Françoise Nielly’s massive, colorful portraits are delicious to look at. Even more wonderful – and particularly infuriating to those of us who have timidly dabbled in painting – is to watch her create them. In a beautiful video posted on her site, she, in her confident, strong hand, wields her painting knife shaped like a miniature garden trowel, and makes painting look easy like cake frosting. She paints her vivid, passionate canvases — some as large as 78 x 25 inches (195 x 62 centimeters) — from black-and-white photos, further proof of her unfailing ability to interpret light, shadow, hue and tone by applying brilliant colors and daring strokes.

Strangely, airlines and airplanes and air travel continue to still look pretty much the same, no matter which airline you fly. In fact, most of us would say that the in-flight experience is getting worse each day. Premium-class prices warrant a slightly more tolerable experience, but it is still tough to really tell one experience from the other.

An airplane is of course transportation, and not a hotel, spa or restaurant, but we have been waiting for a long time for the first airline that is willing to embark on true differentiation. Taking cues from cool architecture, leading-edge design and the vibes we see ahead of, and outside of, trends, The Coolhunter is now working on creating truly cool airline experiences, giving premium-class passengers a real reason to select one airline over another.

Absolutely everything— from the on-board entertainment, furnishings and decor, to exclusive on-board shopping — will be curated by TCH. Rather than being mundane, boring and almost same as all other airlines, the TCH-curated in-flight experience will be really something worth talking about. Each flight will be different, each experience more surprising and exquisite. Airlines who want to ad value to their inflight experience, can contact catherine@thecoolhunter.net or bill@thecoolhunter.net

Virgin Atlantic exterior designed by Andy Gilmore for TCH Design Studio

ThinkJL is a Los Angeles based Digital Marketing and Design company. We cater to the create and design needs of the music, film, fashion & sports industries. Our focus is to provide our clients with customized creative tools that are affordable, effective and on the cutting edge. Thanks to the quality of our work, we have been fortunate to work on such notable projects as The Dark Knight, Twilight, New Moon, The Watchmen, Valkyrie, 3:10 to Yuma and Saw IV over the past few years.

Over the past few years, we have been honored to work on some of the biggest creative marketing and design projects in the world including The Dark Knight, Twilight, New Moon, The Watchmen, Saw IV, 3:10 to Yuma, Valkyrie, and have also had the opportunity to work with great clients such as NBC, Universal Studios, Walt Disney, MGM, Victoria Secret, EA Games, Def Jam, and Warner Brothers just to name a few. We are constantly seeking new technology and new creative ways to make an impact in the digital world.

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Minjae Lee is a young South Korean artist whose work expresses a semi-disturbing inner tension that is tough to ignore, even if you feel that you’d like to. It draws you in with its powerful colors, halting imagery and clever juxtaposition of beauty, innocence and fragility with brash, loud and aggressive.

The 19-year old artist is mainly self-taught and uses old-fashioned tools — such as markers, pens, crayons, acrylics — to create his illustrations. He has yet to break into commercial success, but as his style is developing and improving each time new images appear, we will likely see a lot of him in the future.

What characterizes his work overall is drama. The ethereal females that populate most of his work exude a dark, organic tension, and it seems that even the brightest marker colors do not quite manage to save them from some sort of looming peril. Or are we, the viewers, in fact, the ones who are in danger? Whatever the case, we are drawn in, interacting on an emotional level, surprised, looking for something.

Minjae Lee’s penchant for dramatic expression is clear also in the work of those he admires. His favorite photographer is the 55-year-old Japanese Hiroshi Nonami, whose women are equally capable of telling a dramatic, dark story. Not surprisingly, Lee’s favorite fashion designer is the king of runway drama, the Gibraltar-born, 49-year-old John Galliano. – Tuija Seipell

Watch the Blueprint 3 album cover come to life in this fascinating behind-the-scenes video.

Jay-Z confirmed that the graphic that hit the Internet on Monday (August 3) — a gaggle of white instruments piled together in a corner with three red horizontal lines over them — is the artwork for Blueprint 3. “It’s the album cover,” Jay told us Tuesday in Brooklyn, on the set of his Roc-A-Wear commercial.

Jay said he chose to highlight the instruments on his cover because he felt they have been overlooked.

“These things are like the forgotten pieces in hip-hop,” Hov explained. “It’s still about music. It’s not about radio, making gimmicks — it’s still about making music. Those things are piled in the corner. These are the forgotten things about music. It’s still about music. It’s not about radio, it’s not about making gimmicks, it’s about music. The three stripes that everybody is asking about is made from the original [number] three. The first three they made on the wall was someone carving. If you look at [the number] 3, all they did was connect lines. The whole thing about this album, how I approached it, is that I wanted to make a new classic to start that all over again — to go back to making classic albums like the ones we grew up listening to.”

Jay is up for two VMAs. “I feel fantastic,” he said after hearing the news of the nominations.

Hov’s Blueprint 3 will be released on September 11.