An artist shout out for Michael C. Hsiung is long overdue considering The Rathaus is friends with him on both Twitter and Facebook and we’ve been following his work since we saw the Enjoi deck he designed back in 2007. His quirky ink drawings feature re-imagined characters from mythology and folk tales that  are cute, funny and near romantic yet tinged with an almost morose mystery. Centaurs writhing in pain from arrow shots, a giant mollusk attempting to devour a skin diver, mermen struggling with life in general and knights falling over one another to lift an angora unicorn are but a few of the scenes Hsiung has created using an approach to form, line and color that is inspiring in its simplistic purity. The result is like if Aubrey Beardsley illustrated a Chinese scroll about mythical creatures while adhering to Jean DuBuffet’s color palette, in a word: special. We should also mention Hsiung has one of the most boss mustaches we have ever seen, so if you can’t respect the work you’ve got to at least respect the ’stache.

Click here to see more of Michael C. Hsiung’s work.

posted by: Harold Johns III

Tags: art, artist shout out, design, drawings

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 6:22 pm and is filed under art & design, the rathaus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.