The World Before the Flood, 1828, 140 by 202.3 cm (55.1 by 79.6 in)

The World Before the Flood is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1828 and currently in the Southampton City Art Gallery. It depicts a scene from John Milton's Paradise Lost in which, among a series of visions of the future shown to Adam, he sees the world immediately before the Great Flood. The painting illustrates the stages of courtship as described by Milton: a group of men select wives from a group of dancing women, drag their chosen woman from the group, and settle down to married life. Behind the courting group, an oncoming storm looms, foreshadowing the destruction which the dancers and lovers are about to bring upon themselves.

When first exhibited at the 1828 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition the painting attracted large crowds, and strongly divided critical opinion. It was greatly praised by many critics, who counted it among the finest works of art in the country. Other reviewers condemned it as crude, tasteless, offensive and poorly executed. (Full article...)

Self-portrait, circa 1845

Paul Kane (September 3, 1810 – February 20, 1871) was an Irish-born Canadian painter whose paintings and especially field sketches were known as one of the first visual documents of Western indigenous life.

A largely self-educated artist, Paul Kane grew up in York, Upper Canada (now Toronto) and trained himself by copying European masters on a "Grand Tour" study trip through Europe. He undertook two voyages through the Canadian northwest in 1845 and from 1846 to 1848. The first trip took him from Toronto to Sault Ste. Marie and back. Having secured the support of the Hudson's Bay Company, he set out on a second, much longer voyage from Toronto across the Rocky Mountains to Fort Vancouver (present-day Vancouver, Washington) and Fort Victoria (present day Victoria, British Columbia). (Full article...)

• ... that the author of Sugar Dog Life ended up buying and raising a cactus after drawing one in the manga?
• ... that as a senior in high school, manga artist Yama Wayama began drawing male–male romance manga as a hobby?
• ... that John Hoke III, who is dyslexic and the chief design officer of Nike, has described drawing as his first language?
• ... that the early woman explorer Adèle de Dombasle travelled to Polynesia in 1847 and worked as an illustrator, drawing people such as Queen Pōmare IV?
• ... that the documentary Lynch/Oz incorporates hundreds of film clips to illustrate the influence of The Wizard of Oz on the work of filmmaker David Lynch?
• ... that The Summer Hikaru Died went from drawings on a Twitter account to receiving three times more orders than copies available in its first print run?
• ... that a British filmmaker forced the British Board of Film Classification to watch paint drying for ten hours?
• ... that Nickelodeon storyboard artists created a book with hundreds of pornographic drawings of SpongeBob SquarePants characters?