Lego’s Modern Art set lets you unleash your creativity and create your own abstract masterpiece

Posted on 06/08/2023 by Ida Torres

Legos have always fascinated me, but that doesn’t mean I always understand it. As someone that has trouble following directions and instructions, putting together the sometimes complicated set structures can be difficult. I’d rather watch someone else do it and just do my own thing, trying to create my own masterpieces which sometimes turns into some sort of abstract art that only I can understand and appreciate. There must be others there like me since Lego is now releasing something for that demographic.

Designer: Lego

The 31210 Modern Art set has 805 pieces that you can play around with, which is pretty small considering the thousands of pieces that some sets like the Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings set have. But what makes this different and even more interesting for some people is that you can create your own abstract art without following any instructions. Well, it does come with some form of instructions for the four separate brick sculptures that you can create out of it but you can also follow your own rhythm.

Each set comes with several shapes like rectangles, triangles, and circles. You also get various colors like red, yellow, green, pink, black, and white. While you can choose to follow the 4 options that you can create with the accompanying patterns, since this is modern art after all, you can just do your own thing and create masterpieces according to your mood and fancy. You could always do that with the random lego pieces that aren’t part of some big pop culture structure but this is the first time that a set is built for some abstract pieces.

If you’re happy with the Lego art you’ve created, you can also display it with the hanger element that comes with the set. You can come up with something that’s at a maximum 12.5 inches high and 7.5 inches wide so it will look good on your wall or countertop. The Lego Modern Art set goes for sale on August 1, 2023 for just $49.99.

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LEGO master builder Mitsuru Nikaido creates detailed animal sculptures that will shock and awe you

Posted on 09/01/2022 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

Mitsuru Nikaido, a Kurashiki-based artist, makes sculptures of different animal species from LEGO building blocks.

Mitsuru Nikaido has been creating intricate sculptures out of LEGO building blocks for years. Backed with a wide-ranging and diverse portfolio, Nikaido feels most inspired to build his sculptures in the shapes of different animal species.

Designer: Mitsuru Nikaido

When constructing his sculptures, the Japanese LEGO enthusiast tends towards a cyberpunk aesthetic and gray-scale color palette to highlight his signature style. His varied collection includes LEGO sculptures of walruses, Huntsman spiders, crayfish, cicadas, triceratops, beetles, shoebills, and even microscopic water bears.

Based in Kurashiki, Nikaido mostly utilizes the gray-toned LEGO bricks, only relying on brightly-colored bricked to accentuate an animal’s defining feature, like a pair of electric eyes or a lustrous beak. While any one of Nikaido’s sculptures can impress without any movement, some of his works feature spring-loaded limbs, like flexible joints and a wagging tail, that shine a spotlight on the potential of LEGO building blocks.

Nikaido mostly exhibits his sculptures on his social media channels, and a select few of his pieces of artwork are for sale on his website. Alternatively, interested viewers can see his sculptures on display at the LEGO House in Denmark.

Nikaido’s Mecha Cicada creation.

Nikaido’s Mecha Beetle creation.

Nikaido’s Mecha Water Bear sculpture.

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LEGO Creations by master builders that prove LEGO is not just child’s play!

Posted on 13/09/2021 by Srishti Mitra

Remember when we spent our summer vacations and free time after school fiddling around with LEGO blocks, and sometimes painfully stepping on them with our feet? Fun times, right? But, LEGO is no more considered child’s play! Master builders, artists, and LEGO enthusiasts all over the world are creating impressive LEGO builds that’ll blow your minds away. They are a result of their hours of dedication, attention to detail, hard work, and creativity. They can be considered works of art, and I love scrolling through these creations, admiring them, and feeling an intense surge of satisfaction at their perfection. And, we’ve curated the best of the lot for you to drool and go gaga over!

Using over 100,000 LEGO pieces, designer Ekow Nimako imagines the Kumbi Saleh 3020 CE a Ghanaian metropolis 1000 years in the future. This artwork is the centerpiece for his exhibition titled Building Black Civilizations and showcases details like nothing you have ever seen before, almost reminiscent of the Game of Thrones title sequence!

The iconic Toyota GR Supra (earlier known as Celica Supra) celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. To celebrate the same, LEGO Japan, LEGOLAND Japan, and Toyota Gazoo Racing have put together a life-size replica of the sports car that’ll make your jaws drop. The LEGO version is slightly wider than the original GR Supra, weighs much more (4,156 pounds) – and is, for the most part, made entirely out of LEGO bricks which is an impressive sight, irrespective of whether you are a LEGO fan.

With a rotating crank-lever on the side (sort of like a jack-in-the-box) the Pac-Man Moving Display is a fun little interactive toy that features the familiar pill-munching spherical character along with 4 ghosts. Rotate the lever on the side and the ghosts bob up and down, while Pac-Man’s mouth moves vertically too, just like in the videogame!

Designed by LEGO fanatic Steve Guinness, the LEGO set is called 21327 Typewriter – styled to bring back the memories of 50s typewriters. It doesn’t surprise that the LEGO typewriter is actually inspired by the original typewriter used by LEGO Group founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen. According to Federico Begher, VP of Global Marketing at LEGO Group, the vintage typewriter has an enchanting appeal and, “Steve’s incredible replica is a thoroughly worthy LEGO Ideas success story.” It’ll be something that mingles the two worlds seamlessly – a thing that LEGO fans will take pride in displaying in their living room. Steve wanted to create something intricate and new for LEGO, so he bought a vintage typewriter. He then set out to figure out how he could arrange the bricks and replicate a typewriter’s complex mechanism to achieve the final design. In the end, he managed to create a LEGO set that doesn’t look like a LEGO creation when viewed from a distance.

This breathtakingly realistic car was created by a team of 15 people who put over 8000 hours of work into recreating the automotive beauty. The car was built meticulously out of LEGO Technic pieces, and barring the wheels and the logo on front, practically the entire vehicle is made solely from LEGO bricks. In fact, even the headlights, taillights, and the light-strips running along the side are LEGO pieces!

TOMOELL’s LEGO Fender Stratocaster is an immaculate beauty, looking very recognizably like the original. It comes with 6 faux strings that connect from the bridge all the way down the fretboard to 6 tuning keys (I’m fairly certain those are representational too) and even sports the knobs, pickups, and the vibrato arm that guitarists love to use! Made from 335 LEGO bricks, the Strat is incomplete without its accessories, a 54-piece guitar-stand, a 287-piece Fender amp, and even a tiny foot-pedal for extra effect!

The upcoming ZX 8000 sneaker collaboration was announced by Adidas Originals as a part of its ongoing A-ZX series. Stepping on LEGO blocks but now they can’t hurt you because you have made allies with the enemy HA! Adidas usually has the classic monochromatic shoes with a few bold limited-edition drops and this sneaker design certainly incorporates elements from both brands in a way that none are overpowered – so you can recognize those Adidas curves but you can also relate to the LEGO colors!

A LEGO creation for the history buffs! Swan Dutchman created the mask of Tutankhamun! The ancient Egyptian Pharoah has always been a source of curiosity, and this mask does him complete justice. Initially, Dutchman built the mask using 16,000 lego pieces and is displayed at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, however, he downscaled the number of elements used and created a smaller and more compact version.

Speaking of Game of Thrones-esque magnanimous scenes, Rocco Buttliere, a Chicago-based architect has displayed his detailed skill and love of architecture with this Purple Forbidden City! Borrowing from the historic ages of the Chinese royalty, the design features a Hall of Supreme Harmony. Speaking of building this design, the designer says, “Finally, and probably most instructive to myself and perhaps others during this time of uncertainty, are a particular few words of a famous proverb by Laozi which kept me looking forward during this four-month undertaking: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Fusing the nostalgia of watching ‘80s cult classics like Back to the Future and spending entire afternoons building with LEGO bricks, Brickstuff designed the LEGO version of Doc Brown’s Flux Capacitor as a kit for anyone to construct, all ages welcome. The kit comes complete with a whopping 18 new LEGO bricks, a pre-assembled pliant circuit board, LED lights that actually glow with the help of a battery pack, and three AA batteries. You’ll have to buy the batteries separately, but the kit comes included with illustrated assembly instructions to aid in the building process.

LEGO designs by master builders that showcase why it is more than a kid’s toy

Posted on 10/07/2021 by Neha Mistry

LEGO building is no more child’s play! Today, master builders and artists build impressive and intricate LEGO creations that will leave you stunned. They are no less than works of art, with immense efforts, time, and energy is dedicated to them. I love scrolling through these creations, admiring them, and feeling an intense surge of satisfaction at their perfection. So, here’s a list of some extraordinary builds that I hope will give you that same feeling of satisfaction. Enjoy!

This Illegal LEGO collection may be the piece a master builder needs to unleash their creativity. Each piece is a statement in contradictions, with half a raised side and the other a receiver/negative half, making it almost impossible to join your pieces. Or is it? As far as master builders go, they are always looking for complicated pieces that can help them build the next big impossible structure.

It would be an unfair characterization to call LEGO a child’s toy. Clearly, the product’s an incredibly engaging and interactive DIY system for adults too, and has been used for everything from scale-down models to art projects, to even the rare full-size LEGO supercar… but rarely has LEGO been used as an actual material to build a real, working product. Burls Art details how LEGO is a pretty great choice to make the guitar in the first place. The interlocking pieces are pretty robust and the fact that you’ve got LEGO bricks in different colors makes it pretty easy to design your own pattern on the guitar. To assemble the piece, Burls plugs the LEGO pieces together in sheets, before layering them one above another and pouring epoxy resin to really seal them in place (the last thing you want is to have a guitar falling apart when you play an exceptionally funky slapping bassline).

This laptop riser/ monitor stand is the perfect addition to your work from home desk! Bored of the usual laptop stands? Build your own using LEGO! The nifty little design even accommodates little storage drawers to keep your pens, pencils, notepads, and other miscellaneous stationery. It even manages to incorporate cable management in its structure.

Designed over a period of 8,660 hours with more than 400,000 bricks, this Lamborghini Sian FKP 37 is the closest thing to the real deal! Earlier last year, Lamborghini and LEGO co-created a 1:8 replica of the Sian car… This year, they pushed the limits to build this incredibly realistic beast that looks stunningly like the original (in both shape and size) and weighs a mind-numbing 2.2 metric tonnes! This breath-takingly realistic car was created by a team of 15 people who put over 8000 hours of work into recreating the automotive beauty. The car was built meticulously out of LEGO Technic pieces, and barring the wheels and the logo on front, practically the entire vehicle is made solely from LEGO bricks. In fact, even the headlights, taillights, and the light-strips running along the side are LEGO pieces!

LEGO just approved of turning the Starry Night into a production-ready set. The idea for the product came from LEGO Ideas, a playground where LEGO enthusiasts upload their creations, and LEGO fans vote on designs that they want to see willed into existence. The Starry Night rendition comes from Truman Cheng, a Master Builder who goes by the username legotruman. Cheng’s rendition of the post-impressionist masterpiece uses a total of 1,552 pieces, and gathered a stunning 10 thousand votes on the LEGO Ideas platform!

Looking every bit like the real deal, the Ship In A Bottle is the latest from the clever master-builders at LEGO Ideas who churn out magical numbers such as the LEGO Typewriter we saw. Made using 962 pieces of LEGO (although a majority of them are just the water under the ship), the Ship In A Bottle comes with everything you’d expect, including a ship with 3 sails, a transparent bottle, a stand, a nameplate (the ship’s called the Leviathan), and even a cork-stopper made from LEGO bricks!

The latest LEGO sets include the Moff Gideon’s Imperial Light Cruiser (which I’m surely going to add to the collection), Imperial Armored Marauder, and the bounty hunter Boba Fett’s Starship. The highlight of them all is the Imperial Light Cruiser (75315) which comes with a bridge (doubles as a handle for flying action), large spring-loaded shooters, and dual mini TIE Fighters. How could the LEGO set not have the main leads – that’s why it also comes with The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda minifigures along with the infamous villain Moff Gideon, Fennec Shand, Cara Dune, and the Dark Tropper too.

The LEGO Art sets give creative adults a different way to transform their passion into art!

Posted on 26/03/2021 by Neha Mistry

Every weekend brings forth a new dilemma – what is the most entertaining way to spend this weekend without stepping out in this quickly escalating COVID situation? Well, we now have LEGO to thank to make our weekend castle-making activity (consider this writer guilty of spending hours playing with LEGO creating her personal billionaire homes) a little more adult. What I mean is, the LEGO Art is here to make playing with LEGO more intricate and also creating an artwork that definitely deserves that coveted shelf space!

Designed to help adults relax and recharge as they transform a blank canvas (or in this case, small interlinking base plates) using LEGO tiles. Each set can be reimagined in a number of different ways to express the personality of each different builder and to make it easy and simple for pop culture lovers to refresh the LEGO Art piece on display in their house.

Being a hardcore IronMan fan (genius, philanthropist, playboy, billionaire – what more can we ask for!), that’s one of the first sets I would be working on. However, the Game of Thrones setup is a close second of mine!

Designer: Samuel Liltorp Johnson, Creative Design Lead for LEGO Art

Artist Creates Yummy LEGO Food Sculptures

Posted on 19/05/2016 by Ehud Riven

Dogs and kids try to eat LEGO, even though they shouldn’t. From a certain age, you know it’s not food, but these LEGO food sculptures look so good it can be confusing.

You can make anything with LEGO, but you need talent, time and dedication to make something look good, and almost like the real thing.

A Japanese Lego creator who goes by the nickname Tary is responsible for these wonderful creations, made up entirely of LEGO blocks. Pizza, banana and delightful chocolate cakes: It’s all possible. But just remember, it’s not real food.

Besides food, Tary sculpts Gundam robots and Star Wars characters, but it’s his LEGO culinary creations that have created the most buzz around the web. He recently used a combination of white blocks for the rice and yellow and orange blocks for the deep-fried shrimp tempura, creating a Tendon tempura rice bowl. It won him 1st place in an original Lego model contest.

You can see more of his designs here; h/t spoon-tamago

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Hand Crafted Wooden LEGO Man

Posted on 26/04/2016 by Ehud Riven

As a LEGO model in my younger days (you know those kids on the side of boxes? I was one of them), I perfectly understand why these tiny figures with a little circle on their head make us so excited.

And when it’s a special edition or custom made LEGO man? It’s hard to resist the temptation to find out more about it, let alone buy it. A wooden LEGO man sculpture? That’s a hard thing to resist.

Made by MoreCowsThanPeople, the wooden LEGO man is hand crafted made from solid cherry. It stands 12 inches tall, with arms and legs that are entirely movable. It’s finished with a hand rubbed citris/carnuba/beeswax blend to bring out the natural beauty of the wood.

So, why get it, for yourself or for someone as a gift? If you’re a LEGO fan, there’s little to explain here. If you love beautiful wooden creations, there’s little to explain as well. And if you know a LEGO fanatic, you can either get it for them, which would make you the best person on earth from their POV, or simply tell them about it. They’ll be thankful for introducing it to them.

Getting this LEGO man isn’t the cheapest thing in the world, but beautiful things that are hand made and take a long time to make tend to be a tad expensive and totally worth it. You can buy it on Etsy.

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Dali’s Elephants Become LEGO

Posted on 24/03/2014 by Kristin Silva

You can’t write LEGO without “leg”, and that’s the most prominent feature of Dali’s elephants, so in a geeky way, this is a match made in heaven.

Surrealism is one of the greatest styles of art, and Dali’s iconic “Los Elefantes” might be one of the most well-known pieces of the genre. Well, thanks to the work of Jin Kei we now get to take a new look at the grand master’s work in a completely new way, that is, made entirely by LEGO pieces. Keep going to see the original right below these lines, which further emphasizes the level of detail that went in this particular creation.

Source: Geekologie

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