Ten years ago, two designers in Vilnius, Augustinas Paukštė and Doman Mikšys, launched Andstudio with no clients and no plan. Today, they have 14 people on staff, a client list including Ikea, NordVPN and the Berlin character design festival Pictoplasma, whose new identity we covered last month. In 2025, Andstudio was ranked the number one...
If you’ve ever sketched in one app, turned your work into vectors in another, retouched the photos in a third tool and then laid the whole thing out in something else, then you’ll be fully aware how slow and frustrating the creative process can be sometimes. The good news is, as of today, Canva has...
Michael Cheval, who I first featured back in 2014, is a contemporaty painter, born in Russia, raised in Germany and who studied at the Ashgabad school of Fine Art in Turkmenistan. I often look sideways at contemporaty artists who call entmselves “Surrealists”, without adhearing to the Surrealist doctrine of unconscious or dream based imagery. Refreshingly,...
A creative writes: “I’ve been working with a client for nearly two years. Every job starts as ‘something really simple’. The brief changes halfway through. Finished projects come back from the dead. And somehow, I always end up agreeing to one more thing. I’ve been calling it a learning experience. But I think I’ve had...
The art world, and society far more broadly, has had a tempestuous relationship with “street art” over the decades. It’s been met with pretty much every response imaginable: in the early days, publicly denigrated by hand-wringing Mary Whitehouse types as a scourge on society, a symbol of ASBO youth writ large on walls, trains and...
Five o’clock tea, Edith Hayllar (1860–1948), oil on canvas, 18 x 14 in. (46 x 35 cm). Image is from a 2011 Christie’s auction. I assume the original is in a private collection. My eye imediately goes to the the almost sihlouetted woman sitting at the top of a small flight of stairs, her arm...
Flat Boat, Andrew Wyeth, watercolor, drybrush on paper; 22 x 29 inches (56 x 74 cm). Image is from Sotheby’s past auction. Original is likely in a private collection. Another of Andrew Wyeth’s deceptively simple drybrush watercolors, singing with texture, harmonized with muted browns and grays, sharpened with striking value contrasts. Just wonderful.
Sleeping Puppy, Rembrandt van Rijn, etching and drypoint, 1 1/2″ x 3″ (4 x 8 cm). This print is in the collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, NY. From their page, you can zoom or download the large image. This tiny etching of a sleeping puppy, hardly the expected subject for a Rembrandt etching,...
Debbie Tsoi is a concept artist based in Sweden. I don’t know if the exampl images I’ve shown here here are for specific projects, or for her own enjoyment. Her work can be dramatic, but it often subtle, with a nuanced play of light and shadow. Her style has elements in common with certain genres...