Z - a r t B l o g

Well all you fans of the delicate art where beautiful nude girls or guys get painted get out them wallets! Specially those who like the girl bit because the brand new bodypainting calender 2007 is available. The team of www.ch-kalender.ch has really outdone itself this time producing in my humble opinion the best calender so far. If you want to compare for yourself, there is an archive of the previous calenders and all the photographs of the new calender are online as well.

If you like what you see but don't want to churn out the big bugs (what's big?) there is even better news for you, because for just the price of a stamp you can order a mini calender or a postcard set.

© www.ch-kalender.ch

If you are looking for a different approach on model photography you just might want to have a look at the photography of Aleksey and Marina. If you don't really care for the different creative approach and just want high end photography of glamorous girls in the nude, you still just might want to have a look at this wondrous website. In this case check out the "erotic glamour projects" behind the nude girl in the bottom right corner.

For starters it's a great looking and pretty easy to navigate website. There is obviously gone a lot of work in building this flash site. One tip: if you have a big screen, make your window smaller as the flash is extended to fit the screen resulting in unsharp pictures.

It's more then just that though, it contains some amazing photographs. The main part, the creative approach, consists of several collections of quite dark and distorted model photography. If you want me to compare it to something, I just can't. As far as I know, this work is quite unique.

Now, the glamour projects, accessible via the scarcely clad young lady in the bottom right corner shows some simple straight forward model photography calendars. All model's are shot against an empty backdrop. As far as nude glamour photography goes and as far as I'm concerned, this is the top. There is also one calendar in here with there more creative approach. Here, in the glamour projects, you will also find a very interesting wallpaper section.

So boys and girls, go have a ball and check it out!
Yet another discovery made via PhotographySites.com

© Aleksey & Marina

It's been a while since I put a fashion photographer in the spotlight. Actually, it's been a while since I posted anything! So lets get at it.

Renat Touichev has a very clean, simple and easy to navigate website with an extensive gallery and large photographs for your enjoyment. That last feature is possibly influenced by my brand new 20" monitor that I use for the first time now, but still. No thrills or frills, just bright, clear pictures of beautiful women on a white background. I love this website.

© Renat Touichev

Playful, most often (very) colorful and full of life is what I would call the work Alanna Marohnic.
Her subjects are as diverse as her techniques and she has not one but two websites to show her beautiful artwork to the world. As a bonus, each painting or lithograph is accompanied by a short story telling you some detail about the artwork: how it was done, what inspired her, and so on.

© Alanna Marohnic

This guy has some pretty stunning photographs in quite an array of subjects such as abstract, landscape, nature, vehicles and so on. Throughout the subjects, the work of Kjetil Hansen is very colorful with a heavy saturation. I only mention the ones that where working for me. There are more subjects but those wouldn't open. The site is not fully operational and so a pain to navigate but the photographs that are on display are well worth the pain!

© Kjetil Hansen

If you like strong black and white photography with beautiful tones and an excellent eye for light. If you like compositions and crops to be not to much according to rules and regulations, you should check out the rather new website of Oliver Dienst.

The site is clean, simple and easy to navigate. I guess we better keep an eye on it, as there's just a few photographs in there and I suspect that it will grow. Have a look at the order section for a couple of bonus shots.

© Oliver Dienst

If you like the old masters of the various painter schools who painted there models as if frozen in a usually unnatural pose, surrounded by symbolic items like fruit, cups, playing cards and so one you might want to have a look a the photography of Mike Lawson.

Mike Lawson photographs sepia-toned female nudes in an unusual and rather painterly style. The poses are forced, the setting unnatural and the (semi-)nude girls are mostly combined with symbolic artifacts creating the same enchanting atmosphere as the old painters.

The website is not the best as for navigation, with all the photograph links at the bottom and now overviews, but the photographs are here in good quality with excellent tonal ranges and his work is definitely worth scrolling down to continue to the next page.

© Mike lawson

I'll start with apologizing for allowing such a huge gap in my little ramblings about art here. Lets get my excuses over and done: it's great weather, to good to be inside, and I'm very busy on another project.

I love Japan. Seeing these pictures makes my heart ache of longing to be back there. My wife and I went there in the autumn of 2004, a selection of our own photographs can be found in our photographic travel diaries. Back on subject though, if you want to travel virtually to Japan right now, check out PhotoPassJapan.com and enjoy the vast selection of photographs that can be browsed either by region, theme, tour or even by map. A little warning in advance: it's an expensive country to fall in love with.

© PhotoPassJapan.com

With all the commotion about Tamara Hoover we are completely overlooking the artist causing all this commotion. Artist, for Tamara Hoover was posing in the nude for fine art photography as far as I'm concerned and not for a pornographic website. We have been through all that, so lets focus on the artist now, shall we?

Celesta Danger may not be completely forgotten as she has been asked for interviews and such on the Tamara Hoover case but her art is completely overlooked and that's a pity because she has some fine works. Her website is under construction, but by clicking on the > you can get in. Whoops, let me rephrase that, apparently a lot of things have disappeared since my last visit and only the "words" section is working any longer. A damn pity I say!

Over to her flickr account then, the famous flickr account by now. But forget about the "scandal" and go through her photos and enjoy her work of mostly strong colored and expressive photographs.

© Celesta Danger

Californian based photographer Jose Villa has a knack for turning wedding photography into real fine art photography. His photographs are downright stunning. He often uses unorthodox compositions and cropping combined with a thorough knowledge of the use of colors or tonal ranges. Ad a cunning eye for detail in photographing the not so obvious and well, you get art. Marrying couples don't have to worry about there pictures becoming to arty, Jose knows very well how to keep the romance and the magic of the day alive.

© Jose Villa

If you ever felt like painting on something else than canvas, why not try a body? If you hurry up you might even be able to participate in the World Bodypainting Festival 2006l! € 18.000 in cash and € 23.000 product prizes is not bad I'd say.

Each year in Seeboden in the south of Austria, Europe’s most colorful Event takes place. The “World Bodypainting Festival” is the biggest art event in the bodypainting theme. More then 20.000 visitors admired work from the best bodypainters worldwide in 2005.

Artists from 40 nations will come to this unique event, and put body art into the mountain and lake scenery. On the three main days the World Champion title in 4 categories will be given. In 2005 the night contest for UV effects had a successful premier and will be given again on one of the festival nights.

The Lake Millstätter See region's scenery is the stage, where bodies are boldly put on show, and each artist has the opportunity to show his/her own specialities - bodies painted with many different materials and techniques, and sometimes combined with the most fantastic costumes, masks and show effects.

The festival runs from July 17th until July 23th, more details and lots of bodypainting pictures on the festival website.

Or how not to use Photoshop: to forge the news! There is a very hot news item in Belgium at the moment, the murder of Joe. He's a kid who was killed for his MP3 player in the Central Station of Brussels, amongst hundreds of other people. The entire country cried out in outrage.
Here is a follow up story by the BBC.

I found an older newspaper clipping on the web. On this picture here below (click on the small one to zoom-out) you see people laying down flowers at the spot where he was murdered. This picture was published by the Belgian news paper "Het Laatste Nieuws". This was to show the world that a "sea" of people came to pay tribute, I guess if only half had shown up it wasn't hot enough? The picture was taken by the AFP. A reliable source one would think. Well, think again, and look at he people in the circles. Whatever is good for making the news just that tad bit hotter? Very out of line and even disgusting in my opinion. Don't refrain yourself and give yours as well.

Unless of course whoever is spreading this clipping on the Internet is using Photoshop to put this newspaper in a bad daylight, as I haven't seen the actual newspaper....

In Austin, Texas, art teacher Tamara Hoover was escorted off campus because she participated in some art pictures in the all together. I had to look a long time before I could find one reminder of these infamous photographs to make my own judgement. Not that it is my business whether this teacher goes nude in whatever photograph. But being an art teacher, participating in some fine art photography as far as I'm concerned, and then getting fired? Come on! What type of ultra conservative censorship is this? This only weeks after I read about Dr. Diane York Blane getting some serious heat about a few topless pictures, more jest then art this time.

In short. A fellow teacher had been talking poorly about Tamara Hoover to her class.
A student said , well if you really don't like Ms Hoover you should check out the website she is on. The teacher made the student pull it up in front of a class full of students.
She told another teacher, they went tot the administration, the administration called an emergency meeting with the school board and police. Tamara Hoover was bad for moral fibre because she was on a pornographic website and deemed ineffective .

The full and developing story can be read here. You also make a donation here so that she can pay the legal costs in the battle for her job and lets face it, against censorship in general!

Photostrip.net displays photostrips that are no photostrips. The strips here presented are interactive story-telling sequences of pictures, sometimes accompanied with text. So I quote from the intro page.

To achieve these dynamics the photographer, of whom I could not find a name, uses skilfully the simple yet effective technique of moving the camera while taking the picture. A technique I myself used recently for my newest photograph: "Walk into the light ye lost soul".

I'm not all to crazy about the website itself. It is quite frankly messy. But don't let this stop you to go in and enjoy the stories told by these blurry, moving pictures.

© photostrip.net

Now here is a funny website, on the lighter side of art. The principle is simple. You tell them what you want a sketch about, you pay $1 and they will draw the sketch and put it on sketch-it. The styles are diverse, some are good, some are bad, but the results in general are funny, so it's a nice place to hang around for a while.

(cc)sketch-it

Today I would like to point your cursor in the direction of dizzle blog*. You might not understand the written text but that is of no importance, it's for the photography that you have to go here and browse through this interesting and diverse photoblog. (use the archives link)

Friday my wive had a splendid surprise for me. She had received 2 free tickets for the summer opera in Alden-Biesen. We had to drive around quite a bit to actually get the tickets but boy was it worth it!

First of all there is the setting. Landcommanderij Alden Biesen is a castle that is beautifully restored. In the inner court of the castle is the stage and the platform for the audience below 4 giant parasols to protect audience and actors from the weather. In this case, from the sun and to maintain the temperature when it got dark, it was a gorgeous day.

Secondly there was the opera, La Bohème. It was a modern interpretation of the opera with a lot of contemporary items brought on to the stage. There was also a lot of humor added, small details to lighten up the sad story. As an example, when Marcello sings about how he paints the heroes on the walls of the in he points at paintings of Batman and Spiderman. Another nice one is when Rodolfo buys a little pink hat for Mimi and it turn out to be fluffy pink earmuffs. Yet the arias stand strong as a rock in a tempestuous sea of music and emotion. The cast was very international with famous singers from Italy, Germany, Korea and so on. You must know that this was my first opera ever but I was very impressed and actually moved to tears at the end by the pure emotional power of the music.

Thirdly and this was a surprise, it appeared to be a special performance, a Gala performance. One of those extra expensive once that help to keep the price of the regular shows low. The kind of shows where the rich and the famous are pampered with food and drinks before, in the pause and after the performance. So we ended the night with drinking, munching and talking to the wive of a former Belgian minister who also was the former Latin teacher of my wive.

We had a fantastic evening and the regular tickets are very affordable at €20/30. So, if you love opera, or want to give it a try, wherever you are, fly over if necessary, but come and see this magnificent edition of La Bohème.

In contrast to yesterdays entry which was full of life and movement I know present to you the work of Michael Parkes. Parkes's artwork is more classical in terms of composition, more graphical. The scenes are set against very simple backdrops, the people rigid and often pale. Yet his work is very dreamlike and enchanting. Of course the graphical character is also a result of his choice of medium, lithography. Enjoy the lovely prints and the fine details.

© Michael Parkes

Else Uhlmann is an South African Artist who lives in Sweden and paints what is to my eye modern Impressionism. For this she uses either oil or watercolor. Her work is colorful, rough, bordering on abstract yet still figurative. With blots and lines she creates beautiful impressions of living people swiftly moving or soft and intimate. She also paints nature but in my honest opinion the paintings of people are far better.
Her gallery is a pain to navigate but worth the effort!

© Else Uhlmann

A watercolor painting by Joseph Mallord William turner Turner has set a new record for a British work on paper at a recent Christie's auction in London.
The 1842 watercolor "The Blue Rigi: Lake of Lucerne, Sunrise" went for nearly three times its estimate, selling for 5.8 million pounds or about $11 million USD. Making it a record for a British work on paper.
Not so long ago Joseph Mallord William Turner also set the record for the most expensive British painting to be sold at auction.

Noel Annesley, honorary chairman of Christie's, said the work marked the culmination of Turner's achievement in the medium that he made his own. In a technique of almost unimaginable subtlety Turner expresses his lifelong preoccupation with the effects of light, shade and atmosphere.

As seen on Art News Blog

Another gap of a few days in my posts. I beg humbly for your forgiveness for this breach of trust. I was far to busy with my number one hobby: travel. Yes, again, my wife and I packed our bags for a few days. We went for a walking trip to the French Ardennes, pictures of this trip will be available soon.

More importantly, specially for this post, a new photograph in the fine art photography category saw the light during this trip. I was an experiment on impulse but I was very, very happy with the result. The title is "Walk into the light ye lost soul" and the photograph as you see it is straight out of the camera, no post processing what so ever. I hope you will excuse me for being very proud. The full image can be seen here, it is the last one of this exhibit.

Don't forget, if you are interested in buying a print, just mail me at peter @ zgallery-art.com for the possibilities (size, cost, etc).

A need little Photoshop trick, and I do mean little, as this trick will help you turn regular photos into fake miniature photos.

The Tilt-shift technique is historically achieved with a tilt-shift camera lens. Today this technique is getting more and more popular among amateur photographers who generally fake the effect with the aid of Photoshop. How you can do this you can learn here. An interesting article about this can be found on the Columbia News Service.

As seen on the Carrot Revolution

If you frequently read my little posts here you will know that I stumble a lot. Well this time I stumbled on an interesting yet rather unusual photography website called "Uncommon Photographers". This site is all about photographs of photographers caught in action. It's an interesting browse with quiet a collection. If you are a photographer yourself sometimes, who knows, maybe you are in there as well. Enjoy.

© Ken Ilio

The world's finest guide to watercolor painting, to be precise and it's written by Bruce MacEvoy. Well the "finest" bit is what he himself claims but I do tend to agree with him.
If you are interested in picking up watercolor painting yourself, you might find this site of great interest. It covers a broad spectrum of subjects like papers, brushes, paints, techniques, etc. Often these subjects are available in great detail with articles about how watercolor brushes are made or how you can test them for example. So knock yourself out and delve in!

Yes I know, I have been awfully quiet of late. The reason is simple: I have been on holidays. The beautiful volcanic Canary Island Lanzarote was our destination this time. About time that I start my writings about art again and how could I better start than with the artist César Manrique Cabrera who was born and died on the island.

You can hardly take a step on the island of Lanzarote without bumping into an artwork by César Manrique, they are everywhere. (Even our rental company was named "Manrique Cabrera"!) They are very diverse as well as Manrique was into tons of different art forms, going from architecture via painting to his famous wind toys. Specially his architecture caught my eye, the way how he managed to integrate human constructions into nature is just superb. His cactus garden is also very famous and with reason for it quite unique. The numerous wind toys spread all over the island are fascinating and a joy to see.

More of my Lanzarote pictures will appear in the photographic travel diaries soon.

The truly amazing and utterly unbelievable wildlife photography of Nick Brandt can be seen on this website. There isn't much more that I can say as I'm speechless because of the beauty of these photos. It' wildlife photography on an incredible level in splendid monochrome tones. This time I do not advise you to go and have a look, I urge you to do so!

© Nick Brandt

At www.whippleart.com we find the artwork of mixed media artists John and Lynn Whipple.

John is a painter-sculptor and Lynn is into painting, photography and combining all that into "ninnies". Of course, just about every artwork is based on mixing different media.

Both have very different styles. Lynn's "ninnies" are a combination of childlike drawings and old photographs, sometimes with extra media thrown in. I found these particularly arresting. John on the other hand "assembles" his paintings out of different rectangles and painting mostly faces on them. His sculptures are assembled out of antique (looking?) materials and items.

© Lynn Whipple

This site looks overly commercial and in a way it is, but if I read correct than a big part of the website's earnings go to good cat causes, so please all you cat lovers, look past the commercial part.

You have to be a cat lover to be interested in this website as it revolves completely around cats and once you look past all the sales talk you will see some amazing realistic watercolors about, right, cats. Drew Strouble, the artist, has been painting cats for 16 years now and is really, really good at it.

I'm going to use a quote that I found on this website to finish this post as I think it really sums it up.
"As if a snazzy website and catchy name aren't enough, Drew Strouble has a crucial third ingredient for success - talent." Andrew Waters, "The Secret Life of Drew Strouble" Cats & Kittens Magazine

© Drew Strouble

Enough model photography for now, lets have a look at something different. Natalie Behring is a photojournalist with an impressive online portfolio and a beautiful, simple flash website to present it. Most images focus on China as that's here home base but you will find stories from other countries as well. Telling a story is exactly what these photos do, watching them is like reading a magazine or newspaper article.

© Natalie Behring

Beauty of life, the website of fashion photographer Andreas Muenchbach, really stands out. It's not just the high end fashion photography, but also how the website is set up. For example the homepage looks like a fashion magazine front page, nice touch. Inside there are plenty of fine examples of his work, easy to browse via the galleries. Should you be interested in doing some fashion photography yourself then check out the photo & fashion guide.

© Andreas Muenchbach

Art from the heart is a truly interesting online art gallery. In here you will find the artwork of Rosita Sikking Reeberg (ceramics, bronze, paintings and poetry) and Frans Sikking (horse photography). The horse photography section by Frans is small but the few photographs shown here are quite original in my humble opinion.

There is much more work by Rosita on exhibition and she shows some fine pieces with a lot of fantasy influences. Her work reminds me in some ways of that of Antoon Coolen, specially her ceramics. I suggest you browse around a little and if you are finished with the artwork there are some interesting reads as well.

© Rosita Sikking Reeberg

The website van the BBC currently features an Art and Personality experiment. In this experiment you are ask to view and rate some pictures plus answer a few personality questions. At the end of the experiment you should:

• find out your personality type
• see paintings from around the world
• discover art you might be interested in
• find out how art preference and personality may be linked.

The entire experiment should take about 15 minutes, so if you will excuse me now, I will give it a shot myself....

Ok, the result are, eh, rather surprising:

___________

Your favourite type of art is Japanese ukiyo-e.

In the personality profile you had a high intellectualism score, which suggests you like to think about abstract ideas and have a creative imagination.

People who are the same age and sex as you are most likely to prefer Impressionism

People who also score highly in your dominant personality trait are most likely to prefer Impressionism

___________

The thing is, I'm not into Japanese ukiyo-e. I can appreciate it, sure, but as the majority of test result for people like me suggest: my main interest is impressionism. Of course, so is Surrealism, but that was mentioned nor shown in the test.

So, I have serious doubts about the accuracy of this experiment, but knock yourself out and have a go yourself, it did take approximately 15 minutes.

as seen on Hillbilly, Please

Fine art nude photography through the means of Polaroid transfers. The nudity is very subtle because of the medium that was chosen for these artworks. The artist has put his intentions into words so well that I'm going to shut up and quote Lawson Phillips directly from his website:

I always wanted to photograph the nude but struggled with the approach. What was it about the nude that was so interesting? It wasn't a sharply focused image of any one body in my mind, but a vague memory of light and motion. A mind's eye vision of limbs and curves that evoke an emotional response.

I wanted to convey a dream-like interpretation of the nude. A nude that was open to the thoughts and experience of the viewer. One you could consider before moving on. A nude that wasn't immediately dismissed because it was too... something.

© Lawson Phillips

Once again just surfing around in the huge collection of online art I discovered the website of Greg Stones. I immediately fell in love with the simplistic surreal watercolors of this artist. There are different galleries showing tons of his work: animals, landscapes, nude men, nude women, people, surreal and prints. I must say most of his work, not only that in the gallery with the same name, has a surreal touch to it.

© Greg Stones

My own surreal watercolors can be found here as usual.

People who have come to zgallery-art for its travel photography or the photographic travel diaries might find this website and interesting browse. Dive into the fascinating world of travel with the photography of Kevin Oke. Visit several different destinations around the world, order a poster or download a screensaver. It's all here, enjoy!

Karel Appel, the famous Dutch CoBrA painter, died yesterday at the age of 85 in Zurich. Karel Appel was born April 25th 1921 in Amsterdam.

He studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten there from 1940 to 1943 and started exhibiting in 1946. He was influenced by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Jean Dubuffet; he joined the Nederlandse Experimentele Groep and joined CoBrA in 1948 together with Corneille, Constant and Jan Nieuwenhuys. His 1949 fresco in the Amsterdam City Hall caused controversy and was covered up for ten years.

In 1950 he moved to Paris and then developed his international reputation travelling to Mexico, the USA, Yugoslavia and Brazil. He is particularly noted for his mural work and lived between New York and Florence. He died on the 3rd of May 2006 in Zurich, where he was living at the time.

Very simple yet strikingly beautiful fine art nude photography. Furthermore an equally simple and strong portrait gallery. Beautiful soft tones and colors, simple stances and positions for the models plus the compositions make these masterpieces stand out!

Photoshop post processing is obviously used, sometimes subtle, sometimes less subtle for example to accentuate the hourglass shape of the models.

The site also features articles about design, photography and Photoshop. If you really like the photography of Roge you can of course order prints or download a wallpaper.

© Roge

If you are interested in old photography techniques, this website might be something for you.
Here you will find fine examples of bromoil, gom-print, cyanotype and ilfochrome. On top of the old techniques you can explore an impressive portrait gallery. All photographs are by Henk Thijs. The only thing I'm missing here is some explanation on the used techniques, but I guess there is plenty of that around on the net.

© Henk Thijs

The famous play by William Shakespeare 'Taming of the shrew', notorious for being not exactly political correct towards woman, is getting a female touch. Rachel Kavanaugh and Anne Tipton are both accepting the challenge to make there version of the play.

Bought ladies are British, but they stage there play in a totally different location. Tipton's version will be staged in the Old Vic Theater in Bristol starting April 28th and playing unit May 27th. The Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, Londen, is playing Kavanaugh's version and this starting May 29ht and ending September 2nd.

The two plays have a lot of similarities, both playing in the 30's in rich societies. Fortunately there are also some differences. Tipton wants to question the social structure of the epoch while Kavanaugh's is more romantic and simple. Both women want to stretch the fact that this play is not about oppression of women but instead about emotional liberation.

Should you be interested but unable to go and see the plays, you can always choose to go and see the movie adaptation 'The taming of the shrew' with Elizabeth Taylor.

Today we advise you to take a trip through the fantasy world of Johanna Pieterman. She draws some amazing photo-realistic color pencil artwork. Sources of inspiration are numerous and her style, specially her compositions are very unique. To mention 2 of her main sources of inspiration: "Mists of Avalon" and Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac). You will see that these are very prominent throughout her work if you browse the art galleries.

I just discovered a very well setup flash website displaying the bronze artwork of Stefaan Werbrouck, a Belgian artist. How to get the site going I'll let you figure out yourself, but as the site is completely in Dutch I'll give a hint on how to find the art. Just click on "beelden" (=sculptures) below the artists picture.

I entered this website through the blog which is an interesting read on itself, available both in English and Swedish, but there is more, lots more. Visiting the website of Max Magnus is a treasure hunt with all kind of interesting art stuff. There is the blog which I already mention, but also free games and programs, a shop, a link directory, some type of link swap program and an art discussion board. All this in a rather original, slightly chaotic styled website.

However, the most important part is of course the art of Max Magnus which you will find in 2 categories. One being his paintings, the other his sculptures. If you like surreal art you should really go and explore this mans work. Dig in and discover the visionary world of Max Magnus.

Can art be combined with racing? Sure it can! At least, according to the people behind the Kinetic Sculpture Race. I would say, judge for yourself, I'm inclined to agree with them. I quote: "It's human powered engineering and art all wrapped up in the most imaginative racing machines you've ever laid eyes on!". To me it looks like a lot of artful fun.

Infrared photography creates very special images with a high dreamlike factor. This website might be not much as a website in itself, but it shows some beautiful infrared photography and is easy to navigate. The subjects range from models to landscapes and are in black and white or in color. Go have a look and enjoy the infrared works of Chris Maher and Larry Berman.

People who are into photography themselves will also find an interesting little article on how to shoot infrared with digital cameras.

© Chris Maher

Art News, Reviews, & Commentary. That's what Art a GoGo Podcast is all about. Listen in if you want to here about interesting art news and events.

Art a GoGo comes with a blog with descriptions of the weekly shows. Enjoy!

On Image Latente I discovered a little photo series by Yves Noir called "Simulation". It are sober images with a beautiful tonal range and light setup. The pictures show a female body on the ground as if that is here natural environment. If we read in the who is Yves Noir it says there: "He rather focuses on originally human exposedness and vulnerability." I can do nothing but agree, vulnerability is all over his photos.

More of his fine art photography can be found on his website.

© Yves Noir

The website dreamlandscapes.com displays some interesting experimental photography but the most interesting is the Altered Reality Gallery. By using digital post processing with mirror like effects kaleidoscopic landscapes are created. Get ready to be hypnotized by this surreal view of the world.

© dreamlandscapes.com(TM)

The epic poem 'Paradise Lost' written by 17th century British writer John Milton (1608-1674) is going to be transferred into a movie according to Variety.

This masterpiece, published in 1667 by the blind poet tells us the story of the creation, the origin of sin, death and evil in 12 volumes. In case of commercial success a sequel is possible as John Milton wrote a sequel called 'Paradise Regained', another quiet volumes poem. Scott Derrickson, know for 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' will be the director. When the movie will hit the theaters is unknown as filming one of the major monuments in world literature will take some time...

R. Young Art produces beautiful and very realistic oil paintings and pastels that vibrate with life. The oil paintings and pastels are very realistic and have an almost photographic feeling to them. Amongst the paintings we find female figure studies portraying the girls in all there sensual beauty, very impressive tango and ballet paintings and powerful concert pastels. You can almost here the music, see the movements of the dance!

R. Young Art also shares some other information with us such as an article on how to care for your art and of course ... how to order.

As of today, the guest exhibitions here on Zgallery-art are officially open. Our first guest is a tarot artist from Hawaii, Anna Mills Raimondi. I do not want to put a label on her, but all the artwork in the exhibit is tarot inspired, so....

Anna discovered the fact that we are offering one web page to artists looking for representation on the web for free via the forum of Aeclectic Tarot.

If you are an artist without a website and you would like to become a guest exhibitor here yourself then all you have to do is sent us an email and we will tell you what we need and how it works. You can check out Anna's exhibit to see what you can expect.

For those with no interest in becoming a guest exhibitor, have a look at the colorful tarot art of Anna Mills Raimondi and enjoy.

Whether art is weird, strange or just plain bad is something you have to make up for yourself. Something Bert Chrisensen has done for a number of paintings. He has put online a small collection of artworks he thinks are either weird, strange or just plain bad and accompanies them with a fun caption. If you are feeling like a laugh or maybe just a smile, this page is a nice browse. If you're really in the mood you can participate in his caption contest. Try to look past he sometimes horrible compression of the images and judge for yourself...

Something completely different this time. An interactive website where you can learn in an interactive (really!) and fun way about Renaissance. I guess the people at the Allentown Art Museum watch a lot of Monty python because that was my first thought when opening the site, and not renaissance.

They take it a lot further then art and also cover subjects such as lifestyle, trade, science, etc. Teachers might find the downloadable lesson plans interesting!

This is a very flashy flash site featuring the glamorous model photography of Andre Hoppe. The top of the website looks rather cheap but I guess some people dig this and it goes well with the fact that he digital enhances his photographs. However it is in strong contrast to his very attractive and tasteful digital enhanced pictures of his mostly nude female models. The site is in German but you don't need to speak to watch his beautiful gallery!

Edit:
The web page has (temporarily?) changed and no longer shows models but a special offer on kid portraits.

"Subjects portrayed in this Gallery may be unsuitable for some individuals." is what you will read on the homepage of Galindorf's Gallery, but it isn't that horrible, well, that was what I thought anyway.

What you will find here are fantasy drawings with a special interest for monsterly creatures. The medium is usually pencil combined with some digital post processing. Although there are also other art forms like sculpting present in the galleries. So if you feel like a trip to a fantasy world, go on right in.

As seen on Aeclectic Tarot

Lisa Gallagher creates stunning handcrafted fine jewelry. Her work is as diverse as her materials but the result is always the same: beautiful and artful jewelry. Check out her website and submerge yourself into the world of fine art jewelry!

One of my personal favorites

People interested in contemporary yet still figurative bronze sculptures might want to take a look here. You can see the artwork of the late Anne Marie Paul here and read a short biography. The sculptures of Anne Marie Paul are "stretched out" figures full of organic shapes. My personal favorite are the figures stretched around a whole holding a sphere.

Browsing around the Internet looking for humorous sculptures I bumped into this website. These guys sure know there way around sand. Their website isn't exactly "it" but there sculptures are great. Incredible what man can do with a little sand, well, a little?

"I would describe my work as humorous with a southern slant. I would like for my art to be a mini-vacation from reality for the viewer.", that's how Rebecca Stringer Korpita describes her work in an interview.

How I would describe her work is another matter. I mean I do agree with her on her own view, but if somebody would ask me in which style she paints I would have to say something like surrealism meets impressionism. Although that last bit isn't really on the mark but it are her strong colors and it looks like she works fast that make we see that link. Oh, never mind, just go and see for yourself. Should it interest you enough to buy her stuff you can go straight to her ebay shop.

Let's just finish by saying: her work makes me smile and feel good!

My wive and I recently visited a beautiful part of the world called Patagonia. It was one of our best travel experiences ever. I mention it because I found this fine website which gives a feel of this vast region through the medium of photography. It's a very nice site also offering prints and wallpapers for downloading.

My own Patagonia photography can be found here, you must see it as a photographic diary. The story behind the pictures can be read here.

Vlad Gansovsky is a fine-art photographer with an impressing online portfolio. He does classic photography, portraits, glamour and retro and has interesting images in most of those categories.

However, it's his alternate category that in my humble opinion is the most interesting. A collection of unusual, distressing, upsetting nude photography with a broad range of special effects.

Link found on Unscathed Corpse

Surreal, dreamlike photographic compositions that evoke in me a feeling of sadness, melancholy, chaos.
They say that art has to do something to you, that it has to make you think or trigger emotions. If that's your definition of art then you are where you should be with the work of Barbara Lee Black.

That's a lot of praise for a photographer but it doesn't stop there. She constructs here own frames as well, and not just a frame. Barabara starts working from within the image to build a frame around it, extracting elements from the original composition that are then moulded into a frame. In this way she creates a symbioses between artwork and frame melting it together to one piece of beautiful art. Whether the work in the frames parallels or surpasses that of the photograph I can only guess but to me she is both photographer and sculptor.

For the second time Praga kahn is staging a theatre tour. It was my first time as I didn't' see the first one so I was pretty impressed. I was told though by people who saw both that the first one was better but hey, that couldn't ruin my experience.

Imagine this, to use Praga Kahn, aka Maurice Engelen's own words: ballet, dance, semi nude tango, magic, action painting, break dance, human beat box, flamenco, opera, and all that to the pounding beats of the music of Praga Kahn. Actually, the music was more tranquil than usual, more atmospheric, trying to create a special atmosphere. Unfortunately sometimes completely ruined by an in your face sponsor logo or a request for a loud applauding.

But these where minor irritations in an overall overwhelming show of art mixtures. The fact that the music was a little more softer than on festivals or on his Cd's added to the overall experience of drowning yourself in a visual and musical feast and even resulted in surprising new versions of existing songs like the Flamenco version of Breakfast in Vegas.

The artists where quite a collection too featuring for example dancers from the Royal Ballet of Flanders, the Royal Opera, an illusionist who won the 'Golden Lion Award' in Las Vegas and a Japanese break dancer with lots of international awards. That's only mentioning a few. For people wondering who Praga Kahn is, if you are from the USA it's possible you know him as the man behind Lords of Acid.

Alas, for those of you who after reading this think: "wow, I gotta see this!", the tour is almost at its end and everything is completely sold out.

Click here for more information on Code Red and here for more information on Praga Kahn in General.

If you are into abstract photography this site might be just the thing for you. Xavier Damon blows up colorful Polaroids or other instant film. He uses this medium in an attempt to capture the elusive moments of daydreaming when color and forms melt together into emotion as you can read in his statement.

We already spoke here of Beaufort 2006 (who's website is still down), the art happening on the Belgian coast. In the town of Middelkerken it resulted in quite a stir when the locals saw what was going to be exhibited on there town square.

The artwork in question is "Shark" by David Cerny, a provocative Czech artist. "Shark" features a realistic looking life-size Saddam Hussein in his underwear and with his hands tied behind his back floating in a large glass tank filled with the embalming fluid formaldehyde looking quite dead.

The mayor of the town banned the work for several reasons such as that children can see it in the town square, that he has problems with it because of it depicting a living person still on trial and finally (maybe the main reason?) that he doesn't want to provoke a certain group of people.

You can read a full article on the Radio Praha website and see the work of David Cerny on his website.

Shark by David Cerny

At the Belgian cost Beaufort 2006 has started last Saturday. Beaufort is a contemporary art happening that in this edition, its second, focuses on monumental art. Every city along the coastal line is participating. Among the artworks are a 9 meter high spider above the grave of James Ensor and a herd of elephants in the sea. The event will end in September.

Unfortunately at the time of writing, the website of the happening was down.

I just ran into an incredible cute dog portrait that I wanted to share with you. Speaking about doggy eyes... Check it out.

I ran into the work of Matha Pettigrew on the Internet, by chance I landed on her "Rebecca" page and I was enchanted by this figurative sculpture. I loved the overall form of the statue but most of all I love how she combined colors in this 26" high bronze sculpture.

So I started looking around on her site and she has some pretty diverse subjects going from funny animals (good, humor is always good) to Mexican woman in Bronze (of which Rebecca is one). There is some great other stuff among her work too but it is especially "Rebecca" and "hopi basket" that stole my heart.

The minute I entered his site, straight into his portfolio I was impressed with what I saw. The first thing that caught my eye was that this guy knows his light. Specially the combination of ambient light and artificial light he masters well. This you can see mainly in the second fashion series or at the end of the third.
I'm pretty (not to say completely) sure there is some Photoshop post processing as well but it all results in striking fashion photography showing the best of his models yet making the location, if shot on location, interesting as well.
If you have a look at his Making Off section you will see that this are big time productions, just have a look at the setup of walking on water, again, very impressive. I would say Franck Duez is a major player in the fashion photography field.

I first encountered the art of Emil Schildt on Photosig. Instantly I fell in love with it. He really does like to experiment with all kinds of techniques. Painting with light, cyanotypes, liquid emulsion, photo polymer gravure, the Diana camera, destroying negatives,...

His experiments result in stunning images with striking atmospheres, often unique because of the technique used. He is not afraid of some humor in his work either and that is a good thing also, never take yourself to serious.

His work is a great source of inspiration for me although I've not yet gotten around to do these experiments myself. If only I had more time.
Up till now I only played around with the painting with light technique a little, which you can see here.

Have a look at Emil's work yourself.

Cubism was the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw the work of Cody Kiser.
He calls himself an outsider artist who is hoping to reinterpret and define new laws for both Pop Art and Cubism.

His work features strong and rich colors and looks cheerful but focuses a lot on isolation, either with or without showing figures. So while the execution of the artworks look positive and uplifting, they portray a rather negative image of our current society.
You can read the artists own words in the about and have a look at his works here

This is a very beautiful Flash powered website. But is not just a great site to look at, it shows magnificent photography as well. Geraldine Allen uses the light painting technique and she knows how to use her light. The images are very strong with lots of atmosphere. "Ambiance & Transience" is a well chosen subtitle. The great thing about this site is that the atmosphere from the images spills over into the site itself.

My personal favorite is the illustrative gallery but I had to push myself to say that, to make a choice. Check it out.

Welcome to this brand new art blog. I created Z-art blog to share whatever art related sites I find on the Internet and think worthy of a look. Eventually I also hope to write an article or 2 here with some tips and tricks from personal experience. Enjoy!