—Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Cardiff, Wales

UK-based freelance illustrator Ed Fairburn draws on maps… which I like very much. See more here.

Krakow, Poland

Photographer Marcin Ryczek recently captured this once-in-a-lifetime photograph of a man feeding swans and ducks from a snowy river bank… you can view and download a desktop-sized version of the photo here.

(detail shown below)

Through graffiti… in every corner of the world.

(original image sources unknown)

Burbank, California

Stay-at-home-Mom (and former elementary school art teacher) wins $200,000 Art Prize for her pencil mural “Elephants”… read more here.

Köln, Germany

Lars Henkel is a talented illustrator/collagist whose work I stumbled across today… view many more of his meticulously crafted works here.

Braga, Portugal

My designer/climber friend Toze (Antonio Coelho) has shared a great little collection of Portuguese book cover designs from the 1920s through 1970s (in a Facebook gallery) here.

There‘s a truism, a maxim, and at least a couple of proverbs in there…

(belated thanks to Pieter Bruegel the Elder for the illustration)

Berlin, Germany

Sigrid Albert, MGDC, is a Canadian designer colleague who is spending 3 months in Berlin. She does beautiful “urban sketches” and has set up an interesting blog to share her experiences, impressions, and visual expressions with her family and friends…

“I was born and grew up in Germany as a child and teenager, so obviously I speak the language, which helps. I have rented a bachelor apartment in a rapidly gentrifying former East Berlin neighbourhood and brought my laptop and client work along so I can afford this… I am mainly interested in the art and culture here, plus I will be pursuing my new passion of “urban sketching” from here as much as possible… Berlin is an amazing city and very inspiring for creatives.”

View Sigrid’s blog here (to view larger images than shown above as well as to read about them) and see an online gallery of her “urban sketches” here.

Barbara Kruger‘s Op-Art piece in today’s New York Times is very apropos.