Silvia Pelissero (aka Agnes-Cecile) brings a face to life in watercolor. (She has more, excellent videos on her YouTube channel).
Category: Art
Morphing Art History
This amazing morphing of old masterpieces by Micaël Reynaud is worth enlarging. Warning: it’s about 10 Mb and you might just have to keep focused on the eyes to avoid motion sickness.
It’s similar to Philip Scott Johnson video below (you can find information about the artworks used here).
Soviet Space Progaganda
An excellent set of Soviet propaganda posters from How to be a Retronaut. The collection contains a fascinating blend of of triumphalism sprinkled with some attempts at modesty.
The posters make wonderful subjects for the study of propaganda and the space race.
My favorite:
Tess of the d’Urbervilles: Police Composite
Brian Joseph Davis creates composite sketches of literary characters using the same software used by the police, and the descriptions of the characters in the books.
She was a fine and handsome girl—not handsomer than some others, possibly—but her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to colour and shape… The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this syllable was native had hardly as yet settled into its definite shape, and her lower lip had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward, when they closed together after a word…Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes…a thick cable of twisted dark hair hanging straight down her back to her waist.
— description by Thomas Hardy, excerpted by Davis (2010): The Composites.
Snow on the Creek
Drawings of Jupiter
The New York Public Library’s website hosts a remarkable collection of Étienne Léopold Trouvelot‘s astronomical drawings by that date back to 19th century.
The beauty and detail of these illustrations are a remarkable testament to the intersection of art and science.
Impressions of Monet
We took the middle and high school to see the Monet Water Lilies exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum today. It was a nice tour; we saw some paintings, and we learned a little something about the impressionists.
One thought that occurred to me during an interesting conversation on the bus back to school, was how the development of abstract thinking skills affects our perception of the more abstract art. After all, it usually requires more effort to appreciate, understand and become affected a piece the more abstract it is. Which would suggest that art appreciation would be useful practice for adolescents who are honing their higher-level cognitive skills.
The tour also left me with one unanswered question, however: are we seeing fog or smog in Monet’s painting of the Charing Cross Bridge in London.
London is famous for its fogs, but this painting was done in 1899, well into the industrial revolution, and the yellow tints suggest a pea-souper.
Stop-Motion Recipe
I’ve always been in favor of alternate means of presenting information, especially for recipes.
Stop-Motion Biscuit Cake from Alan Travers on Vimeo.
(via The Dish)