Coldplay album as inspiration?!

Oh yes my favorite band, their new album has recently come out and I wanted to draw your eye to their album art.  Strangely it sort of fits in with my design project for this term.  I've not told you about it yet but I've based it on the theme of maps.  Now you may be wondering why Coldplay links to my design project, well I suppose it does in 2 ways.  First, when your working (you designers/crafters/arty people, because I've been told by friends who are in other lines of work that they can't do this because it's too much of a distraction) doesn't your imagination and passion for your work seem to magnify when your listening to some inspirational music.  We've all got those bands and songs that make us feel we can take on the world, well Coldplay is the band that does that for me.  Secondly, their cover art, the wildly coloured, detailed patterns in the shapes of the letters.  I'll show you some of my work in the next post, but I'm thinking about playing about with wild colours that are shown above on the album cover. 

Does anyone else have music they listen to to inspire them while their working?

Amazing artist I found last year in SAN DIEGO!

Ok so when I went on a spontaneous trip to go and first meet my boyfriend in San Diego, California, I came across this amazing artist at a market.  I love the detail in his drawings, the bold choice of colours and the iconic images he works from.  He really thinks through what he is going to put into his work and how they link in with the theme.  I bought a print of the art work below and it's my favorite because it's based on the famous art work of Hokusai's great wave.

I've done the images extra large so you can see the detail (I know the side bar goes over it but it is a small sacrafice)

Look really closely and you can see images inside the image!
Here is his website, definitely worth a look because I couldn't put all of his work on here!