Starlight: a David and Laurent Nicholas video for the group Supermen Lovers.

• Wallace Stevens and the conscience of poetry. (The New York Times)
• She's everywhere. (This Recording)

Partial Portrait
gouache
20.3 x 12.7 cm (8" x 5")

Sometimes it doesn't come easily.

• Adolf Hitler, artistic genius? (Spiegel)
• Cecil Beaton portraits at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.
• More Cecil Beaton portraits from Google Images.

• Perhaps everyone's favourite Beaton: Eileen Dunne.

Sketch
ink and watercolour
16.5 x 24.1 cm (6.5" x 9.5")

This sketch has been lying around the studio for about a year. It's now destined for the recycling bin.

• Is portrait painting pointless? (The Guardian)
• The Gagosian Gallery of New York is suing shippers over the destruction of a Brice Marden painting. (The New York Times)

Long Face
ink and oil pastel
29.2 x 21.6 cm (11.5" x 8.5")

Long face? What about long body?

• Photoshop for better or worse. (The Los Angeles Times)
• A beautiful failure, physicist Paul Dirac. (The Barnes & Noble Review)
• Say it ain't so. Money can buy happiness. (The Boston Globe)

Strange Breast
ink and graphite
47.0 x 29.2 cm (18.5" x 11.5")

I don't know what happened with the model's breast in this drawing. I must have been concentrating on other things.

At least it's not the end of the world: a David Nicholas video for the Super Furry Animals. (A clearer version of this video can be found here.)

• A video tour of the Bronx. (The New York Times)
• Heaven forbid. The rich may not be getting richer anymore. (The New York Times)

Synchronicity, an exhibition of work by Pamela Rhodes and Billy Bob Beamer, opens tonight from 5 to 8 pm at the Water Heater in Roanoke, Virginia. The exhibition runs from August 22 to September 30, 2009.
























Word Dust Plinth #2
graphite and chalk
(6" x 6")

Billy Bob Beamer

Orange Door
ink and pastel
45.7 x 30.5 cm (18" x 12")

I don't particularly like this drawing. The proportions of the figure are more than a little unreal. The model looks like some misplaced, or displaced, heroic figure from Greek mythology.

The orange beside the model came from an open studio door.

• German police have arrested three people in connection with the sale of forged Giacometti sculptures. (Deutsche Welle) (via Illicit Cultural Property)
• How to collect modern art on a modest budget. (The Telegraph)

Wild Grass, Bunn's Creek
oil and pastel
17.8 x 25.4 cm (7" x 10")

This is a reworking of a small painting which I did last summer. Some areas, particularly in the foreground, have been darkened, and touches of colour have been added throughout. It's a marginal improvement over the original, which I've reposted below.

Wild Grass, Bunn's Creek
oil on paper
17.8 x 25.4 cm (7" x 10")

• A brief history of art hotels. (The Guardian)
• The Pillow Book. (Barnes & Noble Review)

Teal Blanket
ink and pastel
22.9 x 30.5 cm (9" x 12")

I'm not sure of the accuracy of this drawing, but I like it.

• Edvard Munch, Nordic nights, aquavit, and Scream Vodka. (The Smart Set)
• Alice L. Walton's unfortunately named Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, has a new director. (The New York Times)
• Prince Charles's war with architects described with 12 examples. (The Guardian)

The Pose
ink, charcoal, and pastel
29.2 x 22.9 cm (11.5" x 9")

The multiple ink lines give the figure, and in particular, the face a blurred look. Perhaps the drawing should have been called Blurred Face, or better yet, Fuzzy Face, instead of The Pose.

The drawing took fifteen minutes and was drawn directly in ink.

• Slovak book cover designs. (A Journey Round My Skull) (via Drawn!)

How To Make A Wax Model: Eleanor Crook, a sculptor specializing in wax anatomical and surgical models, demonstrates a few of the techniques employed when making a wax model.

This video was created in support of Exquisite Bodies, an exhibition at Wellcome Collection, London. The exhibition runs from July 30 to October 18, 2009. (via Morbid Anatomy)

• Ritchies Auctioneers remains closed without explanation after last month's split with Sotheby's. (The Globe and Mail)
• The magic of Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen). (The Nation)
• triplecanopy, a stylish architecture site.
• The Polaroid Corporation's collection of 60,000 photographs, including work by Chuck Close, William Wegman, and Ansel Adams, is going on the auction block. (The Wall Street Journal) (via C-Monster)

James
ink and gouache
36.8 x 26.7 cm (14.5" x 10.5")

I'm not sure if James was sitting for a portrait or awaiting execution when this drawing done.

• The story behind the genesis of Shakespeare's The Tempest. (The Washington Post)
• Penguin geometric book cover designs. (Designer-Daily.com)

Actor
graphite
25.4 x 25.4 cm (10" x 10")

This drawing is quite old. All I remember of the sitter was that he was an actor and quite good looking in a soap opera kind of way. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to draw him again.

• Knut Hamsun, the Hamsun Centre in Presteid , Norway, and Hitler. (The Guardian)
• How much should a museum director be paid? (Bloomberg)
• Pride and Prejudice just won't go away. (The Washington Post)

Weird Hands
charcoal and oil pastel
31.8 x 29.2 cm (12.5" x 11.5")

Do those hands really belong to this woman, or are they just a pair of rubber hands set on her lap for the drawing?

And why is she wearing a blanket?

• How many of you knew that Damien Hirst really lives in Slovenia, and that he has a new blog? (hirstdamien.blogspot.com) (via Art News Blog)
• The fine art of art speak as quoted by Art Baloney Blog,

However, whereas the fires (like many of the subtler constructions created for this commission) function as allegories – representing the metamorphosis that each and every reality undergoes every time it is observed (could this be another Romantic appropriation of Heisenberg’s UP?) – the doubling/mirroring of certain images serves another function. Reality is fragmented, repeated and polarized. The doppelganger is introduced.

Staring Woman
graphite
26.7 x 21.6 cm (10.5" x 8.5")

I wish that I could remember who the model for this drawing was. She looks quite striking, at in this drawing. (The eyes seem to be going in different directions, but we'll ignore that.)

• Sacrificing virgins on the Mississippi. (salon.com)

Cloud
acrylic
53.3 x 81.3 cm (21" x 32")

This is not a good photograph of this particular painting. I will try to replace it with a more colour accurate and clearer photograph over the weekend.

Several years ago I was having some back problems and consequently spent considerable time lying on my back looking out of a window at the sky. That experience resulted in a number of sky paintings, including the one posted today.

By the way, there are two small birds in the bottom right hand part of the painting. They are barely visible, particularly in this slightly blurred photo of the painting. The birds were bank swallows, if I'm not mistaken.

• The problem of Alberto Fujimoro, the former president of Peru. (New English Review)
• 15 Leonardo da Vinci war machines. (The Toy Zone) (via things magazine)
• Design plagiarism at You thought we wouldn't notice ... (via things magazine)

L'échange: a minimalist video from Baptiste Sola, inspired by the work of Josef Albers. (Albers was an accomplished designer, photographer, typographer, printmaker and poet, although he is best remembered as an abstract minimalist painter and theorist.) (via Drawn!)

• Whatever happened to conservative investing for arts organizations? (City Journal)
• Need a patron? The top (ten) billionaire art collectors. (Forbes) (via C-Monster)
• The latest in art blogging: links that cost $1.50 US. (Culture Grrl) (via C-Monster)

Orange and Pink Portrait
gouache
20.3 x 17.8 cm (8" x 7")

It's interesting how little it takes for a portrait.

iQ Font: a font designed with a car. (via Drawn!)

The purpose to designing this font was no doubt less to introduce a new font than to advertise Toyota's new mini car, the iQ. The car is the real star of this video.

Two typographers ( Pierre & Damien / plmd.me ) and a pro race driver (Stef van Campenhoudt) collaborated to design the font. The car movements were tracked using a custom software, designed by interactive artist Zachary Lieberman. ( openframeworks.cc )

Download the font here: nl.toyota.be/iqfont

(This music for this video is unfortunately quite annoying.)

Poet Singing (The Flowering Sheets): a short film documenting a Jim Dine installation at the Getty Museum by Hillman Curtis.