Tools Hack Daily

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Beautiful Update to the Lunar New Year #ArtTuesday

Every year @Feliciachiao creates a new rendition for the animals of the Lunar New Year. Check out their awesome new Tiger.

I’ve been making Chinese New Year drawings every year since 2017 and expect to complete the set by 2028 😅 Hopefully the pandemic is gone by then…what animal are you? I’m a rooster!

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A post shared by Felicia Chiao (@feliciachiao)

Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

A Look Back at the Life and Architecture of Ricardo Bofill

Renowned architect Ricardo Bofill recently passed at the age of 82. Curbed takes a look at his work and life.

For many people, their introduction to the work of Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill comes from the image of his grand social housing project, the monumental and colonnaded Espaces d’Abraxas, standing in as the dystopian headquarters in Brazil and The Hunger Games. For others, the pastel pink walls of La Muralla Roja serve as a frequent Instagram photo-shoot location, or more recently, as a visual reference for the interlocking stairs in Netflix’s Squid Game series. While the dystopian associations with Bofill’s work may be cemented by pop culture, there’s a lot of color and wonder that’s missing from that imagery, which is perhaps unfair to those projects that were intent on making great architecture for all (and, in many cases, were successful at it).

A talking Lunar New Year Box with CircuitPython #CircuitPython #RP2040 @gallaugher @Instructables

Professor John Gallaugher makes a talking lunar New Year’s box (with treats inside!) Pushing the corresponding button wishes you a happy Lunar New Year in Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, & American-accented English.

The project is made with CircuitPython and an Adafruit Feather RP2040.

See more on Twitter and a full tutorial on Instructables.

Deconstructed Game Boy as Wall Art #ArtTuesday

Even the president of the united states thinks we should have a right to repair. And if we have a right to repair, we should also have the right to deconstruct our handhelds and turn them into wall art. Here’s more from Kotaku:

Having a shelf filled with older portable video game systems is nice and all, but there’s so much more to a Game Boy Color than you can see. The boards and buttons and bits and bobs that make up the inside are every bit as impressive and important as the plastic shell. Grid Studio’s pieces celebrate the inner and outer beauty of beloved electronics in a way I couldn’t resist.

Grid takes actual gaming hardware, from the Game Boy to the Nintendo DS, disassembles it, and mounts the individual parts on a board that’s printed with labels explaining what function the components perform. The Game Boy Color model, currently awaiting hanging in my new home, highlights the system’s speakers, inputs, buttons, and even the rubber bits beneath that make the buttons so soft and spongy.

See more!

Fields of String Comprise the Portraits of Joshua Adokuru #ArtTuesday

Joshua Adokuru transforms dense fields of string into beautiful, vibrant portraits. Here’s more from COLOSSAL:

Blending sturdy metal with the soft warmth of wool, Joshua Adokuru winds vibrant fibers around precisely placed nails that anchor his expressive and abstract portraits…. Formally trained in computer science, Adokuru has been experimenting with different mediums since secondary school, but it wasn’t until spring of 2020 that he started working with thread. His pieces, which are often larger than life, begin with a photograph of a child or friend, which are then translated into a simple sketch on a wooden board. Adokuru accentuates the figure’s silhouette, facial features, and any motif on their clothing or in the backdrop with nails that are glued in place, sprayed with black paint, and finally covered in taught thread. Because the artist is most concerned with capturing his subjects’ exact expressions, he always completes the eyes last.

See and learn more!

The Hyperrealistic Art of Pedro Campos #ArtTuesday

An art critic might say something like: Hyperrealism is a natural outgrowth of the epistemological challenges of late-stage capitalism. The style reaches for a reintegration with the senses at a time when even the present moment has been disrupted through mediation by what Guy Debord would call “the Spectacle. ” Hyperrealism, as the a perfectly illusory re-presentation of stilled life, is a manifestation of both our yearning to reunite with the phenomenal world and the impossibility of ever returning to that place we once called home.

But an artist might just say: the skills exhibited in the still-life paintings of Pedro Campos are extraordinary. Here’s more from artnet:

Madrid-born Pedro Campos (b. 1966) started his career not as an artist, but as a restorer. In fact, he didn’t pick up oil painting until he was 30. Within a few years, however, he had committed himself to it completely, creating meticulous hyperrealist compositions. Over the past 40 years, Campos, who is represented by London’s Plus One Gallery, has carved out a signature niche within the hyperrealist world, working in a color palette that emphasizes dark backgrounds and pops of white and red. His works center around prescribed subject matter: luxury cars, aluminum tins, candies in glass jars, macaroons, and the spines of art books.

See more!

The French Naturalist Who Loved To Paint Mushrooms

Delightful, recent entry in the The New York Times Sketchbook from by Brian Blomerth.

Jean-Henri Fabre, known for his popular books on insects, was a man of many hobbies.