The influence of data system mapping is immediately apparent when first confronted with the drawings of Emma McNally. The complexity of lines could represent online chatter, the flight path of starlings, or a new global epidemic. But they are all pencil on paper and any system that is being plotted here exists purely within McNally’s mind.

This link is blazing across the internets like wild fire but thought it worth posting here: yet another timely and beautiful New Yorker cover by Chris Ware.

From over at Art:21

I would suggest that the following links were NSFW if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been spending my day at work researching this stuff. Check out the hyper-retro work of Japanese artist Rockin Jelly Bean.
Here, here & here.

Illustrations from various works by Russian science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev
(via Coudal)

For some time now, I have been on the lookout for examples of Japanese street art. The uncanny means by which Japan adapts Western culture, reprocesses it and then spins it out as something altogether hyperreal, combined with the ever-prevalent superflat movement suggested that there must exist something extraordinary in the darker corners of the Tokyo streets.
So it was great to read PingMag’s recent piece on The Ghetto, a former love hotel in Shin-Okubo that has been converted into a skater shop/graffiti space. The article also provided links to …

Sweet illustration from South Africa’s Am I Collective.

There’s nothing quite like starting off the new year with a little post-apocalyptic anarchy care of Brian Wood’s beautifully rendered graphic series DMZ, in which the U.S. has plunged back into civil war, and Manhattan serves as the figurative “line in the sand”. The first issue can be downloaded for free from Vertigo.
More of his work, including links to other comics can be found on his website, brianwood.com.