He's not the first one to do this but some of these are pretty clever.
What originated as an artistic experiment in Kiev continues to grow in quantity and popularity. Alexey Kondakov’s Napoli Project—in which classical characters are superimposed onto modern-day scenes—has expanded with brilliant new creations. The Ukrainian artist has taken up shop in Italy to cultivate a cohesive line of collage works. There, in the home of the Renaissance, Kondakov juxtaposes dreamy paintings with the photographic backdrops of contemporary Italian life.
As an art director, Kondakov employs masterful instincts and technique to place oil-rendered characters in mundane city streets. The result of his photo manipulations is not only stunning but surprisingly whimsical. Among the creations, Kondakov features feminine belles from the Pre-Raphaelite works of Bouguereau, Waterhouse, Leighton, as well as other romantic characters from Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical art. These muses, either dressed in flowing robes or not dressed at all, receive new storylines in Kondakov’s collages. By placing these antiquated characters inside clothing shops and riding public transportation, Kondakov breathes fresh life into old paintings.
Although the Napoli project is based in Italy, Kondakov superimposes paintings onto other European sites as well, including Berlin and London. To see more of his innovative collages as they happen, you can follow the artistically inclined photo manipulator on Instagram.
Past meets present in the dynamic collage work of Alexey Kondakov, where he superimposes classical painting figures onto scenes of modern-day Italy.
The season is upon us, so it's time to watch the greatest of all Christmas movies: Die Hard. Redditor lammage01 is helping to spread that special Christmas cheer with this Advent calendar inspired by the classic Bruce Willis film. He used artwork borrowed from A Die Hard Christmas: The Illustrated Holiday Classic, a storybook that retells the classic tale.
Each day of this time of expectation and preparation, pull a tab out. Terrorist leader Hans Gruber will fall just a little bit more to the bottom of Nakatomi Tower.
I'm actually surprised this hasn't been a thing for decades already.
(if you watch it, you can skip to 17:20 to get to the kabuki part)
For one-night only, Three Shining Swords took the stage at the Meguro Persimmon Hall in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward on November 28 for an unforgettable night of cultural storytelling. A unique adaptation of George Lucas’s 1977 brainchild, this Star Wars kabuki play focused on the franchise’s latest episodes, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, and stars one of Japan’s most renowned kabuki actors, Ichikawa Ebizo, as Kylo Ren.
While it caters to Japanese audiences by employing the traditional good-vs-evil theme and kabuki instrumental accompaniment, this play also assigns Japanese variants to the original character names, such as Kairennosuke 魁連之助 (Kylo Ren), Ruku 琉空 (Luke), Reian 澪殷 (Leia), Hanzo 半蔵 (Han Solo), Reina 麗那 (Rey), and Sunokaku 敷能角 (Snoke).
For most people, dragons only exist in fairytales or fantasy films, but for the people of Calais in France, a huge, fire-breathing beast roams their own streets. Don’t worry though—this particular dragon isn’t real. The mechanical Dragon of Calais (Le Dragon de Calais) was created by La Machine, a non-profit organization comprised of artists, technicians, and theater designers who work together to construct epic mechanical monsters.
The gigantic dragon—made of steel and carved wood—is La Machine’s largest creation to date. Earlier this month (November 1-3), it paraded the streets of Calais as part of an arts festival, where it was manually powered by 17 individuals each day. Crowds of people stood by in awe of the mythical beast as it stomped through the streets and breathed out fiery smoke. “Freed from the subterranean worlds, the Dragon of Calais is heading for the city,” say the makers. “This new creation built by La Machine Company will roam the city, manipulated by 17 people who give him life.”
Dragon of Calais now resides at La Cité provisoire, where from December 17th onward, the public will be able to enjoy rides in a carriage on the back of the dragon through the city—so you can feel just as powerful as Daenerys Targaryen did in Game of Thrones.
Find out more about Dragon of Calais on the La Machine website.
A giant fire-breathing mechanical dragon paraded through the streets of Calais earlier this month.
I love this and absolutely believe it took 4 nights to just tune the lighting to the correct settings. Even just a little bit off will break the illusion.
John and I are in full Panicked Party Production mode, and it's starting to pay off! Considering how we claimed this would be a smaller-scale party than last year's, it's kind of amazing how much the house is slowly transforming.
Our biggest and most impressive build so far is our Labyrinth wall entrance, which allows people to walk through a solid wall the way Sarah did in the movie. We're super excited about this thing, because it turned out so much better than we imagined! John's even been going around showing random cashiers videos of it on his phone, lol.
Here, have a look:
We took a risk adding those extra 3D bricks, since they may have spoiled the illusion a tiny bit - so here's a look at the wall before we added them:
I like the extra bricks too much to take them off again, but you can see they really aren't necessary.
Ah, but it gets even better when someone walks through it!
Sometimes it seems like you can’t turn on a screen these days without seeing characters wreathed in pink, purple and blue. From Frozen II to John Wick, the phenomenon known as “bisexual lighting” has deeply established itself in the visual aesthetic of movies and television. And audiences see it not just as a beautiful cinematic image, but a possible clue to a character’s hidden sexuality.
Just this week the above image from an upcoming episode of Supernatural made the rounds and fans, who have long theories that Dean Winchesters (Jensen Ackles) is bisexual, jumped on the colors behind him as yet another bit of proof that Dean is bi. While I don’t want to discourage fans from their headcanons (I totally think Dean can be read as bi and that’s personally how I read him), the prevalence of “bi lighting” is actually a much more complex, and a technical film phenomenon.
Bi lighting has been getting press for a while now. Last year, YouTuber KyleKalgren made a really excellent video essay on the subject after there was much internet discussion about the prevalence of bi lighting in films last year.
This is a great video and it gets to the point quickly that, while the bi flag—which the bi lighting is theoretically meant to evoke—was created in 1988, and the use of purple, blue and pink in cinema was around before that. Further, the general cultural consciousness that a bi flag existed is even more recent.
Even so, it’s tempting to think that filmmakers of recent years have used this bi palette to allude to character sexuality, especially when the text of a show or movie cannot. For example, the bi lighting in Atomic Blonde, which featured a canonically bisexual heroine. Or the bi-touches in the finale ofThe Legend of Korra, which contained subtextual bisexuality and a queer ending.
Bi lighting is definitely used on bi and queer characters. But that … doesn’t explain everything, so as Kyle did, we’re going to get into the science because it’s actually pretty neat.
Please forgive the following over-simplification. All colors we humans see are combinations of the three wavelengths of light (reddish, greenish, bluish), the different types of cones in our eyes detect. Smarter people than me have reduced these combinations to this very cool thing called the “CIE chromaticity diagram” which represents all the colors we can see. Here it is:
See that line at the bottom? It’s called the “line of purple.” The colors along the curve are pure, spectral colors but the purples and reds at the bottom are actually combinations which means that purple, essentially … is sort of an optical illusion.
Finding this out cleared up some things that had always confused me: namely, why purple was so often left out of the rainbow or the line up of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet we all learned as kids. Turns out it’s because purple is extremely special are rare and technically, not part of the natural spectrum of pure light that makes color.
That line of purple is … basically the bi flag. And the weirdness, color-wise, of purple is why it has become associated with magic, aliens and the unknown. The bi lighting scheme was popular in the 80s in neo-noir, and we see it often in sci-fi, fantasy or action movies where a character in an unknown, dangerous place. But purple has always been the color of royalty and the divine—and so also, something special. Therefore, in these cases, the color scheme isn’t a secret message about sexuality, but a visual shorthand for otherness or otherworldliness.
Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff venture into the bisexual color palette of the unknown.
Now, very often, otherness and bisexuality are things the coincide. A character can be both bisexual, and other. And otherness is an extremely queer experience in general, which is why, in a film like Frozen II for instance, we get a strong bisexual color scheme that serves as visual shorthand to the magical nature of where the gang is going … but also, perhaps, to reinforce the subtextual queerness of its heroine.
So, bi lighting and the pink-blue-purple color scheme can be and often is used to emphasize queer stories or stories that are queer in nature, but it’s not always the case, which brings me back to Supernatural and other shows where fans take the color schemes as part of a larger coding about a character. (See for example the BBC Sherlock). In Supernatural, we see purple used a lot—when magic is afoot.
gif via Inacatastrophicmind/tumblr
So, when we look at the picture of Dean with guest star Christian Kane, we can definitely think “oh boy that’s pretty bisexual,” but it might be more in keeping with the text and intention of the shot to guess “oh, something magical is happening and this is probably an illusion of some sort.”
Bi lighting is a really interesting topic to get into because it exemplifies a lot of things about art and film-making. There are the technical aspects of it: how we use new film techniques to show colors we can’t see in nature and how that subtly tells us about the world on screen. But it also gets into how we can all take different things from something as simple as a combination of colors.
So, we’re not saying bisexual lighting is one thing or another. In fact, and fittingly, we are saying that bi lighting … can go both ways.
I wish I was an archaeologist at the Smithsonian, just for these cakes.
Smithsonian archaeologist Eric Hollinger made a cake for his office Christmas party in 2004. Hollinger is an archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution. He went a little over the top and made a cake for the anthropology department's holiday party that illustrated an existing archaeological dig, complete with a blue Jell-o pond. Hollinger didn't know he had started what would become a tradition. The next year, everyone expected another work of art, so Hollinger make a Haida Native American longhouse out of chocolate. Since then, he's provided cake replicas of a Viking ship, Chinese terra cotta soldiers, King Tut's tomb, and the recreation of Al Khazneh at Petra, Jordan, that you see above. That year he brought music to accompany the cake- the theme from the Indiana Jones movies.
While sharing the cakes is what the whole enterprise is about, Hollinger keeps the subject of each year’s cake a big secret until the party. Experts from around the world and his family and colleagues who help with the creation get to be in on the secret, but the rest of his colleagues are left guessing and eagerly awaiting the big reveal. Hollinger is already working on this year's cake and, as always, it is promising to be unique, educational and eye-catching.
If you want to see what sweet treat he has produced, make sure to keep an eye on the museum's Facebook and Twitter feeds come December 18. Even without the sugar high, it is sure to wow you and might inspire you to do a little research or baking of your own.
“Eric is so meticulous and careful with the cakes — similar to his research,” Burgess says. “It's a huge gift to the department and it's the highlight of our holiday party.”
I will try to remember to post the 2019 cake here when images become available. See some of Hollinger's past archaeology cakes at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: James Di Loreto, Smithsonian Institution)
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Polaroid photos have provided instant gratification and fun for decades, not to mention rich aesthetic value. And with the introduction Polaroid Originals cameras, users are well versed in Polaroid’s sophisticated blend of analog and digital technology. Now, the nostalgic photo brand has released an instant Polaroid printer—allowing users to transfer photos from their phone onto analog prints.
The Polaroid Lab is a revamp of the crowdfunded Impossible Project from seven years ago. Like its predecessor, the 2019 version is a “miniature tabletop darkroom.” To get started, the user simply has to download the Polaroid Originals app, pick a photo, and place the phone face down on the device before pressing the red button. The Polaroid Lab uses a 3-lens system to project the photo from your smartphone’s screen and then exposes it onto a piece of Polaroid i-Type film. The instant printer charges via USB and is compatible with iPhones running iOS 11 or newer and Androids using Android 7 and above.
Although people are taking more photographs now than ever before, most of them become lost in digital storage and quickly forgotten. Fortunately, with a simple click, the Polaroid Lab can transform these passing moments into tangible memories.
The Polaroid Lab is now for sale on Amazon for $129.99. You can also purchase a starter kit that includes two packs of i-Type film for $149.99.
With the Polaroid Lab, users can instantly transfer photos from their phones onto analog prints.
my arch nemesis cynthia is, of course, at the bank, because we both were sent like clockwork to pick up the checks of our husbands. she is wearing a lovely long green gown, which i know was on behalf of me, because, as my husband will tell you, our house abhors green and glamour. already the tellers look at each other under their little hats, for they love our tirades, i’m sure, although not more than i hate them.
“oh, is that your knitting?” my arch nemesis cynthia peers her eyes at my hands. “is it some kind of… sock?” everyone knows she and i used to be close before we were married and our husbands, smartly so, have introduced us to the idea of true vengeance.
“it is a scarf,” i say. i want to tell her that when the time comes and the world gets cold it will go over my mouth and i will breathe warm air and it will fill my lungs and i will be able to run around with my love even in the dark night. “it is not,” i say, “over surprising that you should be caught unawares of a scarf,” i say, “as i’m sure enjoying winter festivities are too beneath the handsome qualities your husband prefers.” pompous ass.
the tellers pass each other eyes for now it has started and they are delighted.
my arch nemesis cynthia thrusts out her hand. a white bottle. “rat poison,” she says. “i would expect the whole town knows about your little problem.” stage whisper. “such a shame, my dear.” then she rustles her long green skirts - which i know she wore on behalf of me - and she shimmies herself out of the room like royalty. oh, she floats everywhere she goes, beautiful black hair behind her. the bottle in my palm is cold. i will devise how to get her back starting first thing tomorrow.
the week, as always, is a long week, for there is much to make and do and knit and be. my husband comes home and i love him for who he is; for he never comes home without checking the state of the house up and down. he is the kind who loves his home so completely and sets each room like a stage for a great band to come playing. i am too ashamed to tell him why so many of the rats go missing, only make him a stew the next morning to celebrate. his favorite, although not mine, i’m afraid. plenty left over.
my arch nemesis today - of course - in a green the color of rotting. a bruise is uncarefully covered on her cheekbone, so striking against all of her dainty. her husband would say it was for her ungraceful nature, and i know mine would agree. i strike first, already delighted by my master plan, shoving over our best picnic basket tied with a bow. “i made you and yours a stew,” i say, “for beneath all that you carry” all that horrible wealth of your husband “it seems you’re getting rather skinny.” i can’t resist one last comment. “i am worried you’re about to waste to nothing.”
She plucks it out of my hand. “yes, if it weren’t for you and your husband’s dwindling wealth,” her sarcasm is biting, “i’m sure i will be nothing in, oh, 5 weeks time.” she arches a brow. “so long from now.”
“i am counting the days,” i tell her. her lips purse. the tellers behind me make a choked titter. perhaps, by their estimation, i have won this round quite completely. i go home to my husband smiling. he asks where i have been and i tell him i’ve been at the bank, but he checks anyway because i like to get up to tricks and he doesn’t like to fall for it. it is a good game we play. at night, when he is asleep, i am so in love that i must convince myself to pull the covers over my nose and practice breathing. how silly to wake him up for a young girl’s feelings.
the first week of five: she gives me a solid, ugly ring that requires three knuckles to hold. “i feel so badly for your status, and i must remember to practice charity,” she says. “it such a small thing, but do be careful amongst all that thin pine furnishing of your house, which dents so easily.” my husband appears at the bank’s front door. just checking. so lovely to be picked up by him. at night, in a rage, i try it - beneath the table bends easily. i scuff out the scratch with walnut before my husband can see. i pull the covers over my face in bed and breathe.
the second week: i wear her ugly ring and give her more stew, this time hearty with meat. her dress is a meadow. my heart each time it sees her collapses on itself. she hands me clothes for my husband, since his wealth continues to go missing, and the charity of her heart is so loving. i am so ashamed i bury them far by the old tree, where all my shames go hiding. again, the covers. it, by now, helps me sleep. i have gotten so good at it that i can simply shimmy my shoulders to be perfectly toasty and buried.
the third week: she asks how comes my knitting. i tell her it’s nearly complete. she asks how comes my husband, whom she must know has been ill recently, and who is doing quite badly. i go home to him, shaking. even sick he is a good housekeeper, who comes home examining for dust and dinge so i do not fall behind on my chores. who checks to be sure i spoke to only him and no one more, for fear a man might snatch me. tell me, who else has a man so involved, in this day and age?
the fourth week she is envy green. i shove a whole heaping of stew at her, for now her husband has gotten it. i say it will return him to spirits, she laughs, a sudden, beautiful sound, even in the quiet of a bank. everyone stares. maybe it is the stress that is making her quite improper. i feel the same way. so much is happening and it always seems she knows. she says she heard he has left me nothing in the will, which everyone already knows. she says she doubts either of us can dig upwards from the hole we’re both in. i look at the bruise on her nose. i tell her to mind her own husband, and be careful where she goes.
the fifth week: so final. her, garishly lime green. and i in black, to pick up a check that hardly seems the effort. it will be enough to cover my husband’s funeral. she smiles at me and hands me a silver bottle. she says quietly: now that i am destitute, there is one thing for it all, and everyone would understand quite completely. it would be quiet, and quick, and complete.
it is the night of the new moon, so dark no man can see in it. i receive notice her husband has died, and i am sorry to say i find a terrible joy in it. the air has changed cold. i have left a note asking to be buried in my scarf, the last thing i have made on this earth. i go through each perfect room, but there is nothing else to take with me, for the house has always been his and his alone, and now aches to be gone of him. i would not serve as a good tender for it. having spent so many nights watched carefully, the silly girlish freedom i’d gain would surely set the house ablaze.
i follow her instructions. quick, quiet, complete.
the horrible rustling is what does it. like a million green skirts. and then it is dark, and i am in my own coffin, eerie with pine. my head hurts but i must be quick and quiet. they have listened and buried me with my scarf. i shimmy my shoulders just-so and get it over my face. bring my arms up, ugly ring heavy, and begin to hit as hard as i can, over and over, the thin wood of my husband’s favorite furniture, the cretin. it would be pine, of course - he left me no money to be buried in any nicer recourse.
the wood splits so horribly, and then it is very hard to breathe, harder than under the covers, and i have to remind myself to be patient and continue to dig upwards, while my throat closes and my heart beats so loudly and the whole thing is so heavy it is a universe. the shifting of gravedirt is loud, and loud, and i feel i will be turned into a worm, and i fear everyone has forgotten about me, or i have gotten the timing wrong, or i will really die down here in the dirt and the cold
but then her hand, and my hand, and we are both digging towards each other, and she lifts me so easily from the ground like a plucked turnip and holds me against her, us both panting and muddied. we can only stay like this for so long, here in my pauper grave, and then we are both running to the old tree where we met, and unburying a second thing; my lovely box of shame, and men’s clothes, and all of my husband’s dwindling fortune i have slowly been squirrelling away.
my love and angel cynthia, who has black hair like a curtain and a mind so fast i sometimes am in frank awe at it, who is, even now and dirty and raw: even now the only sun in my life.
like this, i a man in an almost-dawn, and us cleaned by the river, and her smiling so widely, and only a faint bruise on her, and our pasts behind us in ugly garish colors. and her delicate hand and beautiful nose and when i finally get to kiss her it feels like green feels; my favorite color, all warm and nature and sunny grace and grass and lying awake so filled with love it makes you shake.
i hold her, and she holds me, and our future is a love like a dream unburied.
The nest looks pretty amazing and is cleverly piled higher than the anti-bird spikes. That's some good engineering there!
Poppies have become a lasting symbol of the endurance and perseverance of wounded soldiers, especially since they’ve been seen growing on battlefields after World War I. They’re particularly prominent on Remembrance Day, which honors those who have died in the line of duty and is celebrated across the UK and Commonwealth states. Observed since the end of World War I (as early as 1919), associations have sold cotton or silk poppies to raise money for veterans. In Australia, one animal decided to pay their respects by using poppies in a decidedly different way.
Since early October, the staff at the Australian War Memorial had noticed that poppies were disappearing from the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier. It caused some confusion until the staff looked up. There they saw that a pigeon has been carefully crafting a nest on the ledge of a stained glass window. The fact that the pigeon was the poppy thief was actually a pleasant surprise given the role that these birds had during times of war.
As historian Dr. Meleah Hampton points out, communication was difficult during early wars as the technology we have now simply wasn’t available. Just as horses were used to transport troops and supplies, pigeons were used to carry important messages at times when soldiers weren’t able to relay information easily. Their role carried on well into World War II, when environmental conditions continued to cause communication issues.
“We often think about the Second World War as a time when technology has taken over,” said Dr. Hampton. “We’ve got our trucks instead of horses, and wireless radio, and sophisticated radar signals, and all those sorts of things. But particularly in the Pacific, the mountains and the humidity meant that the wireless radios didn’t work very well, so pigeons were actually the most effective way of getting messages up and over the Owen Stanleys, and throughout the islands.”
In fact, pigeons were such a valuable military asset that the Australian Corps of Signals Pigeon Service was created in 1942. Over the course of two years, 13,500 pigeons were trained as carriers and Australia even advised the American military on how to start their own service. In the end, pigeons were so good at their job that several were awarded the Dickin Medal, which was awarded to animals who displayed high levels of service and devotion during World War II.
Given this special relationship between pigeons and the military, the nest takes on a whole new meaning. In its own way, the pigeon paid homage to the service of its ancestors and their human handlers.
Workers at the Australian War Memorial noticed poppies were going missing from the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier.
The thief was a mystery until they looked up and saw a pigeon making a nest high on a window ledge.
It was a fitting tribute as pigeons have served an important purpose in times of war.
They were particularly helpful in communications during World War II.
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Cartoonist John Atkinson of Wrong Hands has a playful way of describing some of literature’s most celebrated works. Known for his Abridged Classics series, he shares humorous “spoilers” of novels including The Catcher in the Rye and 1984. His very brief reports of the books are pared down to their most basic and boast a biting, dry wit. Of George Orwell’s 1984, for instance, Atkinson sums it up with the following: “Vision of a dystopian future (now called Tuesday).”
The inspiration for Abridged Classics and its spinoff comics came a few years ago when Atkinson stumbled across the results of a survey. “It revealed that around 60% of people pretend to have read books they haven’t and around 40% rely on movies and TV to feign knowledge of classic novels,” he recalls to My Modern Met. “That coupled with our ongoing obsession with ‘tweet-culture’ got me to thinking that it might be a funny idea to help everyone out and provide synopses of classic books suitable for dinner parties and awkward social functions.” The illustrations will make you laugh, but don’t forget to read the books, too. “I’m always quick to tell students not to use them as book reports unless the want a solid D- or an F,” Atkinson says.
In 2018, Abridged Classics was turned into a book of the same name. Atkinson has continued to make comics about literature with spoilers of Dickens novels, Shakespeare plays, and more. He’s even ventured from writing topics onto artists. Scroll down to enjoy his comical illustrations.
Illustrator John Atkinson creates funny book cartoons that famously feature “spoilers” of classic tales.
Atkinson has expanded his portfolio to explore comics about artists:
Sora News 24 introduces us to Twitter user @kusabanaasobi, an origami master who specializes in leaves, acorns, and other fallen products of autumn. She can make fairies, butterflies, Santa Claus, crayons, and more appear from these natural materials. Best of all, her Twitter feed is filled with videos that show you how you can do it, too.
This is Hellvetica — a font that tells you to “kern in hell.” It’s a very bad, if not evil, version of the Helvetica typeface family. Created by Zack Roif and Matthew Woodward, the font has questionable kerning properties that will surely give any graphic designer nightmares.
Kerning, which adjusts the spaces between letters based on how they’re shaped, is usually applied to make the text more pleasing. However, Hellvetica uses it to distort words, making text difficult to read by randomizing the spaces between characters.
I cling to to that x-axis as long as I possibly can. I still miss Corel WordPerfect. And I'm still hanging onto my Adobe 7.0 (17 years old, it's almost old enough to vote!)
This totally makes sense, especially for the warmth issue. And sticking your kids in them like people crate dogs when they're at work :D
Relatively speaking, private bedrooms--or even bedrooms--are a modern invention. A house might have only one room or just a few, none of which could be set aside for sleeping.
So if an amorous couple desired, uh, privacy, then they needed a box bed. Amusing Planet describes the other purposes of the box bed:
Aside from privacy, the small enclosed space of the box bed trapped body heat keeping the sleeping person warm during winter. It’s also possible that the beds offered some degree of protection against intruders, especially wolves and other animals, that might have entered the house. It has been suggested that peasants kept their children inside box beds while they went to work in the fields.
In Europe, box beds continued to be common until the Nineteenth Century, when the practice declined for hygienic purposes.
I saw an intriguing post go by on Tumblr, wherein the poster claimed that switching their font to Comic Sans—arguably the most derided font in existence—had helped unblock their writing. The post was reblogged more than a hundred thousand times, with additional users adding that they had tried the Comic Sans trick and, amazed, found that the font worked wonders for them, too.
On the Tumblr post, the original poster wrote, “something about this font is so disarming. something about this font lets you look past the shape of the words and into their soul. i’ve never written so much as i did last night, on my phone, at 2am, in comic sans.” Another user chimed in with, “update: this actually works. i’m so angry.”
The idea that a mere font-change could alter the way one writes, and indeed help spark creativity, fascinated me. I went digging, and it turns out the Comic Sans phenomenon has been explored before. In a December 2018 post on Lifehacker entitled “Get Over Yourself and Start Using Comic Sans,” A.A. Newton explained why the font-swap clicked for them as a compulsive self-editor:
The entire point of Comic Sans is that each letter is totally distinct from the others. It’s why people who have dyslexia love this font: the irregularly-shaped letters make it easier to break words down into their component parts and properly interpret them. If all the b’s look kinda like p’s, which also resemble q’s and d’s or maybe even g’s, that’s much harder to do.
Even though I have the opposite problem—I don’t need any help scrutinizing my writing at the syllable level, thanks—writing in Comic Sans has helped me break inefficient habits I’ve clung onto since college. The words all melt into a cohesive mass that I’m able to consider as a whole, rather than immediately needing to pick apart, so I write faster and more fluidly. As a freelancer, that’s never a bad thing.
Dolores Toner, in a Medium post, “Yes, Really: Comic Sans Is Making Me a More Productive Writer,” takes a similar tack as Newton in describing her experience trying out the Sans. Something about this silly-looking, less-pretentious font enables us to let go of overly obsessing over our writing while it’s in progress.
Seeing one’s own work stripped of pretension down to its most basic level, language wearing children’s clothes, is a powerful thing. By the second or third day of writing in Comic Sans, I found myself feeling freer than ever to make silly mistakes, take risks, and explore stranger territories.
In result, the word count of my novel has doubled in the past week.
There is no magical solution to writer’s block, but sometimes even the smallest changes of habit can remind us of our own meek position as artists.
As we head into NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month in November, I thought other writers out there might want to hear about this potential creativity hack. As an experiment, I’m using Comic Sans to write this very post, and it feels … fine? It definitely seems less like “work” on the screen, and flows nicely. I’ll report back when I make an attempt with a fictional piece; I’ve been feeling blocked in that respect lately. If Comic Sans does work for me, is there really some inherent psychological magic in the font, or will it be a sort of placebo effect? The honest truth is that I don’t care, if I can banish this particular block.
Fast Company has a fascinating story from 2014, “The Science of Comic Sans,” in which they explore the emotional response people have to various fonts, as well as the importance of typeface across the ages. It’s worth a read, and especially interesting for our Comic Sans purposes here:
Amare, the South Alabama scholar, included [Comic Sans] in one of her recent studies on the emotional effects of typeface. Whereas most fonts trigger one emotion more sharply than others, Comic Sans produced spikes across the emotional spectrum–from agitation to calm. It’s basically a rollercoaster of emotions wrapped in a few playful curves. People either love it or hate it.
[…] Just for fun, she recently changed part of a website that she helps manage to Comic Sans, to observe reader response. And then received emails requesting the type be changed back immediately because it was unprofessional. Interestingly, once she switched the text to Times New Roman, other users told her they kind of missed the “fun” type, and now found the site “somehow duller, boring, and more mundane.”
Of course, if we were to complete a project, I don’t think anyone is rushing to print a finished work in Comic Sans. Can you imagine reading an entire book in the wayward font? Yet as I type these words right now, there’s something increasingly liberating about seeing them appear in a sort of non-conformist configuration.
Have you ever attempted this font-changing trick before? Intrigued enough to try it? Let’s talk typeface in the comments.
Alright, friends. It’s been a whirlwind couple of days and I am beyond blown away, but let’s start at the top.
Hello. My name is Macey, and I’m real gay.
So, last July, I saw this picture by artist @al-norton on twitter. It was gorgeous. Two ladies, one in uniform threatening the be-gowned high femme with her sword. ‘Wow,’ I said to myself, and the internet, ‘I love them.’ And then, ‘but what if we did an anthology full of weapon sapphics and high femmes tho’.
What if indeed.
You gotta understand, I’ve said that before. ‘What if we did an anthology.’ Of tree ladies. Of bone sorcerers. Of airship pirate wizards. No one ever took me all that seriously, before. (Hello, I am your neighbourhood Type A disaster sapphic. Over-commitment is my middle name ^.^;)
But this time… people liked the idea. A lot.
So we decided to put together a kickstarter. We commissioned the cover art you can see up top, from @artbyalexis, and checked if Al was okay with us citing her inspiration & buying rights to show her art. And then we asked all those writers who were so stoked on twitter whether they really meant it - figuring that some of them were probably, well, over-excited.
Nope. They meant it. Claire Eliza Bartlett. Aliette de Bodard. K.A. Doore. Jennifer Mace (yup, it’s me!). Freya Marske. Kelly Robson. Nibedita Sen. Django Wexler. JY Yang. All of them. We had a table of contents.
We posted our kickstarter on October 28th, with a modest goal of $6,000 to pay our authors, artists, and editors, and an ambitious $12,000 stretch goal to put on an open call for submissions and pay everyone professional rates. We figured if we started strong, we could maybe get to $6k in the first day or two, and slowly strive for $12k (which I particularly wanted, because we promised ourselves enamel pins at that point!) over the course of the month.
We funded to $12k in 12 hours.
As I write this, 37 hours in, we’re at $20,000. We’re in talks with authors whose names make me pinch myself. We’re working to bring in even more artists, and expand our open call to bring the book up closer to 100,000 words - which would allow for half our content to be from unsolicited writers. (Perhaps writers like you.)
I’m beyond words, I’m so happy. I never expected that stories about queer women - queer women having adventures, stabbing things, wrangling diplomatic missions or running space stations or falling in love over the bones of a dragon - could get this kind of response.
Thank you. All of you, thank you so much. And please consider joining us, and continuing to show the world: stories like this matter, and are wanted, and are beautiful.
Software engineer Akiva Leffert designed a set of tarot cards inspired by Ikea’s infamous flatpack instructions. The deck of handmade cards contains the four suits of the minor arcana, but Leffert replaced wands, coins, swords, and chalices with sofas, lamps, dowels, and alien keys. In addition, the back of the cards resemble the famous Swedish company’s blue and yellow company colors. Leffert is selling the cards on etsy, if you’re interested in predicting your future with these Ikea-themed tarot cards.
Not generally into this kind of grotesquerie art, but that bunny is pretty awesome.
The ceramic animal figurines happily decorated homes for years before they were eventually discarded. One garage sale led to another and, finally, chipped and partially broken, to the thrift store.
That's where mad scientist/artist Debra Broz found them. She promised these discarded figures a home. But there was a price to pay for that new home. Oh, yes, a terrible, terrible price.
For Broz performed...experiments on them. She altered them.
When is she done working upon one of her subjects? In an interview with Artist Strong, she explained:
In the case of the ceramics, the piece is finished when all the final production work is done: when the painting, sculpting and finish all look exactly how they should. I have a problem with perfectionism so this can be a long process but it’s pretty boring, it’s really all technique.
The more difficult part for the ceramics is knowing when the idea is finished. I try to make sure I’m thoughtful about my work. That means when I have a concept, I always think about pushing it farther- it’s not just exchanging heads and bodies. If I feel like I’ve thought it out well and gone beyond simply visual to add some other type of concept, then the idea is done.
"The city is filled with tall buildings, rows and rows of towers. But you have been here for over a year, and you still don't know anyone who lives in one. None of the people you know, knows anyone who lives in one. Their warm lights at night have stopped reminding you of home. "
"They speak differently here, they say. It is easy to tell from someone who is from here and who is from America. It is unmistakable, and obvious, surely you can tell the difference. They reassure you with smiles, but their pastel blue gaze remains unmoving. Can't you tell? "
"It is a beautiful leaf, bright red and bold, with eleven points rhythmically arranged in stunning beauty. It is everywhere, and people wear the leaf as a sign of community bonding. It feels so familiar and friendly. You have never seen a tree that bears this leaf before. "
Shoji Ushiyama is a Japanese artist from Hong Kong who lived in the UK before moving to Toronto to study industrial design. He recently posted a long list of observations on his Canadian experience at Twitter.
As an expat living in Canada, the more I live here, the more I'm convinced I'm actually stuck in some kind of cryptic horror nightmare country that's subtly and slowly eating away at me.
You want to move in. You ask someone about what the electricity bills are like. They ask you if you mean "hydro". You say you weren't talking about water, but electricity. They insist it's called "hydro". You accept this.
People praise the coffee shop. They joke about the coffee shop. They say the coffee shop is central to their collective identity. You mention that you have been to the coffee shop before, and you liked it. The people are horrified. You decide not to visit the coffee shop again.
Everyone says the other language everyone speaks is French. When you walk down the street, though, you notice all the signs are in Chinese. You ask them again. They still tell you it's French.
Someone invites you somewhere. You ask if it is far and inconvenient, but they assure you it is only a short trip away. They give you the address to check. You learn that it is very, very, very far, and ask them again. They insist, please, let me. It is closer than you think.
You speak to someone. They make a sound at the end. You nod your head and agree. You never disagree when they make the sound at the end.
Dude idk if you're finished yet, but this whole thread was more unsettling than most horror stories I've read in a while
Oh, there's a lot more, which you may or may not relate to, depending on how well you know Canada and the experience of having to shift cultures. The more you read, the more it feels like a classic episode of The Twilight Zone. Check it out at Threadreader, or the original Twitter thread with replies. -via Metafilter
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Anyone that has a home printer knows they can be temperamental at best. But what if instead of having a bulky, barely working machine taking up space, you could print everything you need from a tiny, hand-held device? That’s the concept behind PrinCube—the world’s smallest mobile color printer, designed by TheGodThings.
The ultra-lightweight appliance works using WiFi, so you can upload any text, image, or design from your smartphone (both Apple and Android) that will then be instantly ready to print. PrinCube doesn’t just transfer ink onto paper, though—users can directly print onto almost any surface, including metal, textiles, plastics, wood, leather, and even the skin. “PrinCube is perfect for making safe temporary tattoos on the skin,” says TheGodThings, “Get creative with any design to add art or messages to the skin in a safe way.”
The palm-sized printer may be small, but it’s powerful. A single charge provides 6 hours of working time and a lengthy 1 year of standby time. TheGodThings says: “The high efficiency printer has 20 times more memory than other mobile printers and is capable of printing over 415 pages of A4 paper on a single cartridge!” It even utilizes the latest 3-color thermal ink-jet technology, so you can achieve vibrant, full-color prints each time. And when it’s time to change the ink cartridge, simply open up the device, press in the new cartridge, and start printing again.
After launching their idea on Indiegogo, TheGodThings has already surpassed its original goal by a huge margin. Thanks to its success, the team has begun turning their prototype into the final product, so you can get your very own PrinCube before Christmas 2019!
Can you imagine all of the creative possibilities with this tiny printer? Find out more and support the project via Indiegogo.
Introducing PrinCube — the world’s smallest mobile color printer, designed by TheGodThings.
It can print directly onto almost any surface, including paper, metal, textiles, plastics, wood, leather, and even the skin.
It utilizes the latest 3-color thermal ink-jet technology, so you can achieve vibrant, full-color prints each time.
I wish my lego-loving nephews were more interested in fossils, this is so cool! I'll probably have to get a set. Love the pterosaur!
From a build-your-own Imperial Star Destroyerto a Central Perk set, LEGO is constantly releasing exciting building kits that inspire people of all ages to play and learn. Natural history enthusiasts and aspiring paleontologists will especially enjoy the latest 910-piece toy building kit for adults—a Dinosaur Fossils LEGO set.
The wonderfully detailed, collectible LEGO Ideas kit features two 1:32-scale replicas of dinosaur skeleton models for Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops skel, as well as a model of the extinct, huge flying reptile known as the Pterosaur. All 3 can be adjusted into lifelike poses and each one comes with its own museum-style stand, so users can curate their own miniature natural history exhibition at home. The set also comes with a paleontologist toy minifigure with various accessories for digging up and examining imaginary artifacts and bones.
The Dinosaur Fossils LEGO set will be available to buy via the LEGO website starting November 1st, 2019 for $59.99.
Interested in the history of dinosaurs? Scroll down to check out the new paleontology-inspired LEGO kit.
Aspiring paleontologists will enjoy this 910-piece Dinosaur Fossils LEGO toy building kit.
It features two 1:32-scale replicas of dinosaur skeleton models for Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops skel…
…and a model of the extinct, huge flying reptile known as the Pterosaur.
Every time I hear about Artemisia Gentileschi I learn how much more amazing she was than I thought before. What talent and fantastic intent.
“Self-portrait as a Female Martyr,” ca. 1615 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)
For the sake of convenience, art history’s major movements are often associated with single, pioneering figures. The success of Impressionism, for example, is often credited to Claude Monet, while Salvador Dalí is frequently seen as the sole architect of Surrealism. In addition to overly simplifying the complexity of these genres, however, this system of attribution is flawed, as female artists are rarely included in the running.
A prime example of an overshadowed female painter is Artemisia Gentileschi. Though born into an artistically accomplished family and even accepted into a prestigious art school, she has historically been overlooked in favor of Caravaggio, a contemporary painter attributed with spearheading the Baroque movement.
Fortunately, today, more and more museums, art history books, and other communicators of culture are beginning to shine a light on this overshadowed figure—and the powerful stories behind her most celebrated paintings.
Here are five of Artemisia Gentileschi’s most important masterpieces.
Susanna and the Elders (1610)
“Susanna and the Elders,”c. 1610 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)
In 1593, Artemisia Gentileschi was born in Rome. With famed Tuscan painter Orazio Gentileschi as her father, Gentileschi was exposed to art at a young age. As a teenager, she worked alongside her father in his studio, where she learned the fundamentals of painting and completed Susanna and the Elders, her earliest known work of art.
Completed when Gentileschi was just seventeen years old, this large-scale painting depicts a biblical scene. It shows Susanna, a married Hebrew woman, being harassed and attacked by two men while bathing. After refusing to have sexual relations with the assailants, Susanna is blackmailed and falsely put on trial for adultery. However, her husband, Daniel, points out the unfair nature of the accusation, and, in turn, the accusers are cross-examined. After failing to come up with matching stories, the men are put to death.
Gentileschi rendered this scene in what would become her signature style: a realistic approach to female anatomy, a deep color palette, and skilled use of light and shadow. Most prominently, however, it laid the groundwork for Gentileschi’s eventual preferred subject matter: suffering yet strong female figures from mythology, the bible, and allegorical tales.
Judith Slaying Holofernes (1614-1620)
“Judith Slaying Holofernes,” 1614-1620 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)
Gentileschi’s longterm focus on female subjects was further shaped by an event that occurred the same year she completed Susanna and the Elders. In 1610, her father was collaborating with Agostino Tassi, a fellow Italian artist, on a project in Rome. During this time, Tassi raped the 17-year-old, prompting her father to press charges. While Tassi was exiled for his behavior—which also included separate charges like theft and intent to murder—his sentencing was never carried out.
Gentileschi, however, sought her own form of revenge. In 1610, she painted Judith Slaying Holofernes, a piece portraying an Old Testament story in which a widow and her maid overpower—and eventually behead—a lustful, threatening man. Given the timing of the painting’s completion, many believe that Gentileschi channeled her own sexual assault (and consequent feelings toward Tassi, represented by a bleeding Holofernes) when crafting the composition.
In 1614, Gentileschi returned to this theme, producing a second copy of Judith Slaying Holofernes. With a more vivid color palette and increased contrasts between light and dark, this later work would eventually typify her entire oeuvre.
Judith and Her Maidservant (1625)
“Judith and Her Maidservant,” 1625 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)
Between 1623 and 1625, Gentileschi again revisited the story of Judith. In Judith and Her Maidservant, she captures the moment after the murder, when the heroine and her maid place the decapitated head of Holofernes in a bag.
While Judith Slaying Holofernes is predominantly celebrated for Gentileschi’s radical approach to the subject matter, Judith and Her Maidservant is mainly praised for her treatment of light and shadow. On top of accentuating the rich tones found in Judith’s golden dress and the red velvet curtains, this use of light heightens the drama of the scene and, ultimately, showcases Gentileschi’s mastery of a quintessentially Baroque skill.
Gentileschi’s depictions of Judithwould not be the last example of the artist exploring the effects of sexual harassment and rape in her work. In 1623, she painted Lucretia, a work that features a female figure on the brink of suicide. Specifically, it depicts Lucretia, a real-life Roman noblewoman, who opted to take her own life after being raped by Sextus Tarquinius, the son of an Etruscan king.
While plenty of painters have found a muse in Lucretia, Gentileschi’s rendition (completed in 1625) is described by famed art historian Mary Garrard as “the most unusual and the most radical variation of the subject in early modern painting.” This assessment is primarily due to Gentileschi’s strategy of depicting the moment just before Lucretia resolves to kill herself—not, as in the case of many other paintings, the suicide itself.
Though unprecedented, this decision falls in line with Gentileschi’s approach to such subject matter, as Lucretia, secure in her convictions, is depicted as a “femme forte, a strong heroine.”
Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (1638-1639)
“Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting,” 1638-1639 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)
Gentileschi’s penchant for painting women was not limited to age-old bible stories and ancient tales. In fact, she sometimes found inspiration in a contemporary figure: herself.
In 1639, Gentileschi completed her most celebrated self-portrayal, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting. In this unique painting, the artist imagines herself as an allegory—a creative approach that subtly incorporates her long-held feminist views. “She holds a brush in one hand and a palette in the other,” the Royal Collection Trust explains, “cleverly identifying herself as the female personification of painting—something her male contemporaries could never do.”
On October 18, 2019, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, made history when it launched its 221st spacewalk. Carried out by Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, this stint in space marked a major milestone, as it is the first time that a spacewalk has featured only female astronauts.
Koch and Meir embarked on this historic spacewalk early Friday morning. Tasked with the responsibility of replacing a failed battery component, the pair floated outside of the International Space Station and got straight to work—which, after five-and-a-half hours, culminated in both a mended power control unit and a monumental milestone.
“I think it’s important because of the historical nature of what we’re doing,” Koch said. “In the past, women haven’t always been at the table. It’s wonderful to be contributing to the space program at a time when all contributions are being accepted, when everyone has a role. That can lead in turn to increased chance for success.”
On Friday, people across the planet tuned in to NASA’s website and Facebook page for a live look at the astronauts in action. In order to make it possible for viewers to easily distinguish them from one another, Koch wore a suit adorned with strategic red stripes, while Meir was clad in plain gear.
Though their spacesuits may not seem particularly important, they’ve played a major role in making this endeavor possible. Back in March, NASA had to scrap plans for an earlier all-female spacewalk when the International Space Station did not carry enough suits in the correct sizes—a problem that many misconstrued to mean that women were simply too small in stature for such a task.
However, Ellen Stofan, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, was quick to clear the air. “No physical reasons—not small enough spacesuits,” she tweeted. “Equipment problems held women back—and the men who made decisions about that equipment.”
Fortunately, these “equipment problems” were solved ahead of Friday’s event, allowing the long-overdue mission to finally take off—and enabling Koch and Meir to inspire a new generation of go-getters. “To all those reaching to new heights,” Koch said, “yes you can.”
On October 18, 2019, NASA made history when it launched its first all-female spacewalk.
Hmm, this is actually quite appealing. The formal outline style has never worked well for me, not even to write my thesis, the style of writing that it is actually intended for. But an outline based on relationships between events... that DOES appeal. Interesting!
Well, November and NaNoWriMo start on Saturday and I am busily procrastinating from writing my outline by writing this post… about outlining.
For yeaaaars and yeeeeeaaars, if you had asked me to write an outline, I would have looked at you with unveiled horror and slight nausea, with tears springing to my eyes. I would have offered to clean your entire kitchen as a more preferable alternative. That’s because my concept of an outline was the kind that you learn in third grade:
I. Introductory paragraph. A. First Point B. Second Point. a. Supporting evidence
…and so on. Great for academic essays, utter shit for novels. I had tried to force a novel into this format a few times before. It was like trying to force one’s feet into really painful shoes. Hated every second of it, felt in nigh-physical pain, cried a lot, decided that outlines were The Worst Thing That Ever Were Invented. But my mama didn’t raise me to give up after the first try, so I did some research and experimented with other outline methods, NONE of which jived with my brain, none of which made the job easier – and that’s what they’re allegedly supposed to do. If a method didn’t make me cry, then it killed all the enthusiasm and interest I had in the idea and left me high and dry with a soggy, cold idea-corpse. Not sexy.
So for years I accepted that I simply did not have a brain that played nice with outlines. Seat-of-the-pants discovery-writing was what worked for me (within a limited definition of the word “worked”). Then one day I found myself with a half-written novel on my hands and no idea of what was going to happen next. I *needed* an outline – when you’re lost in the wilderness, what you want is a map and a compass (or, y'know, a smartphone with GoogleMaps on it). So I came up with a very cunning plan – a plan to trick my outline-hating brain.
Alexey Kondakov: Facebook | Instagram
h/t: [Australian War Memorial]
John Atkinson: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Redbubble
LEGO: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
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