About Lino

Lino is an artist, humorist, and occasional responsible adult. He is the co-founder of a challenge-based LEGO car club called LUGNuts which boasts over 1100 members worldwide. He proposed automotive building challenges every month for ten years (120 challenges!) which he and the other members built accordingly. LUGNuts has retired its challenges on its 10th anniversary but still remains a cornerstone for LEGO automotive builders. Between his artistic work and LEGO builds, Lino has been published in several books, including Beautiful LEGO, Beautiful LEGO: Dark, and Beautiful LEGO: Wild. He lives in Washington with his girlfriend and dogs.

Posts by Lino

Rickard Söderberg hits all the right notes

A very talented LEGO builder by the name of Rickard Stensby finds inspiration in his own name. Well at least his first name, anyway. Meet Rickard Söderberg. Truth be told, I had to Wiki this one but he’s a famous Swedish opera singer and LGBTQ activist. Rickard (the LEGO builder) captures complex facial expressions quite well. I mean, just look at the tilt of Rickard’s (the opera singer) head and that mouth agape. I can almost hear him belting out notes the rest of us can only dream of. He looks ultra-fabulous with his great hair, earings and makeup. I just love those false lashes! Check out why we think Rickard (the LEGO builder) is one of the most expressive builders we know. This might be the best thing I’ve seen all day and I’ve seen a skater kid brag about how awesome he is, then go on to credit-card his gooch anyway.

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An ogre breaks wind (mill)

LEGO builder Peter Revan tells us don’t piss of the ogre. Upon mulling that over I filed that under good sage advice. Upsetting an ogre can result in your teeth suddenly being where your feet should be and vice versa. Hopefully, this particular ogre is made sweeter and more sedated by compliments because I genuinely like his shaping and clever build techniques. I’m also rather fond of the horse, cart, windmill, and scared little minifigure occupants that help establish the scale of this massive creature. If you feel like you’ve seen the ogre, horse, and cart around the neighborhood before, that is because you have.

Why rehash a previously featured LEGO creation, you may ask? Is this the result of lazy writing? Well, perhaps. But I genuinely believe the addition of the windmill and diorama offers an excellent setting that better illustrates the world this ogre lives in. Plus once you’ve squeezed out a title that fiendishly clever, there’s really no putting a cork in it once you’ve let loose that bout of genius flatulence humor into the world. Can you find it in your hearts to forgive me?

The Gnome Feast delivers whimsy, honey

Sometimes a LEGO creation comes along and immediately you’re like; I totally want to live here! That’s how I felt when I saw this new piece built by Bard Jaskier. Who wouldn’t want to live in a flower-treehouse among a world inhabited by this much whimsy? I love the sparkling flower, the toadstools, the ladybug, and all the blue tulips. (Or are they Forget-Me-Nots?) As sweet as those blue forget-me-jiggers are, the star of the show has got to be the purple bug delivering honey to the inhabitants to feast on in what could be called…a honey bucket. Heh, honey bucket. Get it? OK, I’ll just let myself out. While I make my shameful exit, why not check into why we think Bard Jaskier is as sweet as honey.

A flaming sword is scarier than a regular sword

This new LEGO creation by Geneva Durand begs the question; what is scarier than a regular sword? A flaming sword, of course. No, it’s true; it’s like science-fact written in the annuls of science-y stuff. The same can be said for flaming arrows, a flaming axe, and Flaming Hot Funyuns. I mean, have you seen those things? How are they even considered suitable for human consumption? Anyway, the builder tells us this 1:1 scale weapon is not quite swooshable but you can swing it around a bit if you’re careful. And it is super fun!

Geneva borrowed an epic cape from her brother and while we’re not quite sure if this is a real human in the photo, here’s a shot of a human-like figure standing with the sword to show off its imposing scale. It’s an image suitably bitchin’ enough to be airbrushed on the side of a 70s-era van or a Molly Hatchet album cover.

Isaac is a ray of Sunshine

Based on all of his LEGO creations we’ve seen lately it might be safe to assume that Isaac Wilder is having the best week ever! The dude is prolific, that’s for sure. Now, thanks to Isaac your day can be just a little brighter, too. Here’s a sunny little ’32 Coupe he calls Sunshine. You feel that? That’s your day getting just a little brighter. This might be the best thing I’ve seen all day and I’ve seen someone try to gas up a Tesla. Still not convinced? Then check out our archives to see why we think Isaac lights up our lives with sunshine.

A surfin’ rat rod suitable for Pooh

No, I didn’t resort to using kindergarten potty humor as inspiration for this title. That would be every last one of my other articles, except this one. Instead I’m talking about this slammed little LEGO surfin’ rat rod built by Isaac Wilder. He took inspiration from Jack Dick’s Surf Wagon. The stickers, now that’s where the Pooh reference comes from. They were pilfered from the Winnie the Pooh set that came out a few months back. Pretty sweet, right?

A massive castle and bridge just under the deadline

Some people can work magic under a tight deadline. Take this LEGO castle and bridge built by Thomas van Urk for example. He tells us it was an entry for the Summer Joust: Bridging the Gap category and was finished an hour before the deadline. In his own words; “Since there wasn’t really a category for a large castle I decided to include a bridge in front of the gatehouse. Originally I wanted to leave it at that, but because of the pressure from the arching bridge, it needed to stand on a baseplate. But then, of course, there needed to be water around the whole castle, and then of course there needed to be a landscape across the water. Maybe I went a bit overboard.” If working until the deadline and going a bit overboard yields results like this then we’re pleased as punch.

Thomas says he didn’t even have time to build his favorite part of the castle. I wonder what that could be. To see how the Summer Joust is heating up with all the other builders check out our Summer Joust category in our archives.

The spaceship that (hopefully) comes with fries

Maybe it’s the color scheme or its simplistic blocky shape but this LEGO spaceship built by David Roberts reminds me of a delicious carton of McDonald’s fries. Other commenters on his Flickr stream state that they are reminded of Buck Rogers while others claim this is reminisant of a Viper from Battlestar Galactica. What does this remind you of? No matter what the answer is, we can all agree that this spaceship looks pretty tasty.

We’re going to need an even bigger boat

In 1975, Stephen Speilberg (and to a lesser degree Peter Benchley) made the world afraid to enter the water when the unsettling movie Jaws came out. How do you top that, exactly? Well, LEGO builder Julius von Brunk may have figured out that formula. You simply go larger. He may have arrived at that success quite by accident; the shark turned out much larger than anticipated so the “normal” shark attack scene he thought he was building became an encounter with the prehistoric Megaladon. The protagonists (or are they antagonists?) are a group of pirates proving that a pirate’s life isn’t always yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. The water, and especially the shark with its complex curves, are done to great effect. However, as enticing as a deep golden tan and a breezy cocktail may be, this is one beach I’d much rather avoid!

Cluckery on the high seas

LEGO builder and The Brothers Brick alumn Benjamin Stenlund acquired some chickens recently. This inspired him to build The Bad Egg, a plucky pirate ship inhabited entirely by chickens. As Ben tells it, here we see Captain Cockerel and his bloodthirsty buck-buckaneers prowl the seas in search of gold. Golden corn, that is. The plume of tail feathers at the aft of the ship is a brilliant touch and the chicken masthead is also quite funny, but I like that one of the crow’s nests is an actual nest. Ben tells us he enjoys watching the real-life chickens roam the yard and do their thing, which is mostly eating and pooping. It’s about as productive as some humans get, truth be told.

It’s always great to check in on how an old friend is doing. Have a gander at our archives to see why we think Benjamin Stenlund is still the cock of the walk around here.

Falcon and the winter Toa

LEGO builder Aaron Van Cleave tells us that this is Kualus, Toa Hagah of Ice and wears the Kanohi Mask of Rahi Control. Consider yourselves informed! I like the overall shape of this character, the sword, shield and the doodads going on in the chest area. Its feather plume is also not without its charms but my favorite detail has to be the black hawk companion. It would fit in perfectly on the hood of a 1979 Trans-Am!

A dastardly duo of freaky-deaky bots

In a LEGO world of massive castles and spaceships sometimes it’s refreshing to see little things that are well built. Take this duo of odd little bots created by the enigmatic R 194, for example. First, we see the very expressive Spear Soldier.

Next, we have my personal favorite, the Highway Disturber. It’s like a mythical creature with its unicorn horn.

What is the purpose of these two? Why does the spear soldier look so sad? How does Highway Disturber disturb the highway, exactly? The builder offers no explanation so these little bots propose more questions than answers. Pretty cray-cray, right? Sometimes ya just gotta stop asking questions and go with it.

About Lino

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