Z - a r t B l o g

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.