Yesterday, while delaying the completion of my FINAL grad school application, I noticed the following gem in my friend, Megan Keely’s, gmail status.
A chicken banjolele! Had I known that a chicken banjolele existed, I would have included it on my Christmas wishlist instead of the Gold Tone banjolele. Oh, but wait my friends. THE FUN DOESN’T STOP THERE…
A MOUSTACHE UKULELE!!! I think my favorite might be the “Sad Cowboy.” Or maybe the “Shirley Temple.” Anyways, this discovery (xylocopa, moustache ukuleles, etc.) is very timely, because I recently noticed mini cracks in my ukulele. Chicago is too dry for my little ukulele. Anyways, the above creations are all by Xylocopa, a design studio in Tuscon, Arizona. I recommend that you wade through their site. The Mad Scientists Alphabet Blocks are especially glorious.
Copyright Adweek.com
Once upon a time a quiet, but slightly mad, Welsh illustrator met a loud, but extremely mad American journalist and a legend was born. One horse race, a drug-fueled drive from Las Vegas to California, several wrecked hotels, many wrecked minds and countless destroyed mimeograph machines forged the lifelong friendship of Ralph Steadman and Hunter S. Thompson.
Steadman’s slightly acerbic satirical doodles at “Punch” and “The Daily Telegraph” in the UK had gained him a respectable, if small, following amongst the liberal readers and critics, but it wasn’t until he snagged a commission from “Scanlan’s” to illustrate Thompson’s piece on the infamous Kentucky Derby in 1970 that his surreal and twisted scratchings came to life.
Copyright Ralph Steadman
“This man had an impressive head chiseled from one piece of bone,” recalled Steadman later. “and the top part was covered down to his eyes by a floppy-brimmed sun hat. His top half was draped in a loose-fitting hunting jacket of multi-coloured patchwork. He wore seersucker blue pants, and the whole torso was pivoted on a pair of huge white plimsolls with a fine red trim around the bulkheads. Damn near 6-foot-6 of solid bone and meat holding a beaten-up leather bag across his knee and a loaded cigarette holder between the arthritic fingers of his other hand.”
Thompson’s gonzo style of journalism – putting himself at the heart of any story and relaying his experiences of the moments in a dark stream of consciousness – held a mirror up to Steadman’s crazed artistic sensibilities and made him look ever deeper into his own nightmare visions of the world.
Copyright Ralph Steadman
The spray and ink blot style of illustration was not a new thing. From Ronald Searle’s grubby little prep school boys of St. Custard’s to Gerald Scarfe’s cruel caricatures and around Quentin Blake’s whimsical drawings for Roald Dahl, the calculated mistake of splashed black ink had always been a feature of satirical portraiture.
Steadman turned it into an art form with elements of collage and touches of fine art in amongst the savagery. He’s won many prestigious design and illustration awards, worked with other authors, done graphics for companies and records and written his own novels. Yet it’s his work with Thompson that fuels the legend to ever-greater heights: bats and rabid dogs, bleak desert landscapes composed of twisted telegraph poles and infinite perspective lines, bloated bureaucrats with gaping mouths and US matrons with cruel features and monstrous bodies.
Copyright Ralph Steadman
And it’s his drive and creative zeal, even at the age of 73, which sets him apart. “I must have a feeling that: ‘Oooh I’m really excited about this!’ The most depressed times I have is when I just don’t wanna do anything. A living hell is not being creative, being utterly devoid of any creative impulse whatsoever.”
Check out the work of Ralph Steadman at his official website
Read his excellent autobiography
I will readily admit that my love of books is an obsession that has extended beyond the normal. I spend more time drawing them than I do either reading them or writing them, though I’m probably better equipped for the later.
I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart: I am, I am, I am.
No matter! I am busy making a series of classic book desktop wallpapers! Remember, way back when, when I provided you with your very own Catcher in the Rye wallpaper!? Wasn’t that fun??? Yes? Good! Now for The Bell Jar! My edition of The Bell Jar is perhaps the ugliest in existence. I think it’s some movie edition (was there a movie???). But when I re-drew it in my ugly, wobbly hand, I found it weirdly more pleasing, math has never been my strong suit, but it is as if ugly squared = pretty!
If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.
The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.
So, I’ve got many sizes, shapes, and styles for you! I know everyone’s computer set-up and style is different. (My personally customized setup with my dual-screens is thus:)
But enough about me. Here’s some free backgrounds for you!!!
Do these bright and cheery quotes make you want to read The Bell Jar? Have a go! With a better cover! Unless you like ugly covers for their kitsch value, then get this one
Remember when I claimed Ray Fenwick was my boyfriend? Well, he still isn’t, but he does happen to have a library show tonight in Toronto (1086 Queen Street West, 6pm). If you can’t get there by plane, train, or automobile (or bike, we’re trying to save the environment!) then you can check out the whole library collection here. Then you can check out his awesome coordinating letterpress print (at least it looks letterpressy to me).
Finally, I was just re-surfing his GLORIOUS web-page, and found this painting set about finger & toenails,
which reminds me of Maira Kalman’s beautiful, rambling Op-Art in the NYTimes. Maybe these two should get together. (Sigh. Always a bridesmaid!)
Yasmine just put up the newest issue of Parasol Magazine. I liked #1 but with #2… I am really in love. Honestly. THERE ARE CUPCAKES ON THE COVER (see picture below).
Consider this. It is 5:30 am and I am writing a post on this even though I have a combination of a headache & insomnia & the magazine was issued less than two hours ago.
It’s up in both an online Issuu version and a downloadable pdf. Download the pdf, yo. Above are some of the highlights, a little taster-sample so you will think, my god!!!!!!!, I need one of these myself! You WILL need one — it will inspire you to be creative, eat cupcakes, wear vintage jewelry, cute shoes, and paint pictures with rainbows. Bestest of all, it’s so ridiculously free there is no reason not to get it!
I know several of my readers (and writers. and self.) are unemployed, and have wondered what to do with their new found time (besides, of course, looking for nonexist jobs, completely changing their future plans, and/or questioning the meaning of life). Well, how is this for a new column: Unemployment Project of the Week.
This week’s project: make a portrait of a portrait. This especially good for those of you, like myself, who have limited artistic ability. A portrait is hard, but if a portrait has already been made, an artist has already showed you the portrait-sitter’s most prominent and important features.
I am no artistic genius, but you can see I had fun with the above Frida paintings, took artistic liberties, and still managed to get something that is identifiable as the artist herself. To make these, I looked at a portrait of Frida Kahlo (far left, by Frida herself) and made two very different versions, the one in the middle is about 8×10 and in acrylic, and the one on the right is a little moleskin notebook sketch with watercolor.
You also don’t have to make a painting of a painting, you can make a painting of a photo, or any-which-way you choose. As you can see, I ruined this little cartoonish-painting (I suppose I could try and fix that left side of his face) I did on a business card-sized artist trading card. Nonetheless, you can tell who it is because it’s a famous portrait, so I was still pretty satisfied (expectations are low for the unemployed, alas).
And, finally, one of the most fun ways to re-create a black and white portrait is by making a linoleum print (pictured here hanging on my bulletin board with a nice little sharpie covering it). I think these are very eye-catching. Check out my sort-of old, but-still-completely-relevant linoleum print tutorial here.
Have fun with your portraits!
Okay, Ray Fenwick is not my boyfriend. I really just meant that as a general expression of love and affection for his art. Sorry. For the confusion. Sorry Ray. Sorry Ray’s possible significant other. Sorry everyone else. Sorry co-editor Tricia for soiling Stickers & Donut’s image as a reputable source.
Anyway, so I’ve been scouring Ray’s bright and beautiful web-site ever since my friend bought me some fantastically funny bookplates he made for Tiny Showcase. (He is a master of hand-lettering.) Then I realized I had admired some of his work on Threadless, and elsewhere on Tiny Showcase. Then I realized I was in love, which was also about the time I wrote the title of the post.
I love Ray Fenwick’s web-site, but there are several issues I have with it: (1) I want everything, (2) I cannot have everything, (3) I need help locating the things I could, potentially, have.
SO, to increase the problems presented by 1 & 2, and hopefully solve 3, I’ve collected some places where you employed people can purchase Ray Fenwick’s work so you don’t have to merely look at it lovingly on your computer screen, sighing occasionally.
By the way, the Ray Fenwick logo at the top of the image is from his webpage which you should visit. Because it has more stuff than I can possibly post here.
I love reading, but I also adore books as physical objects. This is why I am in love with Penguin. Especially today. In fact, I can barely contain the love I feel for these bright, beautifully designed book sets & their matching posters (HINT: Scroll down for some Shepard Fairey). SWOON!!!
I was reading The Penguin Blog, which is UK-based, and found out about these awesome Penguin Sets. There are 13 sets of books which contain a bunch of novels of a similar theme or by the same author, and each set has covers designed by a single artist.
What’s more, FIVE of the sets also have an accompanying poster (or two). The BEST of which is the George Orwell set because it includes TWO posters (1984 and Animal Farm) designed by Shepard Fairey (of Obama Poster fame).
Each Penguin set includes 2 to 16 books (and 0 to 2 posters) and run from $40 to $380 (the priciest collections aren’t necessarily the ones with the most books).
Click to see the rest of the posters and details of the most expensive “luxury” books. (Also, more of my rambling.) Or, check out the UK Penguin Sets page (I can’t find a US Sets page, but you can order to the US)! (more…)
Which do you like best? (Some of my favorites listed at the bottom of the page.)
CLICK to open the related page or product in a new window.
Am I missing anything? Let me know! I’ll update the page through election day as I find more relevant links! WordPress is having trouble with all of the added links, I’ll add links to Part II through election day. Lots more there!
Obama & voting prints, merchandise, blogs, web-pages, posters, maps, and more. Click on each images & it will open the related site in a new window.
Have a favorite? Here are some of mine:
Web-Pages
Clothes
Prints/Posters (besides every other one from AIGIA, also these were quite hard to choose):
Other
Although I found many of these through my own ventures, searches, and a significant number were posted on multiple “big blogs”, I did find a handful of useful links in the following locations: notcot.org, Urban Outfitters Vote Blog, Urban Outfitters Store, SwissMiss, SeriousEats.
PS VOTE!!!
PPS If you want to link to this post, I’ve got some cool images you can use:
A couple of weeks ago, my friend and I tip-toed (him, metaphorically; me, literally) across the Gehry bridge to see the Chicago International Poster Biennial exhibition. My favorite poster was by Tomasz Boguslawski, a Polish artist and master of assemblage art.
Delicious.
In addition to being one of my favorite bands, Titus Andronicus is an often overlooked Shakespeare play. With this fantastically grotesque composition, Tomasz supremely captures the play’s gruesomeness. I love how he expertly molds the head based on the natural strata and contortions of the meat. The bone at the base of the neck suggests a spinal cord, and the strands of adipose tissue add further facial definition. The marginally sanguineous laurel serves as an integral component, and perfectly complements this piece. Complementary like sprinkles and icing. Or barnacles and whales.
This print is available at the Polish Posters Shop
