I've posted two new artworks on my Deviant Art gallery. These are meme-like graphics for VNV Nation and Epica with their biographies, plus lyrics excerpts and pictures. It's a practical and quick way of learning about these two amazing bands.
Click on the pictures to view them.
The Lowbrow American artist Camille Rose Garcia is responsible for some of the most creative and intriguing alternative dark art out there. She has recently released an Alice In Wonderland book with her illustrations, which give a fresh acidic twist to the classic tale.
Though she graduated from Art school, for the first few years Camille Rose Garcia didn’t want anything to do with art, preferring to join a punk rock band. But then after seeing works by the Clayton Brothers and Mark Rydens, she decided to start all over, as theirs styles were similar.
She and other alternative artists from Los Angeles define the Lowbrow style, which is an art movement that started in the late 1970’s, which have a lot of influence of comics visuals, street culture, punk rock, and other subcultures.
Describing her way of doing art, Camille Rose Garcia said: “I think I have always approached art making in the same way as a lot of my favorite bands.
“Bands like The Clash and the Dead Kennedy's make this really rad music that in some cases sounds really fun, but still has a social commentary…
“I always wanted to do art that people could relate to but also carry some social relevance. Like in art school it wasn't really about commentary, or if it was, it was really boring, so I really just wanted to create art that was not only super fun to look at, and if you’re 5 or 15 and hated art your still could like, and relate to it and understand and would still carry that whole social political commentary, which is kinda the same approach that a lot of my favorite bands were taking.” [1]
Camille Rose Garcia really has some strong points of view about present society. Commenting on global warming, the break of economy and other current problems, she had some provocative thoughts to share:
“To me it just seems that things are getting worse and worse faster and faster. As far as the whole machine of keeping people scared, they don’t rebel if they are scared, it’s just part of the control mechanism.
“Then there is all the stuff that is real. I don’t really think all the terror warnings are real, but the global warming is real, the huge deficit is real, the end of oil is real, all those things are real. But the terror alerts, I don't know how much of that is real and it’s an easy way for our leaders to blame them.
“I just think, on a very basic personal, spiritual level if every person would take some responsibility, ya know, as far as being cool with others and not being an asshole. That’s the only real revolution that I think is possible at this point.”
Besides having worked as a free lancer illustrator for magazines, she has published three books: The Saddest Place on Earth, (Last Gasp, 2006), The Magic Bottle: A BLAB! Storybook, (Fantagraphics, 2006) and Tragic Kingdom (Last Gasp, 2007). She also has works in permanent collections of LACMA and the San Jose Museum of Art.
Below are three of her artworks. Visit her site for more.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Rose_Garcia
http://www.hifructose.com/the-blog/494-behind-the-scenes-with-camille-rose-garcia.html
In the last few weeks, I had taken a break from updating this blog, but today, as promised, I'm resuming work here, so be sure to visit it every weekend for new posts. Also check the new index pages for lists of all the posts on this blog. Some of them have been expanded and altered too.
Besides that, I've also updated my art gallery at the Deviant Art site, with the manipulations below. Please let me know your thoughts about them. Best wishes!
Visit my Deviant Art gallery for more.
The Greywalker novel by Kat Richardson is the first in a series of five books, the latest is due to be released in August 2010, which has a great paranormal detective story.
It tells the story of a private investigator in Seattle, Harper Blaine, who is clinically dead for about two minutes, and after that experience, she develops the ability to interact with the creatures of the Grey.
The Grey is the dimension between the physical and spiritual worlds, in which vampires, witches, ghosts and other magical creatures dwell.
Harper Blaine has to go on with her life though, and she is immediately faced with two cases, one of a missing student, who turns out to be a vampire, and of a mysterious artifact, which is a sort of time bomb. Though she is still groping with this new reality and her abilities, she is the only one who can keep the worst from happening.
The Greywalker is written on a first-person narrative, with terse sentences, but that doesn’t compromise the story, which is very interesting and rich. Kat Richardson’s writing seems to have improved a lot since then, having acquired a more fluid rhythm, as far as the excerpt of the last installment of the Greywalker series shows.
Kat Richardson told in an interview about how she created the character Harper Blaine. She said Harper was originally a male clichéd character of a tough PI with blazing guns, who never complained and never got hurt. She then started a long process of shaping the character into something more believable.
She said: “Making the character female was some immediate relief, but it still had that ‘man with breasts’ problem. The former military or spiritual martial artist trope has been done to death, too, so those were not options for developing the character and breaking her out of the cliché, so I considered the women I knew who were competent and physically tough and drew Harper based on them.
“I let her go ahead and acknowledge her discomforts, but do the job anyhow—just like most of the women I know.” [1]
The author Kat Richardson seems to be a very interesting and unconventional person. She has a degree in Magazine Journalism from California State University, and presently she lives in Seattle with her husband in a sailboat.
She has worked as a writer and editor in the computer industry, and has also written RPGs, film scripts and computer games plots and has experience in theater and music. She is a supporter of the California Ferret Legalization, which aims at making it legal to own ferrets as domestic pets, instead of considering the ownership illegal and the animals as wildlife ones.
About her working process, Kat Richardson said “I'm not a seat-of-the-pants sort of writer. Since the stories are structured like Mysteries, that makes timing and placement of clues very important, so I work out a lot of the details in the outline before I get a lot of the writing done and that eliminates a lot of heavy revision or re-writing later. At least so far it has.” [2]
Check the sites below for more information on the book and the author.
More info:
Barnes & Noble Greywalker Page # Kat Richardson's Site - About Greywalker & About the Author
Selina Fenech is a very talented Australian illustrator, who specialized in pictures of fairies. She has always had an interest in mythical creatures, and as a child loved illustrated fantasy books.
A professional artist since age 23, Selina Fenech had her artworks sold all over the world, and published in books and magazines. In her site, her beautiful illustrations can be acquired as posters, stationery, t-shirts and other products.
Her working medium is mainly watercolor and acrylics on paper, but she has also used other media such as inks, pencils and even digital painting.
Selina Fenech describes her passion for her work on her website: “I want to live my life like it's a fairy tale, and I want my artwork to make other people feel the same. I love that for a person of any age my fairies can bring back the magical memories and feelings of adventure from their childhood. I hope that they also create new memories and dreams of magic!
“As an artist, I paint because of a true, driving need to create beauty and magic. It is an inner need which I fulfill by putting brush to paper. But there is no magic there until it is shared, no joy to be found in the forms and colours until it is seen by another.” [1]
She has also published several articles on drawing and painting techniques, which are available on her site.
Here is a selection of Selina Fenech’s artworks. Visit her site for more.
The Bulgarian band Irfan is a great Ethereal band, with a sound reminiscent of Qntal and Dead Can Dance. Using instruments traditional to the music of Turkey, Egypt, Greece and the Balkans, Irfan’s sound is a blend of the Eastern, the Medieval and the Modern.
Talking about the band's mysterious and dark sound, vocalist Denitza Seraphimova said that “We believe that music is an act of the spirit… The vibration of the sound and the music has the "magic" power to create new worlds, to open gates to other space and dimensions. But this is also very dangerous because creating spiritual music is a big responsibility that needs a clear mind, intention and pure heart.” [1]
This concept begins in the band’s name. Irfan is a Sufi term from Persian and Arabian, which means gnosis, mystic knowledge and revelation.
The musicians of Irfan, Denitza, plus Ivailo, Kalin and Kiril joined together in 2002, and had their first album released in 2003, with the band’s name, and their second in 2007, named Seraphim. The line-up is made of Denitza Seraphimova vocals, Ivailo Petrov - programming, strings, Kalin Yordanov - vocals, percussion, Peter Todorov – percussion and Yasen Lazarov - keyboards, woodwind.
They have already done soundtracks for a Bulgarian documentary and a movie, and they have played all over Europe.
One of the interesting things about the Irfan musicians is that all of them work with archeology, history and culture, and have side projects as musicians. They also like to experiment with old folklore music and instruments like the daz, bodhran and tamboura.
As for the vocals, the songs seldom have any lyrics, they prefer to vocalize sounds in a Cocteau Twins-like way. When they do, the lyrics are in Church Slavonic, Latin and Medieval Spanish.
Their process of composition is very democratic. Denitza described it as “It is a common and collective process. In the beginning one of us (mainly Ivailo and Kiril) brings a primary idea and then all of us work in the building of the composition.” [1]
Throughout Europe they often play in Goth Festivals like Summer Darkness, and also Folk Festivals. Talking about the way their music seems to attract people from so many different cultural backgrouns, Denitza said: “We believe that the message of our music is universal and that it is for everyone who could understand it with his heart nevertheless his language, color, religion or music stream and preferences.” [2]
Check the videos below for samples of their fascinating music.
Source: Wikipedia Irfan # Irfan MySpace Profile
