New York City – the city of skyscrapers and never-ending possibilities., one of the most important and most popular cities in the world. Here are some old historic pictures of New York from the first half of the 20^th century. The photos are really beautiful and you will almost feel that you are a part of them just by looking at them.They are capturing great and random moments like sellers in the street, camel advertisement, Grand Central terminal, Washington Market and other different markets, and of course Central Park.

Some of the photos are from the Great Depression that hit the U.S. stock market in 1929. At last it caused economic growth that is also to be shown in these black and white photographs. If you want to enjoy more photographs of New York, you should check out these vintage photos of the city taken between 1920 and 1960.

Via SmashingUsa.

Today almost no one gets impressed by photomontages, and we can all thank Photoshop for that. A lot of people can already use that photo program and it is just not so shocking to see a montage anymore unless it looks super realistic. But something that is impressing are these photomontages were made and published in 1979 by Tsunehisa Kumura who surprised everyone at that time and is still surprising today because Photoshop didn’t exist back then. It really is weird how he managed to create those montages, especially the huge mass of water falling down on city buildings.

The Japanese artist gets inspiration from urban settings, buildings and constructions in a mix with natural phenomena, and it can surely be seen in his works. The set of his photomontages is called Visual Scandals. Another illustrator has made photomontages of superheroes and old World War II photos, but he used Photoshop.

Via BLDBLOG.

This interesting work of art is actually old photos superimposed on present day scenes. It shows how it was back in the days and how it is now. The brains behind the project are several photographers from a flickr group who have managed to cooperate and create an amusing art piece by only using photography as the main tool. There are some very cool transformations and you will be surprised how different it looked before. A transformation that is especially fun to check out is the one on Dubai. If you want to do the same as these members of the group did, you need lots of time, a bunch of old photographs of buildings, structures and locations,  a photo camera, and last but not least creativity. It can make an interesting hobby.

The flickr group contains several hundreds of photos, but here are the best 25. Something that can remind of this project is these amazing drawings combined with photography.

This artwork is based on the world known 2009 Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds with actors such as Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz. The movie’s production team came up with the idea to cooperate with Upper Playground and create these different illustrations that’s representing the movie. Inglourious Basterds has won several prices including the Golden Globe, BAFTA award and Best Actor Award. The film was planned in 1998, but Tarantino couldn’t find the perfect ending so he worked with other projects while getting inspiration and finishing it in 2008.

It was filmed in Germany with a production budget of $70 million, but still it earned a lot more, over $320 million. The images are all made by illustrators like Alex Pardee, David Choe and Sam Flores among others. They are really giving that raw impression and mood that the movie gives, because of the blood and the grotesque scenes. Illustrations have also been the work of an Italian cartoonist who has illustrated how superheroes would look like when they get old.

I presumed a science fiction genre as something where you can always learn something useful. It doesn’t matter if we talk about movies or comics and animation, the past has proven that science fiction does give a realistic sight into the future despite the fact we, who live in present, are not always sure if this or that device from sci-fi movies could really become a real one day.

Shigeru Komatsuzaki is one of the world’s most famous sci-fi illustrator who created some amazing drawings and, today, we can see that what once was science fiction for this guy, it is pretty part of reality today.

Shigeru Komatsuzaki who died in 2001 created most of these drawings in ’50s and ’60s of the past century.

Via Pinktentacle.

For some artists ordinary drawing is just not enough exciting so they decide to take some extreme efforts in creating something completely different and unique. Ben Heine is one of those brave artists who do not afraid to try to do impossible things. Of course, his drawings are far away from impossible but at least, you shall agree with us when we say that his artworks are extremely hard to achieve.

In order to create his artwork, Ben has to be very good in three things: drawing, balancing or positioning and photographing. His artworks contain all of these three skills combined together and he have to be perfectly precise while doing that because if one of those skills are not good enough, his artwork cannot be completed. We have collected a few of his masterpieces where you can see how Ben combines the real word and the world of painting in his unique way.

This match was simply remarkable. Tough game, maybe both selection deserved a winning but Spain has used an advantage of  one man more on a field.  Andrés Iniesta scored in 116. minute of the second extratime. During the game he gave us a little, well lets say an average game. But still, big players are big when they are supposed to be and his goal gave Spain the first World Cup. You should remember this team, who knows when the next one will be like sometimes Brazil was. Anyway, enjoy in photos taken by Reuters, a little leak of quality but still, you will enjoy.

Nadia Moro is Italian photographer who makes some interesting underwater photos but she doesn’t photograph underwater vegetation or animals, she rather takes the photos of people underwater.

I believe it is not so easy to be a model for her photos because, beside the physical features you have to have, you also need to be a great swimmer and diver, unlike I am.

Anyways, we picked a few of some most interesting photos taken underwater in a hope that you’ll enjoy them.

Via Nadia Moro.

Alexei Lyapunov and Lena Ehrlich are artistic duo from Russia. They are creating amazing paper sculptures of people’s everyday situations.

Every of their paper-sculpture installations represents an unique story from everyday life of an average human being. The choice to make them colorful is something what I like the most, and this is what makes those figures look more entertaining.

You can also see that they have focused their work to ‘capture’ the perfect movement positions of figures which is the main cause they look so realistic. Their collection of sculptures is called ‘People Too’.

Via PeopleToo.

I have always considered those painters who are trying to make their paintings look more realistic as a real artist. I am not a big fan of abstract paintings and artworks which are far away from reality. Richard Estes is painting artist from United States who makes great realistic paintings that look like real photos. Richard is born in 1932 in Kewane, Illinois and he has made a long career as an artist.

He is considered to be one of the founders of new photo-realist artistic movement which is also known as super-realism or hyper-realism. The painters who follow this movement are trying to paint as realistic paintings as they can and to provide us almost exact details of the environment which was the subject of their artworks, without any additions.

Via Richard Estes on Artnet.

Floppy discs have definitely became the part of history. Once, they were inevitable part of any computer and most of us remember the days when we had to deal with those not so cool magnetic drives in order to store our data. Nick Gentry is an artist and he is one of a very few people who still use the floppy discs to do the job. Well, he doesn’t use them to store the data but he uses them as a material for his interesting artworks.

Nick uses floppy discs to make some paintings on them. He paints portrait and he often use the center of the floppy disk as a space where he draws the eye.

If you look carefully, you will notice that floppy discs aren’t the only forgotten medium for data storage which are used by this artist. He also uses magnetic tapes, usually to draw eyes on them. If you wonder what happened with all those floppy discs who suddenly disappeared from the world of computers then you may find the part of an answer in this article.

Via Nick Gentry.

Super Mario is one of the most recognizable and most famous game character of all times. There is no many people who didn’t play Super Mario game, and the game is popular even today.

Super Mario is hero and he can overcome any problem, he can beat any beast including that fire-spitting dragon. But, according to following photos Super Mario is not only hero in the world of games, Super Mario has skipped all boundaries of unreal gaming world an became part of reality. It seems that he was involved in almost every important event and was present in almost every place on earth and even further, he managed to fly into space and who knows where more he has been…

One of the hardest battles took a place in white house where Super Mario met fire-spiting dragon, again.

It seems that Super Mario and his fellowship were having some fun while that unknown guy decided to stand in front of the tank column in Tianmen Square.

While swimming, don't forget what troubles Super Mario had when he had to swim in sea.

King Kong had to 'digitalize' itself to try to find Super Mario so he became Donkey Kong. But Super Mario was always fast enough to run away on time.

Remember neo, just free your mind pres turbo and juuuuuump.

How did you even think to raise that flag without Super Mario, flag-raising master?

If you see an unusual flying object in space, or some strange colors, don't forget that it could be Super Mario or some of his friends.

Super Mario and his fellowship are model citizens and they cross the roads only on zebra crossings.

And yes, he was there, too...

Via Cody van Tol from DeviantArt.

As we all heard, the U.S. Treasury Department has unveiled high secure of the 100 Dollars bill. Now we are going to show how this bill have changed through 150 years, since 1860.

The 1862 version, back and front

The 1878 version, back and front

The 1880 version, back and front

The 1890 version, back and front

The 1914 version, back and front

The 1928 version, back and front

The 1934 version, back and front

The 1966 version, back and front

The 1969 version, only front

The 1990 version, back and front

The current, 1996 version, back and front

The 2010 version of the $100 bill, back and front

Istvan Orosz is graphic designer and his work is recognized in some on animated films as animator and also a director in a few. This kind of art is called anamorphosis, it was invented in China. In the 16th century, this form is brought to Italy in the time of Renaissance.  Even Leonardo da Vinci were mastering this 3D technique.

The technique is simple,  conical or cylindrical mirror is placed on the drawing to transform a distorted drawing into an outstanding 3D picture that could be seen from different angles. According to public, Orosz’s best work is the first picture above called Mysterious Island, beautiful drawing of a seashore.

Via István Orosz.

The Simpsons, probably the best cartoon series ever. As we all have used to them watching on TV, their fans got out different approach. An inspiring artists painted some of the best cartooned graffiti which I saw. There are many heroes from the famous cartoon, Homer, Bart, Mr Burns and many others.

The second part of those graffiti are located in Vancuver, Canada and the first part is from different cities. However, these looks so great that maybe there are no words to explain them.

Via LaughingSquid and Flickr.

Cliff Chiang, a comic book artist, recreated some classic 80’s album covers using a classic superheroes. There are not many of them but few ones that he did are so funny and inspiring, maybe a little bit bizarre that will make you happy.

The Breakfast Club Soundtrack

The Teen Titans Soundtrack

Puple Rain

Batgirl

Flashdance Soundtrack

Elektra Soundtrack

Duran Duran – Rio

Vampirella – Blood

Via Cliff Chiang.

Fairytales are one of the nice thing we happily remember from our childhood. Almost every child who have heard some fairytale got a wish to be a part of it. Fairytale land could be imagined as the place with a lot of colors, flowers, unusual plants, colorful mushrooms and similar things.

Someone in Kiev, Ukraine, decided to make something what could be described as an entrance to fairytale land. Those photos were taken in some private apartment in Kiev but photographer refused to reveal the location and the author of this masterpiece.

As you can see, a few techniques were combined while making this. We can’t call it just sculpture, or painting or mosaic, it is a little bit of all. It seems that whole apartment is decorated in this way. There is a plenty of different fairytale-like sculptures in there, fixed an painted with a lot of care and style.

I just wonder, if this is the entrance of the fairytale land, then, how incredible the fairytale land itself could be, since the location and the author of this artwork remains unknown, we probably will never know that but our imagination could tell us.

Via Mozart Kiev.

Legoland California, located in Carlsbad which is 1 hour drive south of Anaheim/Disneyland and half an hour drive from north of San Diego, built on a 128-acre landscape with Lego blocks in the year 1999, is the only LEGO theme park in the United States. The theme park which is the only one outside Europe, with the original in Denmark (the original place for toy building blocks), and the others in Windsor (England) and Germany, is the third of the LegoLand parks to open.

This colorful amusement park provides complete recreation to the families and especially to the children. With variety of rides, terrific miniatures, laugh-out-loud shows, everything is just produced with Legos.

The term “Lego” was coined in 1932 which is a combination of Danish words meaning “play well”; and in Latin it means “I assemble”. It provides an awesome sight-seeing not only for kids but for adults as well, with Lego Elephants, Lego Flamingoes, ‘the French Quarter’, ‘The Cathedral’, ‘the Mardi Grass Parade’, and many more wonderful Lego things.

Via LEGOLAND.

Plazza Scala, a town in the fashion capital of Italy, Milan is invaded with a group of cutely made twelve overgrown pink snails. It is a beautiful symbolic representation to the fact that “speed is not always a virtue” in this much fast-paced world as things in this world are fast-developing while the brighter side of life is ignored somewhere.

Created by the Italian Cracking Art group, these wonderful plastic displays are shaped to make people realize the importance of the happenings around them rather than being indifferent to the city’s happenings. Milan’s culture counselor, Mr. Finazzer Flory has candidly expressed that the people need to rediscover the experience of the city life while slightly skipping their daily routines which keep them busy.

These amusing pink snails will periodically move around the city towards Palazzo Reale and then to central train station in January. After some international trips to Amman, Tel Aviv and Chicago, they will return to Milan as a part of 120-snail army, in 2015.

Image Credits: Orlando Sentinel, UPI, Flickr 1, Flickr 2 and Flickr 3.

If you have a passion for Steampunk then Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaums home is an outstanding place on earth. The couple has authentically restored their Victorian home retaining its rich heritage and classic beauty while completely modernizing the homes systems.  They changed the functional layout of their Victorian home to accommodate the conveniences available in modern homes.

They started their own Mod Vic (Modern Victorian) Home Restoration in the year 2007 mainly aimed at combining Victorian high designs and craftsmanship of that era with modern functionality and convenience. Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum share a common love for Steampunk aesthetic and made good use of this in renovating their home.

Their home originally a craftsman style Victorian built in 1901 has a great deal of history and antiques of the craftsman’s era. Let me give you a walk through their Steampunk home-To start with the Kitchen. Here the old Victorian heater was replaced by David Erickson.

Bruce worked hard on restoring the Victorian stove by repainting, cleaning and re-plating the bright work made from Nickel. He even added a firebrick lining to retain heat in the stove for years to come. Bruce even built the fire back and hearth true to Victorian era and complimented this with the stove.

He did a fabulous job by installing stained glass windows to retain the Victorian look. The stone of the hearth looks like real fieldstone from outside the house. The antique printer’s bench occupies the center of the kitchen. This bench is topped with engineered quartz stone.

An extra pedestal was added here and serves to store the dog’s food. The bench has several drawers to store kitchen utensils and is partitioned to efficiently store cutlery and other supplies.

The Kitchen door has a small Doggie door according to modern day convenience. The Kitchen stools are Victorian and may someday have high antique value. The switches are eye catching and one would love to toggle the modern switch/dimmer combination.

The couple has decorated their house with amazing pieces of art and craft, like the clock which resembles a vintage piece, a steam whistle, fire nozzle and an old hat on a coat stand.

Bruce’s living room is perfect example of the Victorian era designed with modern sci-fi equipment. Here there is a Victorian era mantle piece with a Plasma TV fitted in place of the Mirror frame. Below this is a fireplace inserted and sub woofer for surround sound installation. Lastly, Bruce’s house is truly fabulous and magnificently mod.

Via SteamPunkWorkshop.