Those who don’t, like me, use a shortcut for search in a browser bar, but instead actually go to the Google homepage, will frequently see Google Doodles.

These are versions of the Google logo made of illustrated elements that, to one degree or anther, suggest or form the letters of the word.

Google has artists who work on these, and they can be wonderfully clever, imaginative and entertaining, as I’ve mentioned on occasion.

For the past 6 years, Google has been sponsoring a Doodle 4 Google competition for K-12 students in U.S. schools in which the participants create their own Google Doodles based on a theme.

The national winner gets their Doodle featured on the Google home page, is awarded a $30,000 college scholarship, a Wacom tablet (grin) and other prizes, and brings home a $50,000 grant to their school for establishment of a computer or technology lab.

This years theme was “My Best Day Ever…”, and the national winning entry (images above, bottom) from Sabrina Brady of Sparta High School, Wisconsin, is posted on the Google homepage today (May 23, 2013).

The pages devoted to the contest feature the national and state finalists and winners.

For those interested in next year’s competition, there is a FAQ page.

Despite the obvious self promotional aspect for Google, I like this because it not only encourages drawing, but creative thinking in the arrangement of graphic elements to make or contain the logo’s letters.

I was also pleased to see a high percentage of girls’ names among the finalists and winners.

Images above:
Maria I, Chestnut Ridge Middle School, NJ [6-7]
Madelyn K, Homeschool, IN [6-7]
Lauren S, Sheridan High School, WY [8-9]
Marissa F, Urbandale Middle School, IA [8-9]
Andrea S-L, Washington High School, WV [10-12]
Drexel B, Albert D. Lawton Intermediate School, VT [8-9]
Natasha D, Lake City Junior Academy, ID [K-3]
Amy L, Highland Park High School, TX [10-12]
Audrey Z, Michael F. Stokes Elementary School, NY [4-5]
Sabrina Brady, Sparta High School, Wisconsin, [10-12]

Andrew Bosley is a concept artist and illustrator currently working with Red Storm Entertainment in North Carolina.

I first encountered Bosley back in 2007, when he had just graduated from the Illustration program at San Jose state University, and was kind enough to write and share with us a blog he had posted called A Little Bit of J.C. Leyendecker Greatness (my post here) in which he had scanned and posted 30 some Leyendecker covers and made them available to illustration lovers everywhere.

At the time, Bosley was just beginning to post his own work, but not much was available. Since then, I’m happy to say, Bosley has not only continued his blog, but has put up a website with a portfolio of his work, which is just a delight.

A mixture of professional and personal projects, the portfolio showcases Bosley’s stylistic range, from rendered cartoony illustration to retro fantasy to straight ahead concept characters and environments. All of them, though, demonstrate a comfortable and unforced approach to composition, color and execution.

His cover illustration for the new novel by Mike Resnick, The Doctor and the Dinosaur, (above, second from bottom) makes me want to pick up the story just to see if it carries the same paleo-steampunk feeling as the cover.

In addition to his site and blog, there is a portfolio of Bosley’s work on Concept Art World.

There is also an interesting additional feature on Bosley’s website — The Brainstormer. This is a codified version of a tried and true creativity jumpstarting process usually practiced by desperate artists and writers in the dead of night with scribbled lists of words on scraps of paper.

Bosley, with help from John Mitchell, created a wheel based version done in Flash for the website, in which three lists of words can be randomly or systematically aligned against one another, forming three word juxtapositions to spark creative imagery.

Better yet, there is now a Brainstormer iPhone/iPad app (above, bottom), created with the help of Joel Davis (article here) that takes the concept to another level, and offers additional add-on wheels of subjects specifically for characters, world building and imaginary animals.

Solid and invaluable advice for artists or any kind, and at any stage in their life and career — but particularly when starting out, given by writer Neil Gaiman at this year’s commencement address to the graduating class of the University of the Arts here in Philadelphia.

Excellent.

[Via MetaFilter]

Armand Baltazar is a concept artist, illustrator and gallery artist based in California.

Originally from Chicago, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, Northern Illinois University and after a time working in advertising, went on to to earn a second BFA in illustration from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

His animation concept art credits include Prince of Egypt, The Road to Eldorado, Sinbad, Shark Tale and Flushed Away.

His online portfolio is divided into sections for animation, illustration and fine art. In the latter two you will find examples of a rough textured painterly stye that is a wonderful counterpoint to his more refined concept and illustration pieces.

His gallery paintings include figure painting and drawings as well as subjects like farm machinery and trains.

No, you don’t want to get it.

The New York Times has published an article, A Disease That Allowed Torrents of Creativity, on the case of Dr. Anne Adams, a Canadian scientist who suffered from a form of dementia called frontotemporal dementia, or FTD, in which certain parts of the brain are adversely affected and diminish in function, while others are apparently enhanced by some compensating action within the brain itself.

FTD is often misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease, but it’s actions are different and more specific to certain parts of the brain. Adams’ particular affliction was a variant of FTD called primary progressive aphasia, PPA, in which patients lose the ability to speak. The action of the disease apparently releases inhibitions on other areas of the brain, enabling them to increase their function, in this case, the right posterior brain, which brain researchers have been coming to associate with artistic endeavor and creativity. Artists who suffer damage to that part of the brain often lose their creative abilities.

Adams, a scientist and gifted mathematician, lost her ability to work with numbers along with her speaking abilities, and began to exhibit a desire to create visually. She had a passing interest in drawing when she was younger, but never pursued it. To the surprise of her family, she abandoned her scientific work and took up art with an uncanny intensity.

At first she was painting architectural house portraits of houses in her neighborhood. As things progressed, she became fascinated with the music of composer Maurice Ravel, who, unknown to her, had suffered from the same disease.

Ravel composed Bolero, his most famous composition, while he was suffering from the disease. Adams became fascinated with this work in particular and created a visual interpretation of the musical piece. An expert in this kind of brain disorder has described Ravel’s piece as “an exercise in compulsivity, structure and preservation”.

You can see Adam’s interpretation, called Unraveling Bolero (image above, bottom) on a page devoted to Adam’s work on the Patient Art Gallery web site of the Memory and Aging Center of the University of California at San Francisco. Unfortunately, the page is in frames, so I can link directly to it for you. It’s the 5th thumbnail down, with the magenta border. There you will also find other examples of her work, like her paintings of houses and buildings, and other pattern based work, like her interpretation of Pi.

You can also find examples of Adam’s work here, along with a complete series of wonderful, almost Escher-like illustrations from An ABC Book of Invertebrates, by Adams and her husband, Robert Adams.

So here we have a disease that apparently rearranges the brain’s functions, and in these rare cases, unleashes a flood of creativity.

Like I said, you don’t want to get it, but it may help us understand the creative processes of the human brain a little better; just as the cases of artistic savants like Stephen Wiltshire and Gilles Tréhin can tell us some thing about the function of memory and mental visualization in relation to drawing.