Endless fun A photo posted by Shannon Finnegan (@shanfinnegan) on Jun 24, 2015 at 11:59pm PDT (This artwork on Instagram is created by pattern artist, Shannon Finnegan) Such a simple small cross-stitch, but it works on many various levels. From…
When you are shooting a panoramic with your camera, do you ever wonder when you should stop sweeping across? When I was photographing this scene of the Chicago River, Initially, I was drawn to frozen Chicago River, and how part…
If you are in the market for a DSLR camera, here’s the best combination to get. I did two months of research looking at all the various DSLR cameras. My 7-year-old Nikon D80 died after 32,000 cycles. It was time…
[button link=”http://spudart.deviantart.com/art/Science-fiction-is-totally-cool-589672191?purchase=print” size=”large” color=”orange”]» Art prints and canvas available[/button] Giant alien robots invade Chicago! Death rays shoot out of their eyes. The campy setup makes for a great B-movie sci-fi thriller poster. What could be more fun? Swap out…
[button link=”http://spudart.deviantart.com/art/Science-fiction-is-Knowledge-invention-589673191?purchase=print” size=”large” color=”orange”]» Art prints and canvas available[/button] A worm dressed in an astronaut uniform watches a rocket blast off into outer space. Totally crazy. This is the final poster in this series of three illustrating the etymology of…
[button link=”http://spudart.deviantart.com/art/Science-fiction-is-Knowledge-fiction-589672726?purchase=print” size=”large” color=”orange”]» Art prints and canvas available[/button] Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy is always one of the top results when googling for vintage sci-fi posters. The design of this poster fit exactly what I needed for my…
Amazing the stuff you’ll find online. While looking at NASA documents for a friend’s birthday, I came across this spiky ball contraption used by NASA in 1968. Any guess what this could be? Oversized foot massager? Giant mace-ball weapon? Colossal doggie…
Since 2010, the Super Bowl didn’t use any color in their logo. For 2017, the Super Bowl 51 logo will use red. Why red? A few thoughts why red is being used in the Super Bowl 51 logo: The colors of…
Is there a health website where I can enter all my cholesterol levels? Then the website would give me recommendations based on the various levels of HDL, LDL, and triglycerides. Actually, it would be super great if this website would…
For all the creative projects you make on your computer, you certainly want to have a good storage system. You want your storage system to be simple and easy. Not overly technical where you have to be a geek to…
40 years ago today on January 2, 1976, NASA released a 60-page Graphics Standards Guide. It’s awesome to see the design of the worm logo standing the test of time (despite the fact that NASA retired the worm logo in…
I am proud to say that one of my blog posts is a citation on the 2 Legit 2 Quit wikipedia page. Now the question is: can you take the 2 Legit 2 Quit challenge? Can you watch the entire…
What did you think of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens? This blog post is meant to be a place where my friends and family can talk about Episode VII. SPOILERS, VERY DEFINITE SPOILERS, LIE AHEAD To be clear on which…
Two monumental cultural events are about to happen in the same week: Star Wars is releasing episode VII: The Force Awakens The Art Institute is about to exhibit their largest donation of artwork ever. 44 monumental modern artworks were donated…
Where do you go to find inspiration online? Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? Flickr? Websites? Possibly a combination of some of those? I’m going through all the artwork and artists that I’ve faved the past year. That means re-looking at all my…
How many photos did you like on Instagram this year? I liked 945 Instagram photos in 2015. How do I know? I built this collage and counted the number of photos. How do you make a collage like this? Sign…
Take all the articles you’ve read the past year. Imagine if you could automatically build a list the author names who wrote most of those articles? Would you find that sort of service helpful? On my content strategy blog, I…
The Tate Museum published an interesting 17-page report, “Tate Website Audience Segmentation” (PDF file) Number of people that use the Tate website before, after, and during a museum visit: 38% of visits to the Tate’s website are to plan a…
What facts and figures would you like the Museum of Contemporary Art to share with the public? The museum has a webpage with various facts and figures. Data points like: 21% of the words in their collection are named “Untitled.”…
The @museumhack Instagram account liked my recent ewok photo, so I checked out their account. It’s a lot of entertaining cheesy spoofs on modern artwork. Things like Spider-Man sitting inside a Norman Rockwell painting. A photo posted by Museum Hack…
The first item on this list is mysteriously covered up by the other sheet. What could it be saying? “Find stuff to s_______” This is a fun game: how would you complete that phrase? Here’s a few ideas: Find stuff to…
You might follow some of the top Chicago art museums on Twitter, like The @artinstitutechi or @mcachicago. But what about the other visual art organizations? I compiled a Twitter list of 49 visual art organizations in Chicago. Please feel free…
Ever run out of ideas for what to write about? My cousin Peter was experiencing writers block for his blog. Here’s how to build up a list of ideas to write about. 1. Keep ALL your blog drafts in one…
Ben Katchor has such unique views of urban life. Here he draws the parallel of how the durability of prison construction is eventually adopted by the outside world. Tamper-proof toilets and sinks. Detention grade mattresses with welded seams. My favorite…
How do you check the weather? Mobile app? Watch the tv news? How about twitter? I normally ask Siri what the weather will be for the day. While that is the most direct route, it’s not the most fun. To…
Every week I check a bookmarked Flickr search for street art Chicago. Even though I try to make the search exclude graffiti, I still end up with mostly graffiti images. Every now and then there might be something remotely interesting…
If you could invent a country, what would you come up with? How about a country on another planet or another moon? The Saturn moon Enceladus has been in the news lately, as NASA is flying the Cassini probe over…
Help my class assignments to be exhibited in New York. Please like any (or all) of these three drawings. The drawings with the most likes on the Art of the MOOC Facebook Page, will be shown at the Creative Time Summit…
Asking questions and more questions might help you to brainstorm better. Instead of brainstorming answers, brainexplore questions. Tanner Christenson writes in Focus on brainexploring, not brainstorming, to have ideas: So I recently began experimenting with a new exercise for creative thinking,…
What if our culture made it a tradition that you always took your paper receipt and folded it into an origami? Forget that it would be pointless. Forget the time involved to do with with every transaction. This would simply…
It’s been a while since I’ve submitted a word definition to Urban Dictionary. I’m digging way back to a word I learned as a child, skelbow. Ten years ago, I was shocked to find out that nobody else has heard…
