Archivio di marzo 2012
Zoo invades South Carolina (USA)
I’m so happy today!!
Nothing is better after being sick (yuck!) than find an email with a picture attached for my section “Zoo Invasion”.
Zoo postcard is not easy to be recognized as it is the quite dark “Milky Way”, but Carol Beth you really made my day…Zoo loves you ♥♥
So, this is the right moment to propose you a deal:
1- Check my postcards gallery here on my blog or on Flickr
2- Chose your favourite one and then email me (nextlolaAThotmail.it) the name of the postcard you would like to receive and your home address
3- I will send you a copy of it by mail
4- In change, once you’ll receive it, you’ll email me a picture of you (your room, your dog, your ferret or whatelse) with my Zoo postcard inside
Then I’ll try to find one of those widgets where you can pin places on Earth, and then pin every city from where I’ll receive a picture. I hope to see the “invasion” grow fast.
If you don’t want to do it for me, please imagine the sad eyes of one of my lovely pets staring at you beggin’ for your pic 
Tree of Life bookmark
I’m an 80′s music lover, so was inevitable that such a golden bookmark made me think to the Spandau Ballet song “Gold”.
In the Eighties I was just a baby but I was big enough to understand how famous Duran Duran were compared to the others. I know their major hits and I have some of them in my music collection, but I don’t ever play them…meanwhile I hear Spandau Ballets’ hits quite often.
Does it make of me a thirty-year-late New Romantic fan?
Sea Serpents II (not IV) bookmark
I’ve started to send my new illustrated postcards to my Postcrossing contacts, other postcrossers around the world seems to enjoy them, but one of them make me notice I put the wrong title on the Klimt’s Sea Serpents postcard…aaarrggghh!!
Well, noboby’s purrrfect…
Meanwhile new bookmarks are available on Nextlola’s Etsy and DaWanda shops.
In the mood for being… Amelie Poulain
Here we go again! A new illustration is ready…I had this one in my mind for over a year and finally here it is. It will be soon available as postcard.
This time I was inspired by a French movie, Le fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain, I saw it just once in January 2002 and I was stunned by its poetry and colors. Maybe ten years later it’s just time to rewatch it…to have a bad memory could be useful sometimes, as you can watch the same movie again and again through the years as you’re watching it for the first time…a very bad memory indeed
Here’s a short clip for you (in Italian, sorry!)
Inspiration
Today I’ve been asked if I’m going to make other postcards inspired by famous artists and their works…the answer is ABSOLUTELY YES!
I don’t know yet who’ll be the next one…you can’t plan inspiration, it just suddenly takes you to bring you where it wants…that’s how it happens with Klimt’s artworks, one day I woke up and I just couldn’t resist to make those three illustrations…not matter what was already scheduled, my soul just refused to do anything else.
I surely already have some ideas I hope to realize as soon as possible, as to remake at least one illustration from the works of: Edward Hopper, Alphonse Mucha, Tamara de Lempicka, the Pre-Raphaelites Brootherhood…. although I am not sure yet if my style will match well with these great painters’ styles.
But, if I could start a new art illustration right now it will very probably be “Marcella” (1910) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. He his one of my favourites painters, and I still remember the joy of finally finding (it was a very long treasure hunt, especially if you don’t have any sense of direction and you’re moving in a huge foreign city) and visiting the “Brücke-Museum” in Berlin…the effort was worth it because I came home with a fabulous Marcella tote bag.
I love the idea to confront myself with such a powerlful image, and such vibrant colors.
From Wikipedia:
Die Brücke
(The Bridge) was a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905, after which the Brücke Museum in Berlin was named. Founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Later members were Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Otto Mueller. The seminal group had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the 20th century and the creation of expressionism.Die Brücke is sometimes compared to the Fauves. Both movements shared interests in primitivist art. Both shared an interest in the expressing of extreme emotion through high-keyed color that was very often non-naturalistic. Both movements employed a drawing technique that was crude, and both groups shared an antipathy to complete abstraction. The Die Brücke artists’ emotionally agitated paintings of city streets and sexually charged events transpiring in country settings make their French counterparts, the Fauves, seem tame by comparison.
Tree of life
Here’s the last illustration inspired by Gustav Klimt’s artwork, a detail of the “Tree of life“.
With its roots embedded into the soil and its top branches going to heaven the tree is a symbol to many faiths of: wisdom, rebirth, love, strength, friendship, redemption, and encouragement.
Klimt put very few leaves on his tree, and he made them to look like eyes staring back at you…delightfully alarming!
Life offline
Finally I am back after two very long (and boring) weeks offline due to Internet connection’s problems…in these two weeks I’ve learned how much often a day I think “let’s check on Google!” (hundreds), we freezed (In Italy we had the coldest winter in the last thirty years…a lot of snow everywhere but Napoli), Alice and the hot water bottle became close friends, I regained weight (damn!), I rediscovered The Platters songs, I read a lot (may I suggest you “The centenarian who climbed out the window and disappeared” by Jonas Jonasson?).
Now I am two weeks late on my online work, I still have to reopen my shops on Etsy and DaWanda, update Facebook and Flickr, etc. But at least I had a lot of time for drawing and I loved it! I’ve realized almost two brand new illustrations (the second one will be finished today), I still have many ideas that are trying to pass from my head to my hand but time seems to be never enough…I desperately need an assistant, and I need it for free
♥ ♥ ♥
The Platters – Sixteens tons
