Monday, October 25, 2010

Photos - Goro Miyazaki






Photos - Goro Miyazaki

I found some of these wonderful images of the listed blog - hope you enjoy them.

Goro Miyazaki is back with a new animation short. This television commercial is a celebration of Nisshin Seifun Group's 110th birthday. Nisshin and Ghibli began working together in 2008, as co-sponsors of the Ghibli Museum Library, which has brought many beloved and influential animated films from around the world to Japan.

This 30-second commercial, presented in a hand-drawn calligraphy style, is available online. The website has few links, but, naturally, everything is in Japanese. I've included the above screenshot so you know what page to look for. I think you'll be able to find your way.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Maurice Sendak’s Tribute to Beatrix Potter



























M
aurice Sendak has been called "the Picasso of children's books." But he is much more than that. There has not been another author/artist working during the past fifty years who comes close to his combined genius in both line and word. Only Beatrix Potter in this century might be thought of as comparable.
— Justin Schiller

The following is from the book
Caldescott & Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures by Maurice Sendak

" I know that Peter Rabbit, for the audience, needs no boosting from me, but I would like to point to a few details that might help make my own feelings about it clear. I will refer, of course, to both words and pictures, for in this book there is no separating them."

"Above all, this tiny book vividly communicates a sense of life, and this, I believe, is achieved through an imaginative synthesis of factual and fantastical components."

"This book, so apparently simple, smooth, straight-forward, is to my eye textured and deepened by the intimate, humorous observations that Beatrix Potter makes in her pictures."

"I tremendously admire the poetry of Miss Potter's art as she develops the fantastic, realistic, truthful story."

"Peter Rabbit, for all its gentle tininess, loudly proclaims that no story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it is not a work of imagination."


The following narrative and the images used as examples are from the Victoria and Albert Museum Website data base.

Sendak’s illustrations to Robert Graves’s children’s story, The Big Green Book (1962), incorporate several images by Beatrix Potter, including sketches of the bedroom she slept in at Camfield Place, the gabled roof of Bush Hall and the potting shed at Bedwell Lodge, immortalised as Mr. McGregor’s potting shed in The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It has been said that ‘No other children’s book artist has had the nerve to borrow with the abandon and playfulness of Sendak. His use of borrowed imagery is vigorous, transforming, never slavish.’
















Hello to a fellow Beatrix Potter fan - Hailey.

Both of these artists' works have been a part of my visual vocabulary my whole life and the more I look the more I love their art. So as I have been researching and revisiting their work I am so pleased to see that Sendak really enjoys and and is positively influenced by Potter's work.

Natural Yosemite 'Firefall' at Horsetail Fall


Yosemite Falls (Upper, 1,430 ft.; Middle, 675 ft.; Lower, 320 ft.) is one of the tallest in North America and fifth highest in the world with a total drop of 2,425 feet.

For a few weeks in February, if the water is flowing in Horsetail Fall, photographers and park visitors gather in the waning evening light for an amazing natural display. The 'natural firefall' appears when the angle of the setting sun sets the waterfall ablaze with reds and oranges, like a fire was falling down the cliffs on the shoulder of El Capitan.

Where:
The most convenient, and frequently shot view of Horsetail Fall is at the El Capitan picnic area, approximat
ely 1.7 miles past Yosemite Lodge at the Falls on Northside Drive. In late February, you’ll often see rows of photographers of all levels there catching the last rays of light in the evening.

Of course, the most unique images often come from photographers willing to explore for different angles and locations that also capture the light of the Fall. According to local professional photographer, Nancy Robbins, there are many places that work. Just look for places where the falls will be backlit by the setting sun, such as along the river, or along the rim.

When:
The ‘firefall’ is typically the most stunning during middle to late February. However, the natural firefall ef
fect depends on conditions for the year, and photographers may be luckier before or after that time frame depending on the amount of water flow in Horsetail Fall, and the cloud cover.




The following are found images.




Friday, October 1, 2010

“night night don’t let the bed bugs bit”



How to get rid of bed bugs 18th century style - thestar.com

I am posting this not only because this bedbug thing is so strange and apocalyptic but because of this fabulous Dr. Suess drawing. “Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, produced this ad for Flit, a popular exterminant for bedbugs in the 1930s and 1940s.” So here I am actually thinking about the “night night don’t let the bed bugs bit” my mother and father used to tell me every night and that perhaps it is no longer a sweet little rhyme but has become a little like the beginning of some crazy scary movie plot line.


As for bedbug commentary in this article a book is sited as a source for riding your house of the little guys, The Complete Vermin-Killer, circa 1777.

A 1777 English tract titled The Complete Vermin-Killer, for example, contains several prescriptions for killing bedbugs.

First on the list: Beat some gunpowder into the crevices of the affected bedstead. Now “fire it with a match, and keep the smoak in.” Make sure to keep doing that for an hour. Or until you die, whichever comes first.

Are you alive? Good. Are the bedbugs? Rats. Here’s another handy suggestion from the book: “boil a handful of Wormwood and white Hellebore in a proper quantity of urine, till half of it is evaporated; and waft the joints of your bedstead with the remainder.”

In the off-chance that Loblaws is all out of urine and hellebore, replace that concoction with the juice of wild cucumbers plus a quantity of “good tar.” Or vinegar mixed with the gall of an ox. Or the guts of rabbits, boiled in water.

As a final resort, Vermin-Killer recommends, burn some brimstone under each corner of the bed, or instead of brimstone, three ounces of Guinea-pepper. Be forewarned, however: “let no one remain in the room, or the consequences would be very prejudicial.”