Along with traditional media I’m trying out sketching on my laptop with a tablet. Results thus far are mixed at best. Drawing on the tablet is very frustrating. But I did come up with this little gem, and quite inexplicably too.
. . . and the zombie onslaught continued . . .
When I came across a photo of this statue at first I thought it was meant to look as if this figure was about to jump from the ledge of the building. I’m pretty sure this just the photographer’s angle, and that that’s a plinth the statue stands on (this is from an installation in Trafalgar Square by Mark Wallinger, Ecco Homo), but the idea is sticking with me.
Also so interesting abstract pieces:
Check out these interesting (copied) fashion drawings from Paul Poiret, a very influential designer from the turn of the century. I love the way he’s distorted the figure, both with the drawings and the cut of the dresses.
update: I’ve since discovered that these drawing are of Paul Poiret’s designs, but were drawn by Paul Iribe for a catalogue called Les robes de Paul Poiret racontées par Paul Iribe.
Some interesting Art Nouveau elements I found in a German book in the Art and Architecture Library. Art Nouveau is one of my favorite art historical movements. Other than the figure, the elements below are all doors.
Doing research for my senior project I’ve decided to take a new tact with my not taking. Rather than collect pictures and take copious written notes, I’m making an effort to sketch the images I find. This way I can focus on just the parts that interest me, and I’ll get a whole lot of sketching and painting practice in to boot.
The first batch I sketched from a few of my old art history text books.
With winking apologies to E. H. Shepard, Disney, Charles Shultz, Hanna-Barbera, Ikuko Shimizu, Pillsbury, and Theodor Geisel.
Try this, got to Wolfram Alpha and type your first name into the search box. What comes back will be the statistical breakdown of the popularity of your name (at least in the US).
I won’t put my name here, but I can tell you a little about it. The year I was born the name I was given, one of those traditional biblical names, was also given to 50,163 other people in the United States, or so says Wolfram Alpha. That earned my name a ranking of 3rd most popular name over all that year, a named shared by roughly 1 is every 37 people. My name has been popular for quite some time, there are roughly 1.422 million of us in the US, but it just so happens that I was given this name at about it’s peak in popularity, so a sizable number of the people sharing my name are also about my age. I meet them all the time, you have no idea.
The point to take away from this is that my name is far from unique. Something that, in the age of domain names, presents certain problems. Rather than go by my name then, I’ve spent the last few years inventing different monickers to use as user names whenever the need arises. That’s where the name “also” came from. For whatever reason the user name “also” was rarely taken. This is less so today, but when it’s not available, “alsoalso” always is.
As baby names go, “also” is pretty rotten, but from a designers perspective it has a lot going for it. ”A” is a great letter. Repetition is always fun. The word itself is short and punchy. A good brand.
With all the blowing snow we’ve been having there are big dunes of snow piling up all around our yard. However, when the wind encounters an object like a bush it forms these really interesting voids around the object’s base. If I as a fluid dynamics researcher I’m sure I could explain why this happens, but instead I’m an illustrator, so my best guess is bush goblins.
