My final project for my Computer Illustration class. You can view the full version here or nab it as an icon here.
I hope to see it in person someday. Unfortunately, it may be moved further back due to people’s inability to leave things alone.
Read the Hans Christian Andersen version here, makes the fairy tale and the statue infinitely more meaningful.
After losing his sight in 2001, John Bramblitt took up painting - an unlikely creative outlet for a blind man.
He starts by outlining his image on unstretched canvas, using fabric paint. He uses oil paint, because each color has its own unique texture that he can differentiate by touch, using the raised surface of the fabric paint as a guide.
Painting compelling art is a talent in itself, but without vision? This guy is amazing!
More about him, his art and how it’s done on his site: ( here )
*** Please DO NOT HOTLINK TO MY IMAGES ***
Just finished watching The Notorious Bettie Page, recently released on DVD. I was marvelling over the mediocrity of Gretchen Mol playing Bettie, unable to figure out why she was cast until the bangs were cut and the clothes came off.
From there, it was at least visually stimulating, re-enacting many of her famous photo scenes. They nearly lost me earlier in the movie with a fake slap and recoil so badly acted that it makes professional wrestlers look like polished actors with finesse in comparison.
The storytelling is far from compelling, but this is still one I will add to my collection, since it involves Bettie Page and pin-up girls photography.
I also like that the movie portrays her as unrepentant for her cheesecake photos, even after she finds the Jeebus, fiercely declaring that Adam & Eve were nekkid, until they came into sin and were banished from the Garden of Eden - it was then that they wore clothes.
However, at the same time, they also showed that when she stopped modelling was when there was controversy over these photos and their “appeal to deviants,” and felt personal shame after overhearing the case against her photographer, Irving Klaw, in court. I wish she would have perservered, stigmas and religious fanatics be damned, but I suppose this was right for her.
I’ve seen recent interviews with her as an older woman now, and she insists on full shading obscuring her face and body from the camera as she spoke with her soft Southern voice. I think this adds to her iconic legacy in pop-culture, insisting on being remembered only as she was at her prime.
Unfortunately, there was a 1972 mugshot that did no justice to maintaining that memory. The woman in the mugshot has no spark, just joyless features vaguely reminiscent.
This makes me happy me on so many levels:
No teenager wants to be effectively babysat as they’re all struggling for independence, but Elena was out of necessity - to keep from being trampled and help her carry things. Now her dog, Jewel, handles it all for her, even pushing elevator buttons!
Her adoptive mom is an aspiring children’s writer, and keeps a blog. I’m always fascinated by life behind the scenes, biographies and blogs… what you can find by looking closer, to paraphrase American Beauty’s tagline.
I’m still seeing an influx of traffic from searches on primordial dwarves. I’m optimistically hoping that this is from intellectual curiosity moreso than anything else. They are far too beautiful to be made fun of.
One of my favorite artists. I’d forgotten how profoundly trauma inspired his paintings. At the age of 14, he saw his mother’s body retreived from the nearby river, a suicide, her nightgown pulled over her head, obscuring her face.
Additionally, every nude female form in his work was based specifically on his own wife, never anyone else. This is obvious when you see pictures of Georgette Magritte in comparison. I only wish I had a full body shot of her, better demonstrating this.
It seems limiting, to only portray a single female form, but speaks volumes of his love for her, now immortal.
On a sidenote, if you see the movie Dellamorte Dellamore / Cemetary Man, there is a steamy scene based on “The Lovers” painting shown at top. I highly recommend it on many levels: Gnaghi (I love him!), absurdism, sensuality, surrealism, gore and humor.
Continued from yesterday’s post, further elaboration on how I perceive the man in the moon.
To me, it looks like a face in ecstasy, as best represented by my favorite sculpture, The Ecstasy of St. Theresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Funny that my favorite sculptor would be devoutly religious, something I am the direct opposite of, at least in the commonly-held sense. Bernini had such a knack for capturing the apex of emotional intensity in blocks of marble.
Here’s more on St. Teresa.
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