Take  Johannes Ver­meer’s, The Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, and then try to repro­duce it with a sim­ple BiC pen. That’s what artist James Mylne does here. In 90 sec­onds, we see what took him 90 hours to pull off. Here it goes.

It’s a cre­ative take on Oscar Wilde. And Eri­ka Iris Sim­mons does­n’t stop there. You can find more of her cre­ative “paper­work” cre­ations on her web site. Beethoven, Hitch­cock, Ein­stein – they’re all here… (For more of her work, also see Sim­mons’ Flickrstream.)

via Metafil­ter

Leonar­do da Vin­ci (1452 – 1519) paint­ed arguably the world’s most famous por­trait – the Mona Lisa. But rather iron­i­cal­ly, we have nev­er seen a por­trait of the artist him­self. Per­haps until now… Speak­ing at TED, Siegfried Wold­hek shows what he believes is the true face of da Vin­ci. It’s all pret­ty spec­u­la­tive, but it may be right.

via @brainpicker

Speak­ing at TED Uni­ver­si­ty, Jonathan Klein, CEO of Get­ty Images, shows some of the most icon­ic images of our times, and talks about what hap­pens when a gen­er­a­tion sees an image so pow­er­ful that it can’t look away — and so pow­er­ful that peo­ple must take action.

Sean Stieg­meier trav­eled the world, head­ing to Prague, Japan, Banff, Utah, Ore­gon, Cal­i­for­nia, and beyond. Along the way, he start­ed exper­i­ment­ing with time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy. And what he came up with is pret­ty impres­sive. Catch it above.

via The Dai­ly Dish

The Sis­tine Chapel in the Vat­i­can. It’s one of the tri­umphs of Renais­sance paint­ing. The chapel’s walls were fres­coed by Raphael, Berni­ni, and San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li. And then, between 1508 and 1512, Michelan­ge­lo paint­ed the chapel ceil­ing, cov­er­ing some 12,000 square feet, dec­o­rat­ing it with 300 fig­ures from nine Book of Gen­e­sis scenes. Thanks in part to Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty, you can now take a vir­tu­al, panoram­ic tour of the Chapel. Using but­tons in the low­er left screen, you can move around the room and zoom in on the paint­ings, includ­ing those on the ceil­ing. It’s been a while since I vis­it­ed the Vat­i­can. But, from what I remem­ber, this vir­tu­al tour gives you a clos­er look than the aver­age vis­i­tor gets.

Thanks Ted for this excel­lent tip! To all oth­ers, please feel free to sug­gest good mate­r­i­al for the site. Just click here. We always wel­come and appre­ci­ate your tips.

My old home town in time lapse video. Thanks Ian for the excel­lent find. Have a good week­end all.