Pop culture watercolor prints for cheap

April 9, 2007 10:14 AM

Linking to someone's store usually isn't kosher, but Etsy user elloh's work is pretty unique. Featuring prints of her watercolor work for fairly low prices, her paintings focus on pop culture. There are moments from Office Space, Little Miss Sunshine, and Bob Ross immortalized in her art. But the cream of the crop is her series of portraits from The Office. Kevin, Creed, and Stanley are my faves and she even includes the UK version players as well.
posted by mathowie (15 comments total)

This is good. I think these are my favorite.
posted by roll truck roll at 10:25 AM on April 9, 2007

Awesome! I'm fond of the Hitchcock series, esp. NXNW.
posted by ba at 10:27 AM on April 9, 2007

Etsy costs me money. Damn you, Etsy!
posted by pinky at 10:31 AM on April 9, 2007

she even includes the UK version players as well

*starts heated derail about how damned criminal it is to imply that the UK version is somehow secondary*

But yeah, those are pretty damned charming.
posted by cortex at 10:35 AM on April 9, 2007

I love it! It reminds me of Brandon Hunt's Lennie Grabs a Dog from this exhibit. Previously mentioned somewhere around here.
posted by annaramma at 10:42 AM on April 9, 2007

I just bought a 'Royal Tennenbaums" one, and I kind of want "office space" too.
posted by drjimmy11 at 10:55 AM on April 9, 2007

Oh yeah, I forgot about Brandon Hunt. "No One Wants to Play Sega With Harrison Ford" was my desktop background for ages.
posted by mathowie at 10:56 AM on April 9, 2007

but I got 'Breakfast Club" instead.
posted by drjimmy11 at 11:06 AM on April 9, 2007

WTF, no Pam? Psshhh...
posted by afx114 at 11:20 AM on April 9, 2007

There was one, afx114.
posted by pinky at 12:04 PM on April 9, 2007

Thanks pinky, I couldn't for the life of me find it!
posted by afx114 at 12:07 PM on April 9, 2007

Etsy is wonderful. It's a pleasure to wander around the featured sellers' page and see the drift of present cultural interests. So much to enjoy! Peaceful and likeable work.
posted by nickyskye at 1:34 PM on April 9, 2007

#1: it's Brandon Bird. Or just BBird. I should know, as Beard With Authority is "lost" on my wall. Good post, but I think any more celebrity art and my house will start to look like the offices of Entertainment Weekly.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:54 PM on April 9, 2007

As I pop down the transport tube to grab a Starbucks injector before settling in to work, I ponder what my job would have been like just a century past. Coming back, as the first blessed coffeebots of the day race around my bloodstream, I realize that in many ways my role would be nearly the opposite of what it is now.

In the old days, I'd have been looking for forgeries. Strange as it seems now, people wanted the original, unmodified versions of things! The last thing a collector wanted to do was buy what they thought was an original only to discover it was a recreation.

Now of course, you'd be shocked if you bought what you thought was a very clever reference to something, only to discover it was the referent itself! Why, I once saved a wealthy but naive collector from purchasing an original Picasso. She'd been struck by the intentionally clumsy way Picasso's style had been appropriated, and explained to me in great depth over synthasoy burgers that the artist had been making a deep point about artistic intent and control. It turned out it was a discarded and unfinished experiment by Picasso himself, with a fastfood sticker attached from when it was used as a lap table by a poor college student in the 90s. I found out just in time to save her several hundred thousand newbucks - she spent it on a really lovely Mona Lisa made out of colored sale price stickers and bubblegum.

There's a really popular series nowadays of lovely portraits of the Simpsons (season 27 I believe) done in perfect Old Dutch Master style, and just last week I kept another collector from accidentally purchasing an actual Rembrandt! It can be hard to tell the difference, but nowadays people want something with real content - something that means something to them and their cultural context. But it can be difficult to seperate this sort of real meaning from the "false cognate" you can sometimes get from an original - you've seen it referenced so many times you think it's actually culturally relevant.

Strange to think that people associated creativity with creating something truly novel back then - there are so many more layers of meaning laid on when every aspect is a reference to something familiar given new meaning. It certainly makes things complicated, but there will always be work for someone who can cull out the originals. I sigh happily as I sit at my desk, arranging the webcamp to point at the mirror just right, and get to work.
posted by freebird at 2:29 PM on April 9, 2007 [3 favorites]

"'No One Wants to Play Sega With Harrison Ford' was my desktop background for ages."

Seems logical, since it appears that you're in it.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:32 PM on April 9, 2007