Making Art From Money—Mitchell Vargas Draws On Dollar Bills Turning Them Into Money Art

Sure it might be a felony to draw on and so deface a dollar bill, but it's worth it when the images you're drawing are this good. Mitchell Vargas (aka Miami Inkslinger) is a tattoo artist from Florida who along with inking also has a hobby of drawing musicians, Dragon Ball Z characters, and other pop culture figures on $100 bills.

Some examples of his artwork contain a dark sense of humor within the design, or show a sense of relationship to the medium the characters are drawn on, because the canvas is legal tender it just doesn't make sense in your brain, but then you look again and it does. Weird.

Take for example the portrait of Tony (Scarface) Montana in the examples below atop of a Cuban bank note surrounded by the tools of his trade giving his, "What you lookin' at?" stare. It's perfect.

Sure it might be a waste of money and it's not just dollars either, but other currency like the Chinese yuan and Mexican peso. Vargas draws his characters on with colored pencils, and then sells them framed.

For instance a $100 bill of Bob Marley goes for $40, so effectively he's losing $60, but hey, it looks great.

And hey, after all, that's what counts, right?

You can check out his money art below and head to his Instagram for more.