The Globus INK, Soviet Gearpunk Tech

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From the Department of Space Exploration

The Soviet space program used completely different controls and instruments from American spacecraft. One of the coolest of these instruments is the GLOBUS. This showed the cosmonauts their spacecrafts location above earth and it used some astonishingly sophisticated engineering do its job.

You see this isn't a digital computer here, "this navigation instrument was an electromechanical analog computer that used an elaborate system of gears, cams, and differentials to compute the spacecraft's position."

Wow.

this stuff just fires up my imagination. Who says digital computers are the way of the future? I imagine this thing is solar flare proof, doesn't lose information if the power goes out, and just looks sturdy as heck. Makes me rethink what kind of tech I want to use in my sci-fi comics.

More photos and information here: LINK​

(Kind of cool: Scroll to the bottom to see a comment by "Unknown" who says he has a working Globus in his collection with a link to a photo. Followed the link to find out it's Steve Jurvetson's Flickr account. Jurvetson is on the board of Spacex and is a huge space nut.)

-Jake

Surreal symbolic art of Helvetica Blanc

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From the Illustrators Division

Gosh, I just love the work of Helvetica Blanc. Based in the Pacific Northwest, with a back ground in graphic design, Helvetica is "an artist exploring mysticism, the subconscious, and worldbuilding with an emphasis on form and texture."

The compositions, shapes, textures, and colors hint to an unknown world of iconography that feels familiar but altogether alien. Like, if we discovered a long dead civilization on Pluto and all we had left were their statues and art, I feel like it would look something like this.

More here:

Website: LINK​

Twitter: LINK​

Prints: LINK

-Jake

The Homes and Studios of Famous Artists

From the Cultural Archives Concern

Photographer Isabelle Baldwin has curated and impressive image thread of the homes and studios of famous artists. The spaces range from ostentatious to austere, flamboyant to quaint, but there's one thing that they all have in common is personality.

The spaces are filled with furniture, art, and objects that are each little flourishes of individuality that tell you the people living there have their own vision. It seems like many of the items they've collected where rescued from the side of the road or collected from roadside antique shops and given a second life as a work of art to be sat upon, read the newspaper over, or just to add character to the space.

These spaces feel like they were designed for two things: Creation and restoration. You either want to curl up and read a book or sling paint on a canvas, both sides of the same coin.

Here's a few of my favorites. See the rest here: LINK​

-Jake

Dusk Bunnies

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From the Drawings Unit

The dusk bunnies come out at sunset. Can you spot all of them hidden throughout? There's 26 of them.

This is my 3rd winter in AZ since moving here in 2019 and while I love the sunshine, I miss those big snowy days we'd get in Utah and Connecticut. I think this piece is me working through those feelings.

I've been working on this on and off since December and it went through a handful of iterations before landing on a fox and a boy fishing. I knew it needed one more little element to make it special, and the idea of the dusk bunnies came to me. (Alison coined the name, brilliant!)

These little guys are like mini-abominable snowmen, the size of rabbits. They are curious fur-balls who come out at dusk, and are mostly harmless unless threatened. Here's a bunch of sketch explorations of them:

I made this into a print for my shop! It's available in three sizes and ships out immediately.

PATREON: Join now and see how I make illustrations like Dusk Bunnies from start to finish. Every week I show patrons the process of at least one drawing. At the end of the month some patrons get all my working files to learn from and pick apart. Sign up here: LINK​