Just look at these uber-cool drawings by Esra Røise!  Aren’t they vivid!  And full of life!

I’ve found a find!  Hurrah!  If you don’t already know about Kareena Zerefos then its time you did.  Her illustrations are just… ooooh… wonderful.

This is what she says about herself:

Conceptually based around memories, dreams and nostalgia; Kareena creates a bittersweet, slightly unsettling feeling in her work by exploring themes of isolation and escapism. She works using a variety of media, including pencil, gouache and ink, and often combines traditional drawing with digital graphics.

It even sounds beautiful, doesn’t it?

I LOVE these drawings by Martine Rupert so so much.  I really do.  They’re just so intricate and personal and … well… cool!  

I’d love to commission one.  But of where?  It would be such a dilemma for me…  If you were asking Martine to make you one of these pictures, where would you choose?  And why?

Incidentally I’m loving this poem by Walt Whitman:

I see the cities of the earth, and make myself a 
part of them, 
I am a real Londoner, Parisian, Viennese, 
I am a habitan of St. Petersburgh, Berlin, Constantinople, 
I am of Adelaide, Sidney, Melbourne, 
I am of Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Limerick, 

I am of Madrid, Cadiz, Barcelona, Oporto, Lyons, 
Brussels, Berne, Frankfort, Stuttgart, Turin, 
Florence, 
I belong in Moscow, Cracow, Warsaw — or north- 
ward in Christiana or Stockholm — or in 
some street in Iceland, 
I descend upon all those cities, and rise from them 
again.

I love these drawings by Eveline Tarunadjaja. 

Cool, aren’t they?

When I was little, I used to have to be told bedtime stories.  It was my Dad’s job.  Sometimes he would read me a chapter of The Hobbit or The Narnia Chronicles but mostly he would tell me Frances stories.  (I only recently realised that Frances was called Frances because I was Fran, but that’s another matter.)  Frances had a normal life, most of the time. But some nights she would fetch her magic cape from under the bed, jump out of her window, and fly three times round the moon to another world.  And on some mornings she would leave her nice white house through the blue door, down the path to the green gate, and walk through the woods to school.  And the sun would shine down through the leaves and make beautiful patterns on the forest floor.  And on her way she would come across a mirror.  She’d put her right hand to the mirror… and it would disappear.  She’d put her left hand through, and it would disappear, and then so would her left leg, and eventually, her whole self would be through the mirror and she’d be in another world.

Sometimes she would be in a sort of sea-world, were she was a mermaid and played with her friend Kaylie.  Once she was in Italy and had to single-handedly keep the Tower of Piza from falling on her other friend, a champion wrestler.  Most of the time she was trying to escape from her nemesis, The Black Blob, who lived in a cage made of children’s bones.  The Black Blob liked to nail children through their wrists and ankles to a table with rusty nails, and then tear them open and eat them from the tummy outwards.

I loved those stories.  Frances always saved the day.

Anyway, when I saw this picture by Dirk Rees it really reminded me of that magic mirror:

I also love this by him, because it makes me want to be a boxer:

And I love this, for no particular reason:

Wow.  This is truly beautiful.  Why isn’t the sky like this over here?

I bet that’s the church Father Christmas goes to… (actually it’s the church of the good shepherd in New Zealand.  Maybe whenever Santa’s in the Southern Hemisphere…)

from here

We have one of those massive coffee table books full of wonderful images.  This is one of them and it’s by the amazingly talented Steve McCurry.  You’d recognize a lot of his work.

There are these brilliant people who like to make graffitti out of knitting.  Go here and read all about it.

I guess you’d be a bit like a knitter Banksy if you did this.  I think I’d enjoy the feeling of mystery…

Taxidermy is a bit of a dodgy issue.  I think a lot of people are frightened of it.  But I’ve never really been able to make up my mind: it freaks me out a bit, but at the same time, it can be really tasteful and interesting.  I suppose it makes me realise how well made, how intricate, animals are. 

Polly Morgan is a British taxidermy artist.  Her work is fascinating, and frightening, and beautiful all at the same time.  This is what is said about her on her site:

See over the break for pictures (I thought I’d spare any of you guys with delicate constitutions…)

What do you think?  What do you think about taxidermy in general?  Is it any worse than, say, collecting beetles or butterflies?  Give me your opinions!

What with everybody becoming more and more concerned about saving the world, recycling, using sustainable materials, I think it’s fantastic that art can do the same.  Why shouldn’t art lead the way?

This guy Yuken Teruya has certainly done just that.  He’s Japanese and has won a stack of awards – his work is amazing.

And some of it’s made out of loo rolls.