I'm back from our travels. So, on with the blog.

• Bad women, or women are bad. (The American Prospect)
• The horror of non-Euclidean geometry. (review)
• The meaning of baseball. (First Things)

House and Hills
pastel
22.9 x 30.5 cm (9" x 12")

This drawing was done a couple of weeks ago in Kamloops, British Columbia. Because it was done with a limited supply of pastels, and because I'm not really sure of what I'm doing with pastels, the colour in the drawing is considerably off that of the actual scene.

The drawing also suffers a bit from the smudging it underwent during its' travels.

I will be travelling for the next week and a half. Regular posts will continue in two weeks. For now, here's a video on one of my favourite artists, Jean Dubuffet.

Tateshots: Mark Haddon on Jean Dubuffet.

• Another New York art dealer gone bad. (New York Post)
• Iraq's Center for Contemporary Art and the fate of its' collection. (The New York Times)
• Tibet, or rather the real (?) Tibet. (spiked)
• The sex life of E.M. Forster. (The New Republic)

Blue Background
ink and watercolour
34.3 x 27.9 cm (13.5" x 11")

This is somewhat of an odd portrait, which was drawn directly in ink on a very smooth paper.

I have forgotten what the blue stripe in the background was.

• Video games as art. No, the Chicago Sun-Times. Yes, Kotaku. Who cares? ____ .
• What's with steampunk? (more itelligent life)
• Actor Joel Grey's photographs. (The New York Times)

White Spot
ink, charcoal, conté, and gouache
27.9 x 35.6 cm (11" x 14")

There is a white spot of paint on the model's nose. It is not likely that it's accidental. It just seems odd. Did I put it there?

• Surf's up! according to Herman Melville. (Lapham's Quarterly) (via C-Monster)
• The decline of American creativity? (Newsweek) (via C-Monster)
• Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper: more than just clever. (The Guardian)

Black and Cream Hair
ink and gouache
27.9 x 35.6 cm (11" x 14")

I didn't have time enough to do anything more with the model's hair than what you see. It was actually brunette.

Busy today. Catching up with a few things. Back tomorrow.

• The Vancouver Art Gallery pot smokers. (The Globe & Mail)
• ' Who me? Study? ' The new student. (The Boston Globe)
• A history of bullfighting. (The New Republic)
• A portrait of James Wolfe is coming to Canada. ( CBC News)

Pink and Green Girl
gouache
45.7 x 30.5 (18" x 12")

A rather messy painting. I was just playing around when I did this. Not necessarily trying to produce a masterpiece.

• Photography by Matttieu Raffard. (via things magazine)
• More ugly buildings in New York. The top ten ugliest. (NYDailyNews) (via things magazine)
• Coney Island, then and now. (NYDailyNews)

Black and Cream
gouache
30.5 x 45.7 cm (12" x 18")

I couldn't think of a better title than Black and Cream. I'll have to check the label on the bottle of the cream coloured paint. I bet it's called 'Cream', and if not cream, then 'Flesh Color'.

• America's most overrated book. (The Wall Street Journal)
• Breasts are for ___ ? (The Telegraph)
• Edition One Hundred: limited edition art available in editions of 100, priced at $100.00.

• Is architect Frank Gehry really a genius? (Vanity Fair)
• French football and snobbery. (New English Review)
• Un coeur simple by a simple heart, Gustave Flaubert. (The New Criterion)
• British art collector Charles Saatchi has donated his London gallery, along with 200 works, to the British government. (CBC News)

Blue Paper Box

oil on canvas
61.0 x 76.2 cm (24" x 30")



A couple of things may yet change in this painting: the colour of the canola as well as that of the paper box.

In summer canola is usually a greenish yellow when seen from a distance, rather than the purer yellow I've made it.

As for the paper box, the shade of blue may change, it may be too light, and I may add the white lettering which was on the box: Free Press.

Marc Chagall's Bible illustrations set to Henryk Gorecki's Sorrowful Songs: Chagall created most of these lithograph drawings for the Bible in the mid-twentieth century. In this series, he presents well-known and lesser-known stories from the Bible from the Garden through to the Final Judgment.

The music is a selection from Gorecki's Symphony No. 3, II Lento e Largo, tranquillissimo, also called "Sorrowful Songs," performed by David Zinman, Dawn Upshaw, and the London Sinfonietta. The music was inspired by the story of an 18-year-old prisoner WWII, Helena Wanda Blazusiakowna, who wrote the following message on "wall 3 of cell No. 3 in the basement of the "Palace," the Gestapo headquarters in Zakopane:

"No, Mother, do not weep
Most chaste Queen of Heaven
Support me always
"Zdrowas Mario."

Surveillance Video of an Art Theft: Two Blue Dog Paintings by George Rodrigue were recently stolen from the artist's gallery in New Orleans.

Museum Security Network and nola.com have the full story.