Missouri native Kelly Louise Judd‘s illustrations are lovely, sure, but they’re also just a little bit creepy. They are the sketched equivalent of having all the lights cut out as you read aloud an old ghost story or dark fairy tale from your childhood. You may be all grown up now, but, still, something in the back of your mind suggests that you don’t turn around… The artist interjects a bit of humor just when it’s needed, though. The Big Bad Wolf snickers, carrying Little Red Riding Hood in his fat, furry belly as he strolls away from grandmother’s house. A fox sneaks a peek at his very own foxglove shoes, and a pair of Victorian ladies step out for a smoke, filling the sky with phlegmy constellations. The influences of Victorian illustration, Renaissance art, fairy tales, and abnormal psychology are evident in all her pieces, as you can see here. Check them out below.  

Martine Johanna is a Dutch artist with a beautiful portfolio of illustration work. While being heavily influenced by Art Nouveau, Johanna’s work is decidedly modern, juxtaposing organic, undulating waves of hair with geometric shapes, and delicately wrought shading with surprising peeks of color. Her drawings often depict seductive modern muses in fantastical worlds, proving that fairytales aren’t just for children anymore. 

At first glance the above image might look like a digital collage where a simple cat doodle is drawn atop a photograph of an interior. But if you look closer you’ll see that the cat image is actually painstakingly drawn with tape in perspective to create the illusion of flatness. See more of Samantha Schubert’s optical tape doodles after the jump!

Drawings by Alfred Steiner.

“Alfred Steiner, part intellectual draftsman, part pop culture surgeon. His works on hot press paper consisted of characters and scenes from the popular to the ambitious—Shaggy and Fred from Scooby Doo!, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Saint Anthony—all composed of jutting, blood-tipped bones and glistening, sinewy muscle. Profiles were assembled not with soft lines but with femurs, horses galloped not with hooves but on bare bone and demons brandished swords of muscle over prostrate outlines of pus and blood. Steiner creates a disorienting, dreamy and disturbingly beautiful feast for the eyes, calling to mind large masterworks of surgeons operating in an amphitheater, though one believes it is Steiner whose work operates on us, rather than vice versa. By creating instantly recognizable outlines from the most vital and basic parts of human anatomy, Steiner forces us to look at the culture around us while acknowledging the literal cultures within us.” -Sarah Hassan

Begone/Bygone, 2010
8″ x 10″, ink and watercolor on paper

Welcome to our third offering of Click To Collect, Beautiful/Decay’s campaign to help art lovers start their collection of original artists works at affordable prices. Our featured artist this week is Justin B. Nelson whose delicately rendered watercolor , charcoal, and ink drawings have graced the pages of Beautiful/Decay as well as our website many times. For the first time ever we are offering Justin’s original drawings for sale as part of our Click To Collect initiative to bring original works of art to the masses at affordable prices. Read more about Justin’s fantastic work and see more pieces that are available for sale after the jump!

Biotopographica, 2010
15″ x 18″, charcoal on paper

About The Artist:

Justin Bryan Nelson is a self-taught visual artist born on November 15th, 1985 in Astoria, Oregon. He currently lives and works in Tampa, Florida. Justin’s recent body of work focuses on personal experiences and exploration. In his mixed media drawings he creates strange people, landscapes, and objects often inspired by photographs he has taken in his travels. Sometimes grotesque, sometimes beautiful, they are representative of experiences that he has encountered while exploring distant places.

Real Love, It Finds You, 2009
8″ x 10″ framed, pencil, ink, and acrylic on paper

Pessimysticism, 2010
7.5″ x 7.5″, Ink and watercolor on paper

An Island, 2009
7″ x 7″, charcoal on paper

In A Dark Place, 2010
8″x10″, ink and pencil on paper

About Click To Collect:

Eight months ago I bought my first house and renovated it, which meant my art collection was packed up in boxes and bubble wrap not to be seen for another 5 months. In the mean time, staring at the boring white walls in my house was literally driving me up a wall. And the second the dust settled, before even moving in the furniture, I installed every piece of art I owned in the new space. The art transformed the whole house, what felt soulless and sterile before was now filled with the chatter of all the different works of art telling their individual stories.

That got me to thinking about how important art is in making a house a home, and how everyone should be able to collect it. That’s how the the CLICK TO COLLECT project was born. We wanted to give everyone a chance to collect our favorite artists and keep the prices to $500 or less…. Art Within Reach, if you will, ahem. Each week this month we will offer you 5-10 original hand-made works priced $500 or below through our CLICK TO COLLECT project. It’s our hope that by making these original works available at these prices, we’re helping our readers start or grow their very own collection that they will enjoy and treasure for years to come.

- Amir H. Fallah
Editor In Chief

Edrem, (merde backwards), is a collaborative sketchblog from three French/Belgian  designer-illustrators: Sébastien Paquereau, David Zazurca, and Steven Burke. The concept of the  project, as is instantly evident to the viewer, is based in achieving volume. Paquereau, Zazurca, and Burke just want to get as many whimsical, stream-of-consciousness graphics out into the world as possible. In Burke’s words:

“We like not to say who we are when we talk about Edrem, because this is not the point of the blog. We try to get…massive numbers of experimentations and funny things [onto the blog], but we don’t care if the drawing is well done or not, it just has to be understandable…”

We all have a tendency to get heavily involved in our various projects, exerting microscopic levels of control on our output. Edrem reminds us that pulling off the reigns a little bit can yield many fruitful results. The Edrem crew staged an exhibition in Spring of 2010 at Michard Ardillier in Bordeaux entitled, “La Palissade”.