http://cellar.org/pictures/redrobot.gif

This guy is from http://www.explodingdog.com.

explodingdog is a gent named sam brown, who accepts titles from people, draws pictures from those titles, and posts them to his site.

Over the last few weeks I have become a big fan of explodingdog. I've put the site into the group of sites I visit every day. It's an interesting form, and the artist is very clever.

The pictures are simple, but they have a specific style that the artist has made his own. Rather than try to explain the style, you should just visit the site and look at drawings. (Go now; the link up there opens a new browser window.)

A lot of people don't like art that's immediate and culture-bound. They want art to be hard; the artist had to work at it, so the viewer has to work at it as well.

explodingdog is the antithesis of this. If the pictures were poems, they'd be haiku, not "Howl" or "Leaves of Grass".

Your reaction to the titles and images is immediate, gut-level. Like haiku, the images can be surprising, funny, and lively. Like haiku, their style is intimately a part of the whole experience, and without the "rules" of their style, they wouldn't be what they are.

And like the best art, your individual reaction is most of the experience. The images and titles are so simple, you find that your own thoughts and reactions are larger than what you're looking at.

mr. brown manages to elicit so much out of so little. You feel an odd sort of affinity to his people, even though their "faces" are only two dots, a line and a circle. He gets an awful lot of mileage out of that simplicity. That's part of the point. At face value, it seems any child could do these drawings, but once the style sinks in, you realize that it takes a very adult mind to turn a stick figure into a complex ironic or funny or emotional statement.

And lastly, here is an art form that could not live without the web. Finally. It's not images of art scanned in and posted; it's not some Flash wanker trying to be clever. It's real art that depends on browsers for its consumption and email for its submissions. It deserves a wider audience. Go there now!

"you know, i never used to cry"
 

http://www.explodingdog.com/dumbpict...rusedtocry.gif

wow

Brilliant and entertaining comes to mind.
But so does morbid and depressing

YES!
 

Dumbrella Represent!

I am a long-time Red Robot fan and appreciator of Exploding Dog. Red has made numerous appearances outside of Exploding Dog (as seen above). Small world...

There are some works by Mr. Brown that are easily dark, macabre, even apocalyptic, but as often you can find his art whimsical, light-hearted, and tender. What always strikes me is how deeply emotional or thought-provoking his works are, even as simple as the subject matter and environment may seem.

I always liked "Science Did Not Fail Me"

way cool
 

These are way cool-------
Thanks for the 411:p :D

site similar to exploding dog
 

i love exploding dog. it's amazing the power of the simple drawings he does. my personal fave:

http://www.explodingdog.com/january1...beinghere.html

anyway, a friend turned me on to a similar site, i haven't had time fully check it out, but it looks cool:

http://creaturesinmyhead.com/

btw, love your site too (oh ye cellar folk)! the IOTD never fails to floor me. keep up the great work!

Oh, hell yeah. I love this kind of stuff. Good one Toad.

Four years later, exploding dog is still going strong. I like this one.

This one reminds me of some Cellarites.

Those really are fantastic. I like the Moon Monster Print and the Laser Eyes series. The duck with laser eyes was good as was the one where he was on his back with the dead birds. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

the artist should open up a shop at CafePress or something like it ~ these are captivating images. been grinning since i started looking.

It's not CafePress, but he does have a shop.