Compared with the epic works that have made his name - the shark in formaldehyde, the bisected cow - Damien Hirst’s work in progress is a small, delicate object: a life-size human skull. Not just any skull, mind, but one cast in platinum and encased entirely in diamonds - 8,601 in all, totaling 1,106.18 carats. It is the most expensive work of art ever created, costing approx. $20 million.

Hirst said: ‘We have been buying diamonds slowly and have worked out that it will take about eight and half thousand to completely cover the surface of the skull.’

Even the eye sockets and the holes for the nose have been filled with hundreds of jewels. A 52-carat pear-shaped stone is set into the forehead, surrounded by 14 diamonds.

Read the rest of this entry »

I thought it was about time to release some news, as the following about Ballistic Publishing’s recently released book Exotique 2. For all and every artist who likes good character artworks I can guarantee that it’s worth a look and that the print quality is excellent.

The world’s most beautiful CG Characters:

“Experience a completely new collection of the world’s most beautiful digital characters. EXOTIQUE 2 is the second volume of the best computer generated characters in the known universe. With 18% more artwork than the original, EXOTIQUE 2 features 269 artworks by 168 artists from 38 countries. Printed to the high standards that Ballistic Publishing is renowned for, you’ll be astonished by the original character art in EXOTIQUE 2. Be inspired!”

• Go to preview page

Don’t forget to also take a look for featured DarkScenario artists in this book, such as Linda Bergvist, Enayla, Camilkuo or Azurelle.

Have fun,
Azurelle :)

WOW!

I just looked over the stats of this domain, and checked the unique visitors since the beginning of our online presence. Much to my surprise I found that this site passed the 1 million unique visitors. Seems like alot of visitors, collectors, dealers, artists, writers and art lovers around the world are enjoying the outstanding artworks in our gallery as much as we do.

Here is a quick overview.

Unique Visitors:

1.051.423

Page Impressions:

4.996.658

Art Gallery:

87 artbooks
1.278 pictures
502 comments
726.597 times viewed

Yeah I know, the number of visitors is not in relation to the impressions or picture hits. This has several reasons. In the year 2003 we started without search engine ranking, keywords, metatags and so on. During the whole year we got nearly the same amount of visitors as we get now in one day! It took some time to spread the word and to get some fame in the scene. The last 24 month we doubled or tripled our visitors each month.

Up to the next million visitors!

Thank you,
Dark