Results matching “paint”

Barbara Szepesi Szucs is a Hungarian illustrator. She is inspired by children and nature and paints watercolours of birds, flowers, animal, and people. Her artwork varies in different style, but I prefer the whimsical illustrations instead of the more detailed and figurative ones. (A few of my favourite pieces from her are below.)

Street art from Anthony Lister, an Australian who is now living in New York City, is located throughout Shoreditch in London. I first discovered the large pieces in Corbet Place in the instantly-recognisable style. These include a series of slightly out-of-focus eyes. Another large piece is located in a car park near Shoreditch's Box Park. As I mentioned, the style of painting is recognisable. Black is used to outline, and light shades of pale blue and red can be seen to add additional detail. The artwork mainly depicts human features, such as eyes and faces. The following pieces on a wall in Corbet Place look like they are watching all passing by.

Paste-ups, stickers, and other small drawings bearing the name of the artist can be discovered in all corners of Shoreditch. On two separate walls near some other street art, I discovered the same "moon face" doodle with the name of the artist and the year.

Similar doodles and paste-ups were discovered on this wall, at the corner of Brick Lane and Bethnal Green Road, which is plastered in street art. 

 

 

For more information about this street artist, read the article below and see one of the works in progress. Sadly, this work no longer exists: http://streetartlondon.co.uk/blog/2012/11/16/lister-street-art-london/

Street artist Thierry Noir has arrived in London. The Berlin artist was one of the first in the street art movement and famously painted on the Berlin Wall from 1984 (until its fall in 1989). Some of his work has started to appear in Shoreditch, and I captured a glimpse of some of his work at the end of last week with the Village Underground Wall near Great Eastern Street alive with one of his figures. The figure appears with one of my favourite street art artists' figures, Stik. Both artists use bright colours and simplified drawings of figures. At the end of last week, Stik and Thierry Noir presented a discussion about street art at Somerset House.

In addition to the Village Underground Wall, I noticed a couple of Thierry Noir's figures appeared to be in conversation on a wall above the car park opposite. These were a little bit difficult to spot and photograph, but I managed to get a photograph of them on Monday, though they'd sadly been painted over by another 'artist'.

On Monday, I spotted one of the well-known walls that hosts street art (on Great Eastern Street) was decorated with his figures against a black background. This made me think of chalk drawings.  

One of my favourite pieces of street art to be discovered in London are the mushrooms by street artist Christiaan Nagel. The mushrooms are made of foam, fiber glass, stainless steel, and they are painted in bright colours. They can be discovered on the tops of buildings and walls in Shoreditch, London. 

Below is a photograph of one of Ronzo's monster sculptures in the same square as the street art photographed above. These fellows started to appear at the City's boundaries, but most of them have been removed except the ones located in Shoreditch. They are known as the 'credit crunch monsters'. Smaller ones appeared in the City (known as 'Pity of London'), but these were removed. However, this character has become quite popular. It's a pity that I did not get to see the smaller versions in the City.

In addition to the above, Ronzo has created additional artwork in London. This "Fresh in Town" artwork with the cockroach sculpture appeared earlier this year near Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch. He also created a series of street art featuring pigeons with gold chains and ball caps. The one below was also located in Corbet Place off Brick Lane, but it was replaced sometime at the end of last year or beginning of this year. I think it's brilliant.

One of the works of street art to appear before the Olympics featured Ronzo's pigeon with the Olympic logo. Recently, sculptures of pigeons have appeared on Great Eastern Street. 

To read more about this street artist and to read an interview from him, go to: http://www.veryverylondon.com/2012/03/08/interview-ronzo-a-street-artist/

I've been seeing the "Super Foetus" street art in Shoreditch, mainly on and near Brick Lane; a particular concentration of the image has been seen in and around Corbet Place off of Brick Lane. The imagery includes wall paintings, street paintings, paste-ups, and clay decorations stuck on the sides of buildings and walls. According to the official blog (1), the image is also on clothing, body tattoos, and jewellry. 

Sebastien Lecca is the creator of the concept. On his Facebook "Super Foetus" page (http://www.facebook.com/SuperFoetus), he states that the foetus is a sign of faith in humanity. The imagery has caused controversy with some feeling it portrayed political views. An interview by Lecca to explain the image and the different views is located here: http://superfoetus.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/article-paru-sur-le-blog-mcwp-en-reponse-aux-attaques/

The image is also being used with the super hero image, such as Superman in a baby form. The image can be found on t-shirts and in sculptures. 

For more information about this artist and the image, go to the following:

Blog: http://superfoetus.wordpress.com/

Web: http://www.superfoetus.com/

I am actually not sure which street artists were responsible for some of the artwork below to credit them. Let me know if you are aware of the artist so that I can credit their work.

I headed up to Yorkshire this summer as part of a weekend break during my anniversary weekend. Actually, because this year is a leap year, the day itself fell on the Monday, but the bloke and I decided to celebrate at the weekend.

The last time I visited Welburn and Bulmer in Yorkshire was close to ten years ago. The villages are still beautiful with golden stone cottages and nice gardens, and they are still very quiet. Apparently the ancestors lived in Welburn, but they were buried in Bulmer, which is the next village just down the road. Both villages are near Castle Howard. The last time I was at Welburn, I was certain it had another shop or post office; however, a small bakery/restaurant had opened up where I'd always remembered there being a small shop. This appears to be the only shop in the village now. I had a hot chocolate and toastie here. Across the road is an old schoolhouse with a single clock, and this had not changed.

After the quick meal, we headed over to Bulmer. This village is smaller and quieter. I took a quick walk up to the little church and noticed more changes. The last time I had visited, the graves were open with high grass around, and they were not well-tended. This time, they had put fence around the graves and kept sheep inside. This looks picturesque with the sheep amongst the graves, but the sheep are no doubt wearing away the grave stones as they eat the grass near it and lay against the stones. I noticed that several stones seemed to be wearing away at the bottom. 

After visiting the graves, we drove to Bridlington seaside resort before continuing on the journey to Hull. Although much of Hull is modern, the city has a lot of history and was also once popular in Victorian times. Unfortunately, the city suffered during the second World War, but the docks and gardens are good to visit, and there's many places to shop. 

On Sunday morning, we stopped off at Beverley, which is a picturesque town north of Hull. Apparently, it was one of the ten most populated towns in England and was made rich and popular due to the wool trade. Beverley has many beautiful historic buildings and cottages, and the phone boxes are painted white (as they are in Hull). This is the only part of the UK where the phone boxes are a different colour to the standard red.

Beverley has a nice market square, church, and a cathedral. The town seems to be built in a linear fashion instead of surrounding a central point. I parked near one of the city gates and walked through two or three squares before arriving at Beverley Minster. The town was quiet as it was Sunday morning.

Walking further down the main streets, the beautiful Beverley Minster came into view. Walking early on Sunday morning was nice; the streets were quiet except for the melodic ringing of the church bells.

I've recently been inspired by book art after seeing "Maze of Books" in South Bank this summer. This was a part of the London 2012 Festival. This consisted of a maze of 250,000 books in a room. 

I've also been considering the importance of the book spine. The book's spine is normally the first element of the book that the book browser in a shop (or in a library) sees. Of course, people do "judge a book by its cover", and that makes the spine all the more important. According to Sinclair (2), the book spine is often neglected by designers.

What elements make up a book design? The designer has to consider text direction, font size, and colour.

Berry (1), a book designer, gives a few pointers on text direction for book spines. The most readable book spines would be thick enough to list the title and author on the spine without the user tilting their head. However, most books are not thick enough to allow this, so the words must be written down the size. According to Berrry (1), viewers in North America read the spine from top to bottom; in Europe, they read from bottom to top.

Berry also states arguments for the book title or the author to be in larger font with the rule: If the author is well-known, it is best to have the author's name in larger font (1).

Fixabook is a consultancy that looks at book designs and gives guidance based on the spines (amongst other book-cover-related elements) (2). 

Readability of the font and the correct use of typography is the best indicator about a book and also determines if the book will stand out on the shelf. I have included some examples of good book spine designs.

Coralie Bickford-Smith has had several awards for her book covers for Penguin Books. I have included a selection of her work below, but more of her work can be viewed on her website at:   http://www.cb-smith.com

Jessica Hische is another designer who has worked on Penguin books, and she uses bold typefaces.

More of her work can be found on her website at: http://jessicahische.is

An artist uses books and book spines to create artwork:

1) Berry, John. D. Putting some spine into design. http://www.creativepro.com/article/dot-font-putting-some-spine-in-design [July 26, 2001].

2) Sinclair, Mark. Look after your spines, book designers. http://creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/february/book-spine-design-fixabook

I discovered the snow at about 5:00 in the morning as I noticed the brightness coming from the hotel window. I was shocked, to say the least. The snow was still coming down thickly and would continue to for the rest of that morning. Needless to say, we did not expect to have snow on our holiday to southern/south-eastern Europe in May, so our clothes were not the warmest. Despite this, we soldiered on to make the most of it. Unfortunately, many of the places we wanted to visit were closed due to the snow, and the viewpoints around the city had restricted visibility due to the snow and mist. We hired a guide to take us around and give us a tour of the city.

Have you visited Sarajevo? What do you think of the city?