from his studio north of Toronto Ontario, Canada. Working with sheets of paper and a scalpel, he cuts the component pieces to fit the final drawing and assembles the low relief artwork under studio lighting. When the sculpture is complete the lighting is adjusted to bring out the subtle form and texture. A large format camera is used to capture the detail on 8×10 film prior to scanning for print applications or art prints.

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Produce crate labels

Produce crate labels:

Before the austerity imposed by World War II, produce in the US was shipped in wooden crates with colorful, carefully designed and illustrated labels, meant to set each producer apart from the others.

The relatively sudden advent of cheaper cardboard boxes left many of the crate labels unused and they have become collectors items.

A recent post on MetaFilter has pointed out several sources for images of some of the labels, and other sources of information about the market for them as collectables.

The Boston Public Library’s Flickr set has the best and largest images, along with the Los Angeles Public Library.

There are more, with smaller images, on BlueSkySearch. The Crate Label Museum is most extensive, though the images are unfortunately small (note the dropdown at lower right to select categories, and note that many categories go on for several numbered pages).

Awesome 3D Chalk Arts

Awesome 3D Chalk Arts:

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Spaceships of EVE viewer

Spaceships of EVE viewer: Check out this new spaceship viewer that the CCP crew have developed. Make sure you expand it to fill the whole screen before you rotate them. Super clean.






Keywords: eve online interactive spaceship viewer online web development by ccp

Neolithic Scene

Neolithic Scene:

Sometimes a picture idea gets aborted after a lot of work. That happened with a picture I developed 25 years ago for National Geographic. 

The idea was to show Neolithic humans in their first domestication of sheep. This was to be for an article on wool. The archaeological evidence seemed to point toward a scenario where mouflon sheep were captured, penned in, and controlled.





After doing many thumbnail sketches, the art director and I agreed on a scene where two men are restraining a ram while the ewes are released from a cave. I made a little clay maquette of the scene (photo, inset) to work out the lighting, and then did a charcoal drawing of the light and dark masses.





Then I hired models come into the studio and had them pose for charcoal studies. I wanted to use the really old-school method of working from studies rather than photography. I also went to the Bronx zoo to do sketches of mouflon sheep.





The next step was to work up the scene in color. I was getting excited by the opportunities with lighting. The view expanded outward to show more of their camp, a kid with a lamb, some hunting trophies, and the far landscape vista.





But wait! The archaeologist and the magazine art staff had additional ideas. How about a dog, and an old man? Maybe we could show more of the fence and how it was made. I kept redrawing it.



Eventually the picture lost momentum. I think we all became conscious that this one picture was trying to accomplish too much. There were too many ideas in it. As Howard Pyle said, it is essential that a picture express just one idea. "If in making a picture you introduce two ideas,  you weaken it by half—if three, it weakens by compound ratio—if four, the picture will be really too weak to consider at all and the human interest would be entirely lost."

If I just showed two guys wrestling a ram, that might have made a great picture. That simplicity is what makes Leon Bonnat's painting of Samson wrestling the lion really memorable.



Also, the editorial focus of the article changed, the layout space shrunk, and we decided to go with a completely different picture, showing the range of wool-bearing animals. National Geographic was a good client, and they paid me for the time I put into it.



Even though every picture is a labor of love, and you put everything into it, one has to be philosophical when this happens. This kind of abandoned work is fairly common when you work for clients that must balance a lot of different considerations, or that have a lot of decision-makers, or that are working with large financial stakes. Anyone who works in movie concept art and theme park design has similar stories.

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Check out the new book on Howard Pyle, with my article on his thinking and process.

The wool-bearing animal picture appears on page 36-37 of Imaginative Realism

Concept spaceship model by Joachim Sverd

Concept spaceship model by Joachim Sverd: Ship modelled by scifiwarships (Joachim Sverd) and rendered and photoshopped by Mike Mars.


Keywords: 3d model designed in Sketch up by joachim sverd and mike mars
tactical battledrone/UAV armed with massive particle cannon intended as a force multipier for capital warships of the solar battleforce
(earth in the 24century) flying main gun intended to support big warships combat by adding extra unmanned gun batteries

Concept ships by Christian Bravery

Concept ships by Christian Bravery: Top notch work from TheBrave. Check out Leading Light.











Keywords: concept spaceship illustrations killzone 2 concept art by christian bravery leading light concept design firm house