Elevate and Evolve | Cannabis & Psychedelic Culture Blog
These geometric tattoo designs are so trippy and highly detailed, resulting in perfect examples of art and intention.
You might have flashbacks of a psychedelic experience after viewing the beauty inside our collection of geometric tattoo art.
Dave MacDowell’s art melds satire with an unapologetic wit.
The style of MacDowell’s work pairs surreal visuals with deliberately recognizable pop culture references to transform the known into a hilarious commentary on society.
AM: And you are entirely self taught. What methods did you use to educate yourself in the art of making a good painting? You seem to have a wonderful, and quite individual, grasp on color theory…
DM: Downloading color wheels from the Internet, and struggling with the illusion that I was doing it right. As a career decision from the start, I decided to always use a small script brush to make the work super detailed, and to keep the themes varied and entertaining. – Dave Macdowell, Arrested Motion
AM: Some of the great lowbrow painters such as Robt Williams and Todd Schorr must be a huge inspiration to you. Where else do your significant inspirations lie?
DM: I need to tell stories and express what I feel. I always figured that if everything was painted really well, you could say whatever you wanted. I think hidden behind a lot of my candy colored pieces are revolutionary slants leaning toward the misfits and underdogs. Subtle jabs at Classism, racism, greed and commodified sexuality. It’s all in there, but never in your face. – Dave Macdowell, Arrested Motion
AM: You had a dalliance with Banksy and also the planned Banksy Unveiling show in the UK not too long back. How did that come about and what happened?
DM: Banksy wrote and said he was a fan of my stuff years ago on Myspace {Remember Myspace anyone?}. My friend in London curated a show with the pitch of revealing the guy. Of course they never did, it was all cheeky fun. Banksy and those guys are all tight anyway, so their Broken Britain madness continues. – Dave Macdowell, Arrested Motion
Fabian Oefner brings together the world of science and art to create psychedelic images.
Ted Talks are refreshing because of the passion exhibited by the talkers. Psychedelic science art is born from taking, sometimes hazardous materials and creating chemical reactions which Fabian Oefner catches through his cameras.
Swiss artist and photographer Fabian Oefner is on a mission to make eye-catching art from everyday science. In this charming talk, he shows off some recent psychedelic images, including photographs of crystals as they interact with soundwaves.
And, in a live demo, he shows what really happens when you mix paint with magnetic liquid–or when you set fire to whiskey.
From all the artistic traditions of Tantric Buddhism, that of painting with colored sand ranks as one of the most unique and exquisite. Millions of grains of sand are painstakingly laid into place on a flat platform over a period of days or weeks to form the image of a mandala.
To date, the Drepung Loseling monks have created mandala sand paintings in more than 100 museums, art centers, and colleges and universities in the United States and Europe.
The Tibetan mandala is a tool for gaining wisdom and compassion and generally is depicted as a tightly balanced, geometric composition wherein deities reside. The principal deity is housed in the center. The mandala serves as a tool for guiding individuals along the path to enlightenment.
Monks meditate upon the mandala, imagining it as a three-dimensional palace. The deities who reside in the palace embody philosophical views and serve as role models. The mandala’s purpose is to help transform ordinary minds into enlightened ones. 
Mandalas constructed from sand are unique to Tibetan Buddhism and are believed to effect purification and healing. Typically, a great teacher chooses the specific mandala to be created. Monks then begin construction of the sand mandala by consecrating the site with sacred chants and music.
Next, they make a detailed drawing from memory. Over a number of days, they fill in the design with millions of grains of colored sand. At its completion, the mandala is consecrated. The monks then enact the impermanent nature of existence by sweeping up the colored grains and dispersing them in flowing water.
According to Buddhist scripture, sand mandalas transmit positive energies to the environment and to the people who view them. While constructing a mandala, Buddhist monks chant and meditate to invoke the divine energies of the deities residing within the mandala. The monks then ask for the deities’ healing blessings. A mandala’s healing power extends to the whole world even before it is swept up and dispersed into flowing water—a further expression of sharing the mandala’s blessings with all.
The Tibetan mandalas are deceptively simple. They might look like they’re made up of basic patterns, but are extremely complex and might take weeks to complete. Buddhist monks undergo years of training before they can make a mandala. So before a mandala is made, a monk will spend time in philosophical and artistic study. Once a sufficient level of understanding has been reached, the mandala is created.
In the personal monastery of the Dalai Lama, the Nyamgal monastery, monks spend about three years studying before making the mandala.
> Tibetan Healing Mandalas | Prafulla
Joe Webb’s work eschews the neo-traditional standard of digital manipulation, opting to meticulously craft his psychedelic work by hand.
Sourcing two to three images at a time, Webb’s finished collages probe the unreality of modern-life, with an emphasis on his disdain for technology.
I started making these simple hand-made collages as a sort of luddite reaction to working as a graphic artist on computers for many years. I like the limitations of collage…using found imagery and a pair of scissors, there are no Photoshop options to resize, adjust colours or undo.
I suppose I’ve become fairly anti-technology… although I now promote my art on websites, own an iPhone and use Facebook…It’s confusing, I wish I had been born 100 years ago. – Joe Webb
A selection of work from UK based collage artist Joe Webb.
In this amazing animation by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro, the beauty of classical paintings is brought to life from the immobility of canvas, using the 2.5D effect; creating a sentiment lost to the masterpieces.
Over Beauty, there has always hung the cloud of destiny and all-devouring time.
Beauty has been invoked, re-figured and described since antiquity as a fleeting moment of happiness and the inexhaustible fullness of life, doomed from the start to a redemptive yet tragic end.
Its as though these images which the history of art has consigned to us as frozen movement can today come back to life thanks to the fire of digital invention.
A series of well selected images from the tradition of pictorial beauty are appropriated, (from the renaissance to the symbolism of the late 1800s, through Mannerism, Pastoralism, Romanticism and Neo-classicism) with the intention of retracing the sentiment beneath the veil of appearance.
They are, from the inception of a romantic sunrise in which big black birds fly to the final sunset beyond gothic ruins that complete the piece, a work of fleeting time. – The Enigma of Beauty
Thomas Hill – Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe
Albert Bierstadt – Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains
Ivan Shishkin – Forest edge
James Sant – Frau und Tochter
William Adolphe Bouguereau – L’Innocence
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Song of the Angels
Ivan Shishkin – Bach im Birkenwald
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Le Baiser
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Nature’s Fan- Girl with a Child
William Adolphe Bouguereau – The Motherland
Ivan Shishkin – Morning in a Pine Forest
William Adolphe Bouguereau – The Nut Gatherers
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Two Sisters
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Not too Much to Carry
Thomas Cole – The Course of Empire: Desolation
Martinus Rørbye – Entrance to an Inn in the Praestegarden at Hillested
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Sewing
William Adolphe Bouguereau – The Difficult Lesson
William Adolphe Bouguereau – The Curtsey
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Little Girl with a Bouquet
Claude Lorrain – Pastoral Landscape
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Cupidon
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Admiration
William Adolphe Bouguereau – A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Dawn
William Adolphe Bouguereau – L’Amour et Psych
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Spring Breeze
William Adolphe Bouguereau – The Invation
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Nymphs and Satyr
William Adolphe Bouguereau – The Youth of Bacchus
William Adolphe Bouguereau – The Birth of Venus
William Adolphe Bouguereau – The Nymphaeum
Gioacchino Pagliei – Le Naiadi
Luis Ricardo Falero – Faust’s Dream
Luis Ricardo Falero – Reclining Nude
Jules Joseph Lefebvre – La Cigale
John William Godward – Tarot of Delphi
Jan van Huysum – Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn
Adrien Henri Tanoux – Salammbo
Guillaume Seignac – Reclining Nude
Tiziano – Venere di Urbino
Louis Jean François Lagrenée – Amor and Psyche
Correggio – Giove e Io
François Gérard – Psyché et l’Amour
John William Godward – Contemplatio
John William Godward – Far Away Thought
John William Godward – An Auburn Beauty
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Flora And Zephy
Louis Jean François Lagrenée – Mars and Venus, Allegory of Peace
Fritz Zuber-Bühle – A Reclining Beauty
Paul Peel – The Rest
Guillaume Seignac – L’Abandon
Victor Karlovich Shtemberg – Nu à la peau de bete
Pierre Auguste Cot – Portrait Of Young Woman
Ivan Shishkin – Mast Tree Grove
Ivan Shishkin – Rain in an oak forest
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Biblis
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Elegy
Marcus Stone – Loves Daydream End
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Head Of A Young Girl
Hugues Merle – Mary Magdalene in the Cave
Andrea Vaccaro – Sant’Agata
Jacques-Luois David – Accademia (o Patroclo)
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – San Giovanni Battista
Roberto Ferri – In Nomine Deus
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Cristo alla colonna
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Incoronazione di spine
Paul Delaroche – L’Exécution de lady Jane Grey en la tour de Londres, l’an 1554
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Decollazione di San Giovanni Battista
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Sacrificio di Isacco
Guido Reni – Davide e Golia
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Giuditta e Oloferne
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Davide e Golia
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Salomè con la testa del Battista
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Davide con la testa di Golia
Jakub Schikaneder – All Soul’s Day
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – San Gerolamo scrivente
Guido Reni – San Gerolamo
Pieter Claesz – Vanitas
Gabriel von Max – The Ecstatic Virgin Anna Katharina Emmerich
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Portrait of Miss Elizabeth Gardner
Jan Lievens – A young girl
Johannes Vermeer – Portrait of a Young Girl
Luis Ricardo Falero – Moonlit Beauties
Joseph Rebell – Burrasca al chiaro di luna nel golfo di Napoli
Luis Ricardo Falero – Witches going to their Sabbath
William Adolphe Bouguereau – Dante And Virgil In Hell
Théodore Géricault – Cheval arabe gris-blanc
Peter Paul Rubens – Satiro
Felice Boselli – Skinned Head of a Young Bull
Gabriel Cornelius von Max – Monkeys as Judges of Art
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Medusa
Luca Giordano – San Michele
Théodore Géricault – Study of Feet and Hands
Peter Paul Rubens – Saturn Devouring His Son
Ilya Repin – Ivan il Terribile e suo figlio Ivan
Franz von Stuck – Lucifero Moderno
Gustave Doré – Enigma
Arnold Böcklin – Die Toteninsel (III)
Sophie Gengembre Anderson – Elaine
John Everett Millais – Ophelia
Paul Delaroche – Jeune Martyre
Herbert Draper – The Lament for Icarus
Martin Johnson Heade – Twilight on the St. Johns River
Gabriel Cornelius von Max – Der Anatom
Enrique Simonet – Anatomía del corazón
Thomas Eakins – Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic)
Rembrandt – Lezione di anatomia del dottor Tulp
Peter Paul Rubens – Die Beweinung Christi
Paul Hippolyte Delaroche – Die Frau des Künstlers Louise Vernet auf ihrem Totenbett
Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau – Too Imprudent
William-Adolphe Bouguereau – The Prayer
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Amorino dormiente
Augustin Théodule Ribot – St. Vincent (of Saragossa)
Caspar David Friedrich – Abtei im eichwald
Remedios Varo was a Spanish-Mexican Surrealist painter who believed that randomness and darkness ruled the world. Her art attempts to represent the internal state of the soul externally.
Ephemereal and unusual, Varo’s work resembles the world of dreams, and oddly their similarity to waking life.
Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels. – Francisco de Goya.
Varo was good friends with fellow Surrealist Leonora Carrington, and also went to school at San Fernando Fine Arts Academy in Madrid, Salvador Dali’s alma mater.
Third Monk is happy to bring you images from Merging Views, the first 2014 exhibition at Giant Robot’s art gallery.
Merging Views featured the art work of great artists from Los Angeles and beyond. From 40 clay sculptures by children’s book artist, Godeleine de Rosamel; silk screener hero Dan McCarthy, who captures Cape Cod, life long ago and worlds beyond, to painters which range in styles.
Wayne Johnson uses oils in a time tested technique that echoes both contemporary and historical works. Kwanchai Moriya works faster and creates pieces based on sci-fi and the fantastic, yet at times captures his local environment.
Stasia Burrington mixes an illustration style often using watercolors. Dan-ah Kim works with whimsical and contemplative images, often using only a handful of colors, her distinctive work remains complex despite it’s perceived simplicity.
In your art journey, are there any physical objects that have inspired you?
Actually right now I’m really digging this little postcard that a friend bought me recently. It’s the cover of some obscure old sci-fi novel called, “The Gods Hate Kansas,” and it’s perfect. It has all my favorite things in one painting: guy in space suit with laser gun, space ship, giant beast with glowing eyes, ridiculous title, and the color blue.
As far as artists that are important to me as a painter, I’m inspired by the likes of J.C. Leyendecker, Andrew Wyeth, N.C. Wyeth, John Singer Sargent, and Bernie Fuchs, among others. As far as contemporary artists, I really like Sachin Teng and Charlie Immer. – Kwanchai Moriya, Giant Robot Interview
You have other endeavors along with your fine art. Can you talk about what you do there, and how that intertwines with your work?
I’m a full-time freelance illustrator/artist, which is amazing. I’m currently working on illustrating a how-to bondage guide-book, and recent projects have included tattoo designs, wedding invitations, and an original-art deck of cards. Each project has different challenges and are especially great when they require lots of research.
I idolize and am most inspired by the work of other artists, mostly painters: I’ve had lasting infatuations with many classic artists: Mucha, Klimt, Rodin, Schiele, Hokusai – and contemporary: Kiki Smith, Sam Weber, Jillian Tamaki, Yuko Shimizu and James Jean. – Stasia Burrington, Giant Robot Interview
In your art journey, are there any physical objects that have inspired you?
Books! I love finding old books with worn pages to paint on, or ones with faded illustrations and handwritten notes. I always have a stack of reference books near me when I work. About gardening, weaponry, maps, or inspiring artists (Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Cornell, Yayoi Kusama, Henry Darger are some favorites). Trees and weapons are some of my favorite things to draw. – Dan-ah Kim, Giant Robot Interview
What have been the biggest obstacles in your art career development and how did you get through them?
The biggest obstacles on my career development i think, have been a total lack of talent in self-promotion and lack of related shmoozing skills. I’m pretty shy. I’m still working on this. I probably will still be working on it for many years. – Godeleine de Rosamel, Giant Robot Interview
Merging Views will be open through January 29, 2014 at Giant Robot 2 in Los Angeles.
For more information about Giant Robot, Merging Views, the artists or anything else, please contact GR Editor Eric Nakamura.
Nearly 155 years before CompuServe debuted the first animated gif in 1987, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau unveiled an invention called the Phenakistoscope, a device that is largely considered to be the first mechanism for true animation.
The simple gadget relied on the persistence of vision principle to display the illusion of images in motion.
The phenakistoscope used a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the disc’s center were a series of drawings showing phases of the animation, and cut through it were a series of equally spaced radial slits.
The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc’s reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images that appeared to be a single moving picture. – Juxtapoz
So what kinds of things did people want to see animated as they peered into these curious motion devices? Lions eating people. Women morphing into witches. And some other pretty wild and psychedelic imagery, not unlike animated gifs today.
> 155 Years Before the First Animated Gif, Joseph Plateau’s Phenakistoscope | Colossal
French street artist Dran uses his artistic talent to criticize society, and it’s conditioned conventions. Typically ironic in approach, his similarities to English graffiti artist Banksy have earned him the nickname, “the French Banksy”.
Dran’s social criticisms are varied in scope, and although many of his works are naturally playful, they manage to retain their intended message.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention Dran’s site, it has a lot of cool interactions built in (don’t click on the spider!).
Korean artist Jee Young Lee’s beautiful dreamscapes are living proof that you don’t need Photoshop or even a large studio space to create psychedelic imagery.
She creates all of these scenes by hand in a room that is only 3.6 x 4.1 x 2.4 meters and then inserts herself into the pictures. Some of these self portraits represent her own experiences, dreams and memories, while others represent traditional Korean folk tales and legends.
Australian animator Felix Colgrave has created a surreal universe, complete with a psychedelic ecosystem that makes perfect sense and defies logic at the same time.
Is that a Dragon Lion smoking a joint? Yes it is! The trippy group of unearthly but familiar beasts in The Elephant’s Garden express their biological functions through psychedelic beauty.
