Brooklyn illustrator Sophie Blackall mostly just paints for kids books like the unlikely tail of a bean befriending an ivy vine. But, she also draws inspiration, and paints the resultant imagery, from a much less G-rated source: Craigslist Missed Connections.
If you don’t know, the Missed Connections facet of Craigslist is where users can cast an anonymous cry for affection into the digital ether. The chances that the person they just missed will read the post (and the chances that they’ll recognize it as the missed connection) are very, very slim. But it happens.
After stumbling upon the part of the online classified ads devoted to cross-room anonymous flirtations and chases played out in subway stations where love is barricaded in by automated doors, Blackall was enamored. Though, ironically, not with some dude she had just barely missed in N.Y. somewhere.
She told the N.Y. Times, “I lost about two hours of my life reading them and thought this is just an extraordinary mine of material, ranging from the lyrical, poetic to unintentionally hilarious. Many of them threw out ideas for images to me right away.”
So she decided to paint a series of watercolors illustrating missed connections that she found especially poignant. You can, of course, see them all at on her blog, or you can go to her Etsy.com shop and buy prints for $40.
Stumble
Twitter
