You might have seen the painting, entitled “The Forgotten Man,” circulating around Facebook and other social networks. And the commentary provided was probably either laudatory or derisive, depending on the sharer’s political leanings.

The controversy, as you can see, arose from the imagery used in the forefront. It depicts President Obama trampling on the U.S. Constitution.

Apparently, all of the controversy has led to a boom in business. McNaughton tells CBS Las Vegas that he sold “in one day, what we would sell in three months.” After the painting went viral, he says that traffic to his site increased at such a pace that it crashed it. It took four attempts before the site was functioning again.

It’s probably not surprising that many people said that the painting was inherently racist. A group of former presidents (of course, all white) look on with amazement and derision as the first black president steps on the nation’s most important document.

McNaughton responds to this criticism by saying that “this is not a racial painting – it is about the vanishing of the American dream.”

The only exception to the disapproving faces is the handful of historical democrats – Clinton, F.D.R. – that seem to applaud the action. However, McNaughton also says that the painting isn’t partisan. “I take no favoritism of Republicans of Democrats. Both parties are guilty,” he says.

The painting itself is more than a year old, but it seems to have hit a resurgence after it appeared on the popular blog of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.

Apparently, McNaughton isn’t planning on calling it quits on painting controversial political subjects. His next painting is called “One Nation, Under Socialism.”

In a project called, “Darth Vader: Le futur antérieur recomposé,” which I have on good authority translates as, “Darth Vader: The former future recomposes,” sculptor Alain Bellino has put together one of the most badass looking steampunk renditions of the Sith Lord that you’re likely to ever see. Constructed from unassuming objects like spoons, ornate leaves, and other discarded metal, the entire process has been documented in photographs that show the remarkable transformation of ordinary scraps of metal into one of the most iconic villains in cinema history.

Regardless of whether you like steampunk culture or not, are a fan of sculpture, are a Star Wars fanboy, or just a general appreciator of amazing talent, it’s hard to deny that what Bellino has done here is anything short of awe-inspiring.

From what Google Translate tells me about Bellino via his profile on Behance Network, he worked as restorer of antique metal for 25 years before his creative craft eventually shifted toward the art of sculpture. By moving in this direction, Bellino was able to “give new life to different objects” by altering them from their primary function. More of Bellino’s amazing craft can be witnessed on his profile at Behance. For now, though, feast your eyes on the Bellino’s amazing work.

Additionally, check out the YouTube video that Bellino put together. It’s an entire slideshow of the photographs recounting the creation of the Darth Vader bust.

A new app called StuckUp Stickers from the sticker art group Stuck-Up Piece of Crap allows iPhone users to geotag and index any sticker you see out there in the world. You simply take a photo of the sticker, whether it’s a band sticker or just a single odd sticker that caught your eye, and it will automatically upload the sticker and share the information (however much you wish to provide) with other StuckUp users. A couple of screen shots can be seen below:

The app was developed by All City Street Art & Graffiti, who also developed a similar app in order to document streetart and graffiti. I’ll go ahead and proffer this consideration: you probably won’t have much use for this app unless you live in a city that has a well-supported and active artist community. Then again, you probably know your town well enough to already know if you’ll get any mileage out of the StuckUp Stickers app.

As of right now, no word on whether this will be released to the Android Marketplace. Regardless, go unlock some of those artistic mysteries floating around your neighborhood and tell us what you think of the app in the comment section.

And there have been some pretty great Doodles in 2011. Of course everyone has a different opinion on which Doodles are the best, just like folks have a difference of opinion on any sort of artwork. That obviously means that this “best of” list is nowhere near objective – these are definitely my opinions (and remember, I’m American!). Having said that, I think that the following list is a fairly comprehensive list of some of the better attempts this year.

So let’s get to it (in no particular order):

Google honored the 164th birthday of the great American inventor Thomas Edison. The Doodle was animated, featuring a telegraph machine that types out “G” in morse code as well as a glowing light bulb.

The 183rd birthday of the author Jules Verne was celebrated with an interactive Doodle that allowed users to navigate 20,000 leagues under the sea. You can play around with it in full view HD here.

Charlie Chaplin’s birthday got some special treatment, as Google unveiled a short video of a Chaplin-lookalike interacting with a Google logo.

Google honored the 226th birthday of “Birds of America” author John James Audubon with one of the prettier Doodles of the year. It was also one of the most abstract, as much of the lettering is a little tough to make out.

One of my favorite offerings of 2011 was the set of Roger Hargreaves Doodles. The “Mr. Happy” and “Little Miss Sunshine” author received 16 different Doodles, portraying various characters from his beloved children’s books. See them all in the video below:

The now famous Les Paul Google Doodle allowed you to not only interact with a guitar, but record your songs as well. This led to numerous YouTube videos of people playing famous songs using the playable Doodle, and it turned out to be a major productivity killer. This Doodle was probably the most popular one of the entire year.

Legendary humorist Mark Twain received a massive Doodle fit for widescreen. The Doodle portrayed a few instances from a famous scene from his novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Why do the work when you can trick other into doing it for you?

Modern dance pioneer Martha Graham received one of the most buzzed-about Doodles of the year. The animated Doodle takes us through five famous dances from her career – and is truly a pleasure to watch.

Another abstract Doodle comes from Turkey’s National Sovereignty and Children’s Day. Toys are aligned to form the subtle resemblance of the famous Google logo.

This Doodle for Jordan Independence Day is just beautiful:

The Freddie Mercury Google Doodle needs no description. Just pure, unadulterated awesome.

Another wonderful interactive Doodle celebrated Gumby creator Art Clokey. The Doodle featured all the favorite characters from The Gumby Show – The first “G” is a block, and the first “O” morphs into Gumby’s nemeses, the Blockheads. The second “O” turns into Prickle, the yellow dinosaur. The second “G” is Goo, a flying blue mermaid. The “L” is Gumby himself and the final “E” is his sidekick Pokey the pony.

A recent Doodle that ran in Switzerland, Austria and Germany honored the 83rd birthday of Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. His unmistakeable design is seen in the Doodle, which highlights some of his most famous architectural accomplishments.

What were your favorite Doodles of 2011? I’m sure I overlooked some great ones – so call me on it. Did I make any egregious omissions? Let us know in the comments.

[Lead image is the Jim Henson Doodle]

The bronze statue was apparently commissioned by Gabor Bojar, Founder and Chairman of GRAPHISOFT. It was sculpted by Hungarian artist Ermo Toth and stands proudly in front of the GRAPHISOFT headquarters.

Oh yeah, and it’s in Budapest.

According to a press release, here’s the connection between Jobs and GRAPHISOFT:

The relationship between GRAPHISOFT and Apple can be traced to the 1980′s, when Jobs came across the first version of GRAPHISOFT’s ArchiCAD software at the 1984 CeBIT in Germany. His first impressions of the software led him to throw Apple’s support behind the development and distribution of ArchiCAD.

Apple also introduced GRAPHISOFT to its worldwide distribution network, which remains a cornerstone of the business today.

“Apple’s support included cash and computers at a time when GRAPHISOFT was a small company with limited resources, working within the economic and political confines of what was, at the time, communist Hungary,” Gabor Bojar said. “With its attention to excellence in every detail, Graphisoft Park’s environment embodies the spirit of Steve Jobs,” Viktor Varkonyi, CEO of GRAPHISOFT said. “I can’t think of a better place to commemorate the man and his legacy,” he continued.

Check it out:

We’re not quite sure what he’s doing in this artistic representation. Is Jobs discussing a product? Eating? He appears to have an iPhone or something in his right hand – is he demoing something?

Whatever the case may be, it’s probably not long until we see some Steve Jobs statues popping up here in the States.

Born in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1886, Rivera was considered by many to be the leader of the Mexican muralists, who worked hard to expose ordinary people to art utilizing murals in public areas. Many of Rivera’s works depicted Mexico’s turbulent history. Rivera was also married to another famous Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo.

At one point he was even commissioned to paint a mural on the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The mural celebrates the American worker, and shows the production lines of car plants.

Rivera was known for his support of communism, Leon Trotsky lived with him for some time after fleeing Russia. Even among other communists, Rivera was seen as an extreme figure. You’ll probably see a few “Google honors communist with Google Doodle” headlines today in your news reader.

What do you think of the Google Doodle? Tell us what you think below.

She is responsible for the concept art behind some of the early Disney classics like Peter Pan, Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland. She also created designs for Disney outside of the film studio – like Disneyland’s It’s a Small World attraction and a large mosaic in the Disney resort.

Today is her 100th birthday.

Blair and her husband both worked in animation, signing on with Disney in the 1940s. She helped on classics like Dumbo and Lady and the Tramp before taking time to travel to South America. When she returned, she continued to draw for Disney until the mid 1950s.

After her time at Disney, Blair was known for creating advertising campaigns for large companies like Nabisco and Maxwell House.

Blair died in 1978 of a cerebral hemorrhage,

According to her website, the magic of Mary Blair, here’s what author John Canemaker says about her art:

Beneath her deceptively simple style, lies enormous visual sophistication and craftsmanship in everything from color choices to composition.

Though much of her art veers away from naturalism toward abstraction, she was one of Walt Disney’s favorite artists; he personally responded to her use of color, naïve graphics, and the storytelling aspect in her pictures, especially the underlying emotions palpable in much of her ar

Her conceptual designs are felt running through many Disney films that we all know and love. Here’s a cool YouTube video of some of her art for Alice in Wonderland:

The folks over at Foundry, a research team at Mint Digital, decided to take one of Steve Jobs’ creations apart and make a little portrait of the icon.

And it turned out amazing.

Made from the innards of a MacBook Pro, the portrait features Jobs in his classic hand-on-chin pose. Check it out -

Here’s what the team had to say about taking apart a MacBook Pro:

We were in need of a few fans the other day for our smell dispenser prototypes. Collin kindly donated an old mac book pro to the cause and I meticulously tore it to pieces.

It was an incredibly humbling experience. Beyond the smooth sheen of it’s outer casing, lays one of the most beautifully set out assemblage of components I have ever seen. It’s hard to imagine the amount of detail, concentration and obsession that must go into the creation of one of these machines.

To be honest, I always thought Mac’s were a bit overpriced for what they were. Not anymore.

It’s true that Apple devices are known for their inner beauty almost as much as their outer beauty. I don’t know about you, but I’d sure like to see more pieces created with the insides of tech devices.

[Hat Tip to Gizmodo]

View other daily video round-ups here.

BENM.at created an iPhone 5 prototype based on various hints and rumors that have come out:

Possibly the coolest street art ever:

Google teamed up with Dogfish Head on beer brewing (more here):

A 29 year old gets to hear herself for the first time. She was born deaf, and recently received a hearing implant. It’s being shared a lot around the tech industry:

WebProNews interviewed digital historian and archivist Jason Scott about the cloud:

A couple of closer looks at Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet from SlashGear:

A new Pink Floyd TV ad has been released in the UK. It’s kind of cool:

Next Media Animation provides its weekly wrap:

The Rick Mercer Report has some fun with Blackberry:

8,000 photos cover 80 days (via Google’s Amir Fish on Google+):

A group of Londoners really really love Instagram, and have announced the first art exhibition for Instagram photos – My World Shared.

The exhibit is being organized by Instagramers London (@IGersLondon), a group of folks who love iPhone photography, especially through the various filters of the Instagram app. The group regularly goes on “photowalks” and stages other social events all around the concept of Instagram photography.

@IGersLondon are a city-specialized subgroup of the entire Instagramers community, which boasts a current 141 cities worldwide.

Here’s their explanation on how the idea for the gallery was born –

Earlier this year, a few of Instagrammers who live in and around London organised their first Instameet, a ‘real-life’ meetup for avid Instagram users. Following that first Instameet, helped to grow by Instagramers.com (a worldwide network of avid Instagrammers), many other meetups were organised, where the idea of having an Exhibition was born.

In short, we are a community of passionate Photographers who are bound with a simple idea of sharing the world around us through this iPhone app called Instagram.

The exhibition will take place October 22nd and 23rd at Brick Lane’s East Gallery in London.

Of course, not everyone will be able to make it to the exhibition, but you can participate in the Instagram love through a contest they’ve set up to promote the show. Just submit your Instagram photos and tag @myworldshared and #myworldsharedcontest for a chance to win prizes like t-shirts iPhone tripod & mount, and photo books.

Instagram just released v2.0, an major update that added real-time filtering and more to the app.