Colossal art

If Marija Tiurina’s latest watercolor appears to be a random mishmash of dreamy scenes, that’s because it is. The London-based illustrator (previously) recently completed “The Lockdown Project,” a dense composition inspired by dozens of submissions she collected during the first few weeks of quarantine. Complete with childhood memories, dreams, and colloquialisms, the illustration depicts a rich networkContinue reading "A Surreal Watercolor by Illustrator Marija Tiurina Captures a Miscellany…

Ecuadorian artist Beto Val alchemizes vintage illustrations into bizarre compositions that blend fruits with fowl and aquatic life with land animals. Using imagery available through the public domain, Val cuts and repositions fins, wings, and scaly talons into surreal creatures: round owl faces peer out from pineapples, autumn leaves sprout from tropical birds, and a rendering evocative of a biological chart displays fish with bodies made of strawberries, brains, and an early, industrial…

At the Direktorenhaus Museum in Berlin this past week, a solo exhibition of detailed architectural drawings by Virginia-based artist Benjamin Sack (previously) opened to the public. Titled Labyrinths, the collection of new works features vast cityscapes comprised of impossible inner geometries. The maze-like urban maps reference musical compositions and various symbols found in cosmology. OftenContinue reading "Impossible Cityscapes by Benjamin Sack Draw Inspiration From Cartography and…

Brooklyn-based artist Guno Park evokes the tradition of memento mori with an exquisite new drawing highlighting the precarious line between life and death. Titled “Nature of Things,” the meticulously crosshatched piece rendered in graphite stands at a striking 85 inches, portraying the oversized human figure with botanicals winding around its spinal column and through its chest. “Putting the skeleton together with vine, leaves, and flowers represents for me the power of nature and its…

Illustrator Felicia Chiao balances out her work as an industrial designer at IDEO with imaginative drawings rendered in copic marker and gel ink pens. Chiao’s fanciful worlds are populated with a repeating humanoid protagonist, as well as spirit-like black figures reminiscent of the symbolic creatures in Hayao Miyazaki films. The artist balances her charming aesthetic—cheerful details like daisies and friendly worms—with more evocative emotional themes. “Illustration has always been a way…

“Never go into the deep parts of the forest, for there are many dangers there, both dark and bright, and they will ensnare your soul.” ― Robert Beatty, Serafina and the Black Cloak

Giant Humans Overtake Landscapes in Guillaume Chiron’s Clever Collages

Illustrator Alice Lin uses watercolor and pigment on rice paper and silk to create intricately detailed worlds. Human and animal figures are enveloped in pastel-toned bursts of swirling flowers, mushrooms, oceans, and rock formations. Despite their storybook-like quality, many of Lin’s works are fairly large, with some spanning more than three feet wide. In an interview with Wow x Wow, Lin describes the intention behind her work: “It’s about exploring the internal and external, about the…

Longtime Colossal readers will recognize the surreal, fictionalized scenes illustrated by Marija Tiurina (previously). Whether a bizarre mishmash of thoughts from quarantine or a crowded parallel universe in North London, Tiurina’s works are a seemingly endless exploration of mystery, delight, and general chaos, themes the London-based illustrator continues in her new series Stereogramos—the title isContinue reading "Surreal Watercolor Illustrations Shake Back and Forth in Marija Tiurina’s…

These architectural watercolor studies by Sunga Park seem to drip and fade out of focus like a memory or a dream. The graphic designer and illustrator currently lives and works in Busan, South Korea as a wallpaper designer but it seems her true passion is for watercolor and other artistic endeavors. See much more of her work on Behance and Flickr. If you liked this, also check out the work of Maja Wronska. More