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

What the crazy European kids were into

When I think of my childhood the Ford Pinto comes to mind. That’s because we had one when I was growing up and apparently Dad thought nothing of our safety. But across the pond, LEGO builder Jonathan Elliott tells us that during his childhood, the Mk1 Ford Transit was the ubiquitous thing in the United Kingdom as well as Germany, Belgium, and Holland. It’s still a Ford but apparently far less explosive. In fact, the Ford Transit is so revered out there that the platform is still used today in everything from school buses to police and ambulance applications. Jonathan replicated the shape nicely with this little build proving you don’t need a vanload of pieces to create an accurate LEGO model.

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Crawling with Classic Space nostalgia

Are you shopping for a rover that can handle rough terrain? (Aren’t we all?) Then Blake Foster has all the answers you seek with this LEGO All-Terrain Classic Space Tank or AT-CST. It makes excellent use of this bubble windscreen as well as this Bionicle shell. If that is giving you just a touch of deja vu, that is because Blake recently used the same parts with this Grumpy Gnat. Blake seems to specialize in spacecraft that tickle the ol’ LEGO nostalgia bone. Check out our archives to see what I mean.

The Palm Beach concept that took 1956 by storm

Palm Beach, Florida is known for idyllic beaches, palatial mansions, and Jeffrey Epstein. Wow, that escalated fast! But optimism abounded in the 50s and legendary Italian designer Battista ‘Pinin’ Farina created the Rambler-Nash Palm Beach concept car in 1956. This ended up being one of his most eye-catching concepts and Tim Inman has replicated the design nicely in LEGO. It has all the niceties you can expect from a piece this size; the doors open as well as the hood and the interior is well detailed. Whether it be the thin flex-tube strip along the side, the rounded air intake up front, or the sloping tailfins around back, there is plenty to love about Tim’s creation. Tim has really been on a roll lately as we’ve also featured his Mercedes G550 recently.

Short in stature but long in hair? Per Wilkinsson to the rescue!

What do you do when you’re under five feet tall and your voluminous tresses are getting wild and wooly? Why you would pay a visit to Per Wilkinsson’s Dwarven Barber Shop, of course. LEGO builder Aurore presents this amazing little shop complete with Celtic ornamentation, colorful awning, Viking-style roof and a sign adorned with scissors. Plenty of animals perch on or near the shop while a patron outside haggles for a beard trim. If it turns out Per was just a bit too feisty with the trimmers, you can cover your new botched hairdo with an assortment of bronze and silver helmets at the stand outside.

The whole shebang was inspired by the Friends Heartlake City Hair Salon set. Brilliant!

Get on your bike and be on your merry way!

Time goes by, seasons change but this merry bicyclist keeps on keeping on. That’s the premise to this fun new LEGO creation by Bricksom Parsom. I see the chain belt drive and the gears, but what does it do when you turn the crank? I won’t spoil it for you. You just have to watch the video to find out.

It’s all-you-can-eat, not eat-all-you-can!

A LEGO builder who goes by the dubious name of buttloaf_builds (if that’s your real name!) has constructed something called The Gluttonous. It comes with the ominous quote; “Covet not lest you be devoured by your greed in turn.” That reminds me, unless you happen to live in devil-may-care Florida or Texas, most of us haven’t seen an all-you-can-eat buffet since before the pandemic. Nor are they giving away free samples at Trader Joe’s or Costco to stuff our faces with. Is this a good thing? Somehow it hasn’t stopped me from adding another inch to my ever-expanding waistline. Still, this is a pretty neat creation even if it’s a bit disturbing.

It is inspired by this mural painted by Coppo di Marcovaldo in circa 1260. It kind of makes you want to reconsider eating that third cookie now, doesn’t it?

The wonders of space captivates both young and old

Show of hands, who loved all things having to do with outer space as a kid? Also show of hands, who never lost that dream even as an adult? Right? Space captures the imagination and keeps a child-like fascination within us like nothing else can…except maybe dinosaurs. Instagram user architeclego captures this feeling of wonder quite nicely with this LEGO diorama called To the moon. Whether it be the Classic Space t-shirt, the rocket diagram, or even the bunny companion, I can get lost in these details forever. The moon shining through the attic window is a sight to behold. What can I say? I’m a kid all over again!

One Osprey that won’t get cancelled anytime soon

Are you bummed about the recent cancellation of LEGO’s Technic Osprey V-22 set? Yeah, me too. It’s like LEGO suddenly remembered that they don’t like being associated with military stuff and then it’s no soup for you! The decision has me scratching my head over what to do with the official Red Baron and both Sopwith Camel sets now. Anyway, Simon Liu is not one to let a cancelled set bring him down. I know it’s not the same, but here’s his very sleek futuristic V-42-Osprey in neat olive green with orange highlights. The point of showing you this is, while LEGO occasionally makes doofus decisions, they provide the pieces so that you can build anything you want. Who needs directions and an official set? With LEGO bricks and a bit of imagination, the world is your oyster. Or Osprey.

School’s out for summer. School’s out forever!

Did you ever have that dream where you’re back in high school and all the kids are riding to school in a chopped rusto-mod school bus and everyone is thrashing out to Alice Cooper’s School’s Out? You haven’t? That’s like my second-most recurring dream beside the one where we’re in high school and Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden is teaching gym class. High school for me was in the late eighties so you can forgive me if all my dreams involve hair metal. Red2 may or may not have the same dreams but they at least have the chopped rusto-mod school bus down pat. This LEGO creation features a chromed-out Cummins Deisel motor and an opening folding school bus door.

You need a tetanus shot just to look at this thing! I remember tetanus shots. Our school nurse administered them to us while smoking Virginia Slims. As I said, school for me was a long time ago and it was a different time back then. No one smokes in school anymore and Alice Cooper is now a conservative old man who enjoys golf.

A work of art you don’t have to lose an ear over

Instagram user legotruman renders a LEGO version of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night and we’re all pretty impressed. See what I did there? Impressed. Because Impressionist. Get it? This is why I make the big bucks here, people. Anyway, we can all appreciate good LEGO art here. I particularly enjoy the plates set at all those crazy rakish angles representing those crazy rakish clouds. The moon with its halo glow is also quite charming.

Let this spirit wolf take you on a journey

What can you build using eleven pounds of Technic beams and wedge plates? If you said a LEGO midi-scale Star Destroyer you might be correct. However, if you said White Spirit Wolf you are likely Michael Kanemoto. Wedge plates and Technic beams are not the first things that come to mind when replicating natural elements but Michael pulls off the look nicely. He tells us this labor of love took about one-hundred hours on and off from April 30th to July 14th.

I particularly love the eyes; there’s a depth and cunning knowing to them. I’ve only viewed wolves from a safe distance but this LEGO creation possesses the same mesmerizing gaze as a real wolf in the wild. How can you stare into this face and deny it whatever it is that spirit wolves want? I’m smitten!

That rumbling just might be Godzilla: King of Monsters

What’s that rumbling you hear? It could be that three-bean burrito repeating on you or it could be something even more monstrous. LEGO Saturn V co-designer Valerie Roche teams up with her Space-X co-designer Matthew Nolan to build Godzilla: King of Monsters. The end result is 2034 pieces of pagoda-toppling mass-destruction! Godzilla’s features include a posable head, with snapping jaws, articulated arms, elbows, hands, and fingers.
Also articulated legs, knee joints, ankles, and feet as well as a rotatable tail and his signature dorsal plates, which “ripple with internal energy”. I’m going to assume that means light bricks. That is some good Godzilla action right there! We’re pretty fascinated by this mutant monster. Check out our Godzilla archives.