El Pais had five actors from Spain made up especially as real life versions of well known comics characters, including Popeye, Tintin, Batman/Bruce Wayne, Flash Gordon (although he appeared to be in the 80s movie costume rather than comic style) and a disturbingly cute girly ‘Donald Duck’ (just go and look and see what I mean); there’s a video of the photo shoots (the make up for Popeye is unsurprisingly elaborate) on the El Pais site, in Spanish but I think even those of us with no grasp of Spanish can get the gist from the video. (via Wim’s Ephemerist)

Tim O’Brien creates this image of good ‘ole Charlie Brown as he might look if he was real; it’s quite disturbing and, I think, a little sad, as if poor Charlie is looking at the viewer and knowing they probably see him as some sort of freak curiosity (which is, regrettably, what many real0life people described as ‘monsters’ have had to put up with). It was created for a show in Santa Monica entitled ‘Monsters’. Tim explained his approach, saying he “imagined all of the usual takes on what a monster is thought to be.  Perhaps some will be cute, some ugly.  I went in another direction.  What if I were to paint a realistic version of something usually thought of as cute and benign?  For no particular reason and maybe several, I chose Charlie Brown.  My son just finished his role as Pig Pen in a play at his school – ‘Charlie Brown and the Spelling Bee’ and since I was the set designer, I thought about the look of the play for weeks.  For some reason we all chatted about that THING on Charlie Brown’s forehead.  Is it hair or some sort of scar and hair?  So, like all ideas, idle sketching produced my solution for ‘MONSTERS?‘” The work can be seen in the Monsters art exhibition in the Copro Gallery at Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave, Santa Monica.  (via Wim’s Ephemerist)