inspiration
I get inspired to draw by all kinds of stuff: butterflies, poetry, sci-fi, barbie dolls, comics, horror, (anti)fashion, children's books, foreign countries, candy, furry animals and whatnot. Whenever I get inspired I'll blog about it here below.
Sweet and stingy: Pushing Daisies
- 19 August 2008
Pushing Daisies aired in the Netherlands on 19 August two hours ago and already I am hooked to the bone. Even the actor's real names sound like fairy tales. Lee Pace stars in NBC's (nominated for 12 Emmi's) Pushing Daisies as Ned, unhappily gifted with the ability to bring the dead (and fruit, and pets) to life with the touch of his hand - and back into the afterlife on second touch. Than we have waitress Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth) who loves him, but can't touch him, private investigator Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) who finds out his secret and Ned's dog Digbee (Orbit) who is uncannily old for a dog. Things get really complicated as Ned's childhood sweetheart Charlotte 'Chuck' Charles (Anna Friel) gets murdered and brought back to life by Ned. All this is shot against a bright cartoonesk background, but with a dry, off-key kind of humor to take the sugar coated edge of the sweet surroundings. Did I mention Ned's a pie baker? Did I mention Chuck shows off the most wonderful crazy dresses? That the wallpaper is brilliant? This whole show is brilliant, it mixes the supersweet with a nice spoonful of sour, the filming, the actors, the setting: all is wonderful. Watch it!
Rodriguez' psycho world
- 11 August 2008
Re-wachted Robert Rodriguez' Planet Terror and thought it was even better than the first time I saw it. Bad acting, bad special effects, bad story lines add up to one helluva movie.
It's just great how Rodriguez' makes it somehow plausible that a striptease dancer ends up with a machine gun for a leg, and still manages to win back her former boyfriend, while killing off evil zombies. It's got to have something to do with the seedy seventies soundtrack
The 'Machete'-trailer of a non-existent movie on a Mexican hitman, full of cheesy oneliners ('He was given an offer he couldn't refuse') is brilliant too.
Cracking the glazing
- 5 August 2008
Yes, please, laugh outloud while I confess to buying girls' toys every once and a while. Once as a little girl I used to have tons of barbie dolls, my little ponies, fairy tails, lady lovely locks and more pink girly things that causes the glazing to crack from your teeth. And I absolutely love those toys! Unfortunately sold them at a yard sale at the onset of puberty (when I declared a temporary war on anything pink and skirty). So now I am forced to buy new toys, hehe :). I bought a €10 faerytopia barbie in NYC two weeks ago and decided to take some shots of her and some of the g3-my little ponies I bought last year. Take a look at my Flickr photo gallery for some seriously cute and colourful pics.
Innocent sexuality
- 1 August 2008
Micheal Turner created innocently sensual heroines Sara Pezzini (Witchblade) and Aspen Matthews (Fathom). I first learned of these comics an eerie two days before Michael Turner died of bone cancer, aged 37. A friend gave the comics to me, as he thought I might enjoy them. A few weeks later I visited the comic book shop in my home town to buy some Michael Turner comics myself, as his style had enchanted me. There I learned from the shopkeeper that Turner had died some weeks earlier. Turner was skilled in creating an atmosphere which I can only call 'testosteron-like', however, whithout failing to appeal to a large female audience too. He only drew for about 10-15 years, discovering comics at a later age after dropping out of pre-med school just before acquiring his diploma. I was gripped by his drawings, the way he added action and movement to the still characters and how he combined elegance and sizzling sensuality in his male and female characters alike.
Modern art in New York
- 12 July 2008
In the Moma (Museum of Modern Art in New York City) definately one of the most beautiful works of art are found. Forgot most of the names, but not the paintings who left a big impression on my brain. Here some of my favourites, amongst which some impressionist abstract colour paintings, one of a nude girl and some Dali paintings I wasn't allowed to photograph myself unfortunately.
Bigger-than-life sized rats
- 5 June 2008
The Kröller-Müller Museum is am museum crammed with modern art, collected by Madam Kröller-Müller herself and carried on by others after she died. I wasn't really taken by Van Gogh's dark early work nor by the pointillism. Apart from the fact that it is really cleaver to paint using small paint dots and make it look like a normal painting from afar, I just don't really get it. So far for my art barbarism (sorry art historians). I really did like the garden with surreal sculptures - gives you an Alice in Wonderland feel to walk between abandoned military tent camps and a crashed alien space ship. And was smashed away by this work of Japanese making Shooting the sun: he made huge ashen images by blowing up parts of his artwork. Was in a room next to some giant stuffed animal (rat?), cool too.
Rainbow coloured dolls
- 28 May 2008
Blythe dolls, cute big-eyed, arty collectible dolls who are absolutely too cute! I would love to buy one of my own, but they're really really expensive and hard to come by in the Netherlands.
Now Blythe fanatics all over the world have taken up photography to take photo's of their dolls, imitating Gina Garan who first took up photographing Blythe dolls in 1997.
Eerie cartoons
- 13 March 2008
With sadistic delight a friend introduced me to David Firth's Salad Fingers: eerie online cartoons about a green creature named Salad Fingers who gets off by fingering rusty metal and makes up stories with his hand puppets.
Mad Meg I found while surfing the web for I don't remember what. Her drawings are a bit less sadistic but equally eerie and dark. With a few simple black lines she creates a demanding atmoshpere that draws you into the story she wants to tell. Her freak magazine covers are great to, a true original artist.
1900s Nudes
- 3 March 2008
I found these sepia tainted postcards on a website by a Cyril Fournier who collects postcards and put his collection on the internet, ranging from rather boring cards of towns and cities to these attractive young victorian ladies. Photographed in the early 1900s, these cards caused quite a stir, and still do. I like how these cards portray curvey ladies, covered in lace and long necklaces, in innocent poses. It's nudity in it's most stripped down non-erotic form, at least, that's how I look at it.
Human pies
- 21 February 2008
Magic duo Johnny Depp (ever cute not matter how he's done up) and Tim Burton have come together once again for Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Magnificently horrid story about a baker and a tormented former barber who team up to turn human flesh into the best pies London ever tasted - singing merry and dark songs as they go along - yes! It's a musical. Grotesque and disgusting, yet at the same time moving and beautiful, this movie is one of my favourites.
The wonderful tattered dresses of Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), her dark smokey eyes and high-pitched voice add to the gloomey atmosphere, while the scenery is Burton-worthy terrific and Depp is at his best and believable as demon barber, even though he's singing.
Depp and Burton also made Corpse Bride (2005), - with Bonham Carter doing a voice-over too - Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005).
Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Tim Burton Collective - Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!