When you just can’t take another minute of studying, our good friend the Internet is there to distract us. From cool repurposed art to a creative use of Post-It notes, here are a couple curiosities to give your brain a break from cramming!
Have you ever looked at a landscape picture of a house and thought, “Wow, Darth Vader would look good in this picture?”
No? Well Toronto artist David Irvine did, and the results are incredible!
Irvine buys paintings from thrift stores and paints pop-culture themes or characters in the painting. His altering, or “Re-Directed Art” as Irvine calls it, is becoming a hit!
Each painting is unique, so depending on how it looks Irvine will either match the artist’s style, or paint something in it that completely opposes it!
Irvine says he never paints over the original artist’s signature, but adds his own touch to the painting itself.
Irvine owns an art shop in Toronto called Gnarled Branch, where you can see and buy more of his altered paintings! He also sells prints on Etsy.
“Whichever style he uses, these neglected, awaiting potential landfill paintings, are now given a second chance and are being enjoyed by collectors worldwide.”
Irvine makes his own original paintings as well, which are anything from “whimsical characters to a brooding oil painting of the macabre.”
On his website, you can see many more of his paintings, and even buy buttons, painted furniture, ornaments and painted boxes!
From one cool DIY to another – Ben Brucker is a worker for a creative agency, and one day he decided that he wanted to spruce up the boring walls he had to stare at every day.
“One day I just got so tired of how sterile and boring our office felt, I thought I should do something about it,” said Brucker.
Instead of buying pictures or repainting the walls, he took it to the next level. After several weeks of planning and designing, Brucker got a $300 spending budget from his boss and bought about 9,000 sticky notes. With only sticky notes, he created pixelated superhero portraits on each wall. The result, amazing!
“Superheroes were the answer. I started working out the pixel grid and designing some characters,” said Brucker.
Brucker said on Reddit that he decided to use Post-Its because the agency would be transferring to another office soon anyway, so they had to use a design that wasn’t going to be permanent.
Shockingly, Brucker said it only took him and some volunteers from the office one day, “from about 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.”
In total, Brucker wrote that they ended up using 8, 024 sticky notes.
“This is a creative agency. This is the kind of thing we are supposed to have on our walls, and the kind of thing that we enjoy,” said Brucker.
The next time you think of freshening up your room, why not DIY it with post-its?