Today is exactly the 15th birthday of a masterpiece album by Abbath's band "I". "Between Two Worlds" was released on Nov, 3rd, 2006.
It's not something I often played in the past. Because, if you can't remember the name of the album, it's almost impossible to find the band through the various online streaming services - that's because of its name... But once we had a new wardrobe installed at home, things changed.
Everytime I see or touch its handles, I cannot help but think of the band "I".
These are the handles.
And this is what the cover of "Between Two Worlds" looks like:
See what I mean?
So... happy birthday to "Between Two Worlds". You can listen to the album here.
Hello! Did you know how much luggage can a donkey carry?
Well... it can carry about an @ (arroba).
The word arroba has its origin in Arabic ar-rubʿ (الربع) or "quarter," specifically the fourth part (of a quintal), which defined the average load which a donkey could carry [...] Its symbol is @.
So, babies are brought to us by storks, and e-mails - by (digital) donkeys. And a donkey can carry only one @ at a time.
What else this week?
A few new books, movies and a playlist for the creative artist's workflow:
Movies: We watched the movie Sid And Nancy on Netflix. It casts the great Gary Oldman playing Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. Not for the weakhearted but the movie features some great actor work. I really enjoyed it. If you hate happy-endings, you'll like it for sure! (Even though they made it look like a happy-end, if you pay attention, you'll see it's actually not). We also started the Midnight Mass limited TV series - it's builds up gradually and I can say it's getting better and better. It's actually insanely good!
Art books: I finally got the chance to lay my hands on Sebastião Salgado's "KUWAIT" photo album, as well as a few other Taschen art collections - that of Jean-Michel Basquiat and the one with Francis Bacon's Paintings. Very please to add those to my (yet humble) collection of such stuff. More on why I need to have things of that nature @ my home:
"It is obvious that no one can collect any money off classical standards of beauty and form most of the time so they are discouraged in a consumer society, but an eye for beauty, for balance, is an essential Satanic tool and must be applied for greatest magical effectiveness. It’s not what’s supposed to be pleasing—it’s what is. Aesthetics is a personal thing, reflective of one’s own nature, but there are universally pleasing and harmonious configurations that should not be denied.
Music: I created this mixtape and intend to add to the list. It's stuff I am often listening to while I do creative work. It's been done a lot but most of graphic designers or other visual artists that I admire and do their own playlist are unfortunately (to me, of course) no listening to metal - and metal music is my go to weapon for boosting my powers while doing ...whatever I am doing 🙂 And I guess... No! I actually know, I am not alone in my taste 🙂
A few year ago I started experimenting with image transfer. It's like printing something on white paper and then transferring only the black parts onto another piece of paper, wood... whatever you choose.
In order to do that, you'd need some transfer medium. I use the CHALKY-CHIC:
I love the results. It gets a grungy look because in order to transfer the image, you have to scratch out the white (useless) parts of the print and you make mistakes.
That leads to some scratches on the black parts as well. See for yourself:
The tricky part is that, in order to transfer the image, you have to mirror it before printing the source. A part I often forget and that gets me into printing a lot of useless pages 😀
What I mean is that in order to get this, for example:
You have to prepare the file you're gonna print on paper like that:
Image transfer - Aah, it's a fun thing to do. It gives a unique and vintage feeling. Especially if you use vintage paper for the purpose... The results are astonishing.
If you'd like to see more experiments with this technique, please go here for a few more picturesque examples.
Oh... and one more thing - in order to transfer the image properly, you'll have to of course calculate the proper dimension when printing on an A4/Letter format - depending on your surface. If you're gonna print on something bigger, I hope you have such a printer or else, you'll have to use a print-house's services. But whatever the case or your needs - it's definitely worth the fun. I recommend it!
As a conclusion, I'm pretty happy with my self-made Behemoth poster (it's one of my favorite metal bands):
The most beautiful thing about image transfer is that you CAN'T CONTROL every pixel. Anything human-made nowadays brings some aesthetics that can't be be beaten by the impotency of the digital perfectionism.
Howdy! I started a mini photo series I wanted to start posting.
"How To See" is an amazing book by George Nelson and it inspired my photographic journey. The main theme here is that visual literacy is not something you're born with but, on the contrary - something that can, could and (in my opinion) should be learned and nourished.
That is what made me start sharing the things I notice on a daily basis - the things that, perhaps, nobody else is paying attention to or, at least - not in the way I see them. It's the things that give me ideas for everything I create.
All the new chapters of the mini photo series I will share here:
Most of these are taken with my smartphone because I don't always (or usually) carry my camera with me. And the things "we don't see" are everywhere we go. Some of them can be turned into an abstract painting, some can be vectorized and others - transformed into a nice web element. And some are beautiful just the way they are. In other words - if you're out of creative ideas, which I think happens to all of us when we get stuck, take a walk!
The stuff we're surrounded by nowadays is mostly man-made. Sometimes, an object is put next to the other in a way it makes no sense. It was created or moved to its place with no thought of everything else around whatsoever. On the other hand, again for the same reason, there is some perfect and definitely unintentional harmony between two or more objects. It is up to us if we decide to see. Usually, we don't have the time for that. This is why walks are perfect for the occasion.
