Math can be beautiful. The artist and professor George Heart Makes amazing sculptures, and he generously shares some of the templates so that the less talented of us can reproduce them. Here, I have made a model of his Frabjous in corrugated cardboard: frobjus I am a little partial to the dodocahedron, the 12-faced Platonic ...

As mentioned in the post Mechanical owls – custom drawing, I am not the most efficient at xmas presents. So this is the custom drawing my brother got, a good few weeks after christmas. It is simply called the control room, for obvious reasons. There are some personal hints to my brother, but overall, it ...

Tree of life – custom drawing: This is the third post in the series of my custom drawings. This time, it was a custom "tree of life" for my sister. She had a whole spare wall in the cabin up in the mountains... Again, as in all custom drawings I do, there are some elements ...

George Hart is a professor in engineering and a freelance mathematical sculptor, designer and artist. With the basis in mathematics, he creates stunning sculptures in a variety of materials and sizes, in principle, based on basic polyhedra. But his sculptures are anything but basic. The fact that this shape .... can turn into this, delights ...

Go on a starlit night, stand on your head, leave your feet dangling outwards into space, and let the starry firmament you tread be, for the moment, your elected base. Feel Earth's colossal weight of ice and granite, of molten magma, water, iron, and lead; and briefly hold this strangely solid planet balanced upon your ...

Today, blue is probably the most popular colour around. We associate good things with it, it represents all sorts of positive things: air, sea, freshness, calm, and a few not so; feeling blue, blue monday. At least in this day and age, blue get a good deal of attention. But it was not always so ...

The world looks different in black and white. I think it might sharpen some parts of the visual processing, to see the world in ebony and ivory. Damascus Connie Melbourne Melbourne Damascus Oslo Oslo Oslo Oslo Oslo Riga Oslo ...

Plato's sacred geometry: In  Euclidean geometry there are five Platonic solids. Each of them was associated with an element, and since there are five, one of these shapes were considered sacred by the old Greeks, and to know the shape, and to share that knowledge was punishable. Platonic solids have clear definitions, to quote Wikipedia: ...

Three things are very difficult to draw: hands, feet and transparent plastic. Here are some sketches of hands from my Moleskines. hands hands hands hands hands hands hands hands hands hands hands hands ...

The colour red – the story of E120: In the series of useless facts and trivia, here's the story of food additive E120, also known as carmine or crimson. It's in your food, lipstick, sweets, meat, clothes, drinks and makeup. Chances are, you'll find it in anything reddish that is not naturally red (forget ketchup ...

Mechanical owls: I am not the quickest with xmas presents. On the other hand, people will get a custom piece of art. I have just finished this for a friend, and his general guideline was "mechanical owls". The rest is just me in free flight. mechanical owls, custom drawing It is a large-ish drawing (21x58cm), ...

I sometimes come across data visualisations that takes my breath away. This is one. Created by the design house Kram/Weisshaar for the CeBit 2014 computer expo in Hannover. Wish I was there. It is of course the sheer size that makes an impact, but the visualisations themselves are amazing, the amount of data accessed mindblowing, ...

Guerrilla communication is a form of streetart, or simply a sense of humour that uses objects around us and makes us see a little differently. Here are some examples I have collected over the years. You might have to look close to see it... Certain forms of graffiti and scribbling on walls have been described ...

No better way than to learn from the masters. These are freehand drawings after the work of Albrecht Dürer: Dürer had apparently never seen a rhinoceros, so the drawing is what he did after having the animal described ...

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. – Leonardo da Vinci ...

Tools of the trade: graphite pencils and funfacts: Once in a while I get asked what kind of tools I use for my drawings. The short answer is "pencils". The long answer is... the best ones. I have tried and failed with a large variety of brands. Pencil funfacts: They have not – contrary to ...

  There is no better way to learn, than to study what the masters studied. Even though Haeckel might have been a little too creative in some of his visual analysis, he is up there with the best of them ...

(According to Linnaean taxonomy, there are three kingdoms: vegetable, animal, mineral) After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains. – Walt Whitman The ultimate inspiration. Nature, the largest multivariate network there is ...

Piet Hein was a modern danish renaissance man. He was born in 1905, died in 1996, studied mathematics, started art studies he never finished, started studies in theoretical physics and never finished that either. He wrote books, poetry ("gruks"); did illustration, designed objects and public spaces, researched mathematics and was a cosmopolitan. He is famous ...

Green with envy, I present Diego Mazzeo and his wonderful mechanical animals. I am speechless; they are absolutely stunning and perfect in detail. I am particularly fond of the insert heart on the dragon, with the magnification in the corner. Inspired! Diego Mazzeo mechanical animals mechanical dragon dragon closeup mechanical raven raven closeup Diego Mazzeo, ...

Dangerous, beautiful and essential for life. H2O is a very odd substance; it is gas, liquid and solid in very odd temperature ranges. Think about it; by some mysterious intermolecular forces, two gasses becomes liquid below 100C and solid below 0C. Venus bay, Australia Sweden - Denmark Storebæltsbroen, Denmark Fredrikshavn, Denmark Flinders, Australia dew Sollihøgda, ...

These are drawn from a book with Leonardo da Vinci's sketches; all in pencil.There is no better way than to learn from the masters.   ...

Telling stories that can only be seen. Data visualisations can be extraordinarily beautiful. Here are but a few tools. gephi Open-source desktop application, primarily a network visualisation tool, but with plugins galore for space-time extensions. Gapminder Beautiful, multivariate statistics. See this phenomenal TED presentation by Hans Rosling - love that guy Google charts Not surprising, ...

(According to Linnaean taxonomy, there are three kingdoms: vegetable, animal, mineral) After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains. – Walt Whitman The ultimate inspiration. Nature, the largest multivariate network there is ...

Maps: the time and space of the Hereford cloth of the world The Hereford Mappa Mundi is one of the oldest know, complex map of the world (Mappa = cloth Mundi = world). It dates from about 1285, and are found in the Hereford cathedral. It depicts 420 towns, 15 Biblical events, 33 animals and ...

What is wrong with "interactive information"? Displaying information with heavy use of animation, interactions and happenings – why is it wrong? Why does video tutorials drive me batty? Looking for a tip in Illustrator, I find endless video tutorials and it annoys me no end. Why? Because all I want is an overview that I ...

The three kingdoms, according to Linnaeus; was mineral, vegetable, animal. Throw in man-made, and you have the Natural and the Artificial worlds… ...

Drawing is a skill, art is a gift. I am no artist, but I draw, and the same rule for learning to play the piano applies: practice, practice, practice. I have briefly mentioned earlier my deep belief in doodles. I will in a later post come back to my technique and how I go about ...

A while ago, on a whim, i did some digging into my grandmothers family tree. I found more than I bargained for, as described in the post Noble genealogy. And I decided to make a family tree... A family tree of more then five generations soon gets complicated and it becomes impossible to keep track ...

Over at http://rangelmd.com/ there is this genius post: Human anatomy as subway map ...

…qualities like quiveriness and vulnerability come to mind when I think of creativity… creativity requires a sense of smell, a palate to taste the scents that make brilliance. All life feeds upon the random. Creativity is the haute cuisine ...

(According to Linnaean taxonomy, there are three kingdoms: vegetable, animal, mineral) After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains. – Walt Whitman The ultimate inspiration. Nature, the largest multivariate network there is ...

Take the things that are interesting, and see if you can connect the dots. This is made in Gephi, an open-source network visualisation tool. This will eventually be an interactive browser for my other blog ...

Streetart is all around, in the most unlikely places. I implore you, do not just walk past. Stop and sniff the excellence of creativity in the dark. alley turtle turtle kitty banksy-ish marine life ape in the hotel unicorns weird biker war pac-man eh... trumpeter royal creature stikman piece piece gekko gekko good people once ...

Once in a while I come across some images that takes my breath away, and make me intensely wish that I had thought about it myself. Art can of course do magic, but the combination of information and art, I feel, somehow takes both to a higher level. Giorgia Lupi Has made these amazing charts ...

The importance of doodles: I am a great believer in doodles. I am a notorious meeting-doodler, and believe there should be more doodles in the world. I carry around a Moleskine for this purpose, and here are some examples. my left hand doodles big city doodle deck of cards, three of hearts doodle doodle from ...