Caroline Gray is a painter, illustrator, printer – and long time good friend. In addition to these talents she also creates brilliantly witty greetings cards under her Teeny Tiny People brand.

Loved and respected for her skill, Caroline’s imagination is really what set her apart from everyone else we were at school together as teenagers. Her ability to think of fantastic scenes and at times charming, and often slightly unhinged new creatures made her work wildly popular, and utterly original.

Having delved into the world of children’s book illustrations over the past few years, Caroline is now quite literally bringing these unique images to life by creating 3-D models and diaromas. She has kindly shared some of these with us, together with the processes involved.

You can see her portfolio here, and follow her blog here. To buy her greetings cards, follow this link here.

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My recent children’s book illustrations are created in a style broadly known as ‘three-dimensional illustration’. My process involves the creation of miniature scenes, or dioramas, which I populate with characters, light and photograph. If necessary the images are lightly retouched and edited in Photoshop.

Three dimensional illustration, although often extremely challenging and time consuming, allows me to achieve a level of detail and complexity that I was unable to achieve through drawing and painting alone. It also allows me to work across a wide variety of media, and to draw inspiration from some eclectic sources (painting, sculpting, taxidermy, dollhouses, theater design, stop motion animation, tiny things)!

Although the finished illustrations are photographic, the process of sketching and drawing remains integral to the formulation of ideas. After sketching a scene, I will often build a very rough model to figure out lighting and positioning of main elements. Then it’s time to start sculpting the characters; I use a variety of polymer clay called Sculpey, which you can bake at home in your oven and it becomes rock hard.

Next, I apply acrylic paint to give the character a more realistic appearance.

Sometimes, I add fur or ‘flocking’ for the fuzzier critters.

Recently, I have started to use ‘needle felting’ over a wire armature to create bendable, poseable characters with interchangeable heads. I create one body, and a variety of heads with different expressions.

Photography is the stage I find most difficult, and least enjoyable! I still have a lot to learn, and it can be frustrating trying to achieve the perfect shot. I try to experiment with different lighting situations: for this forest scene, I cut holes into colored tracing paper to simulate the effect of dappled light.

And to sign off, here’s a self-portrait.

Iranian photographer Mohammadreza Mirzaei has been active on the domestic and international photography scenes, putting on exhibitions in Iran and abroad, and founding Dide Magazine for contemporary Iranian Photography.

He is now about to take his work to the US while undertaking an MFA at the University of Pennsylvania this autumn, and has taken the time to kindly share his works with us here. You can see his website here.

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“For a while I was taking photos of the most simple objects and things around me. Much of the time I was surprised to see how they reappeared in the photos. I loved the images wherein objects are different from in reality, showing photography’s brilliant ability to recreate things.

These alterations made me seek the meaning of photography. The question was not about technique, but the methods. Hence how can we figure out a photograph’s true meanings and when does the photograph really communicate a truth? Is  photography a way to experience and attain things that are unattainable without a camera?

As the number of these pictures on my room’s walls increased the difference between experiencing the encounters with the actual objects and experiencing the objects through their images was more obvious.

Had I succeeded? Was it my fictitious world? Those objects were the things that were related to my apartment but these pictures should have been related to me by something more than just possession. Were they?

I wish I knew.”

Caroline Savva is a London-based artist, MFA student at Central St Martins and a good friend. She has just embarked on an exciting and ambitious photography project where permutations are created from 16 initial images – with potential for individual and stunning results. Here is the piece 16_120, which inspired the project:

Savva founded The Permutations Project to explore and challenge the limitations of digital photography. Each day a new permutation is created from the 16 initial images, with the potential for thousands of permutations to result. Savva will be continuing the project until no more permutations can be created.

We hope you enjoy these simply beautiful images as much as we do, and please follow the links where you can see more and make purchases too (click on the titles). More information about the project can be found here.

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The Permutations Project: 1_2_13

The Permutations Project: 1_4_9

The Permutations Project: 1_4_16

The Permutations Project: 1_3_8

The Permutations Project: 1_3_12

The Permutations Project: 1_2_10

So I’ve neglected this blog a little over the past few months – reason is that I’ve hopped across the good old Atlantic from London to New York. The light is simply beautiful – tight and crisp and sharp and inspiring. Posts to come…. For now here’s the Columbia Law School building, which I love, especially the balcony (has an air of James Bond to it) and some late afternoon light from a stroll by the Hudson.

Following on from the popularity of the Cats of the Middle East post a few months ago, my friend Jon has been busy finding more brilliant cats. Enjoy!

(Above: Cats Lazing around. Below, in order: Johnny Cash cat, Ice cold anger, Cave cat, Laying low in Gaza)

More from Shanghai’s superb Idle Beats screen printing studio. Nini Sum has designed the gorgeous poster above, which also doubles up as the cover to AM444‘s EP.

I could wax lyrical about this print – and that it’s composed of my favourite flower and colours – but will just leave you to simply enjoy it instead!

You can see and order the print and also find out about the AM444 record on the Idle Beats website here

Bio

 
Mara Corsino was born and raised in Puerto Rico, now lives and works in Milan. In 1997 she found her passion for photography after receiving her first analogue camera as a gift. It provided a fun way to record the fresh beauty and urban intensity of Puerto Rico.

She studied the basics of photography with photo-reporter Alina Luciano in Puerto Rico and with Hazel Hankin in New York. She has also learned about the craft of photography through her own experiences.

Some great photos from my good friend Will Canzoneri. The California-based musician shares shots he’s taken while on the road with his fantastic band – Darker My Love – together with the stories behind his photographs.
 
The American open road and dreamy visions of California have provided some of the most vivid and romantic images of the photographic era and Will’s shots strangely remind me of places and situations I have never physically been in but know so well.
 
You can see more of Will’s photos here. Darker My Love are fantastic and can be listened to here. Will also plays with Cass McCombs who you should also get into here.

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 This is off of Interstate 80, somewhere in the lower left corner of Wyoming.  Wyoming’s a desolate state; the least populous of all 50 states. It’s also the most boringly-shaped. It’s got a real otherworldly, Martian vibe – the sky is endless, and the road there really does go on forever.

 I used to live on this street.  It’s in Echo Park, in Central Los Angeles.  It’s an old neighborhood, by L.A. standards, and is dotted with amazing century-old-ish Craftsman houses.  I think they hold up so well because of the weather, or lack thereof.  In most other parts of the country, they have to entomb them in vinyl siding or stucco, yuck.
 
This is a double exposure in which I took one without a flash and then, while trying not to move the camera too much, turned on the flash and took another one. Sometimes it works out.

 One of my all-time favorites.  I shot this and the two above with a Holga.  And although those have entered the mainstream in the past couple years, I maintain it’s hard to take a good picture with one, so there’s a steep learning curve that most people get too frustrated to be bothered with. 
 
I love the thrill of gambling on shots like this, since it’s a rangefinder and you can’t see what you’re shooting.  The voodoo involved in multiple exposures multiplies that (fittingly), so when it works out in ways you didn’t imagine, like this one, it’s particularly exhilarating. 
 
This here is just a rickety storage facilitiy in Hollywood – took one shot right side up, then took another upside down, and voila!

 Up until a couple years ago, there was a BBQ joint next to this, at the corner of Cesar Chavez & Figueroa, on the edge of downtown L.A., in between Chinatown and Echo Park.  My bandmate Jared swore by it and, one day after practice, made us all go there. 
 
I have three memories of that meal.  One, the food sucked.  Two, he kept talking at an oblivious, inappropriate volume level about some drug-taking experience he had had over the weekend and it made me uncomfortable.  Three – the most vivid – Rob got a styrofoam cup full of Coca-Cola that we all decided, after much debate, tasted exactly like lipstick.  So, when some asshole developer razed all this and built a garish, oversized condo complex that still nobody lives in, I wasn’t too sad about Lipstick BBQ.

Also on the aforementioned street I use to live on in Echo Park. This is what L.A. likes around half past five in February. That’s the rainy season and even though the weather’s particularly volatile, it always seems to clear up enough for the sky to turn vivid shades of every color at dusk.

This was my taken in my friend Rob’s old bathroom in Echo Park. Cross-processed.

A more recent residence. My empty bedroom, the night of the day I moved in, taken with my old (i.e., lesser) camera because I had, 2 weeks prior, left my good camera at a girl I had just met’s flat in Berlin. Long story though. I eventually got it back.

This week we hear from the Spanish artist Antonio Cabrera. Born in Seville, Antonio has been living and working in London for the past decade. His works include murals and drawings on a wide array of materials – which he explores with us.

Antonio’s work instantly struck me as special when I first came across it at a group exhibition on Brick Lane with Petra from the Blue Rim Gallery. The emotional response they create in the viewer is noticeable and impressive.

Lately I feel that many artists today place such focus on on ideas and concepts that they ignore the powerful ability of art to just move and to target the soul. This is a real shame – so many disciplines explore and analyse the many facets of our lives – and do so expertly – but few can move and provide unexplainable connections the way great art does.

Antonio’s pieces bring to mind Goya’s Nightmares etchings, the eerie loneliness of Lorca, violence, passion, loss. They are organic, instinctive and powerful and full of duende. They are to be experienced.

Antonio tells us about his works and their life-cycle below. You can see more on his blog here.

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Your drawings feel extremely organic and instinctive. How much do you consciously think about what you are creating?

Drawing is a really direct connection to your mind. It’s a very organic process. Often you can make a simple sketch which comes directly from yourself without even thinking about it.

I do have themes of course, I draw a lot of children and certain figures reappear – these must be connected to my own experiences and mental stages which I don’t consciously think about. These repetitions do make me question myself though. Even if I try different mediums and ways of working in the end there will be repetitions and I’ll eventually return to the same themes.

For example, I’ve always been drawing children and pregnant women. Six years ago I accidentally discovered that I was adopted. This did make me look back at my work and that was a scary process. There are unresolved things in my life and my drawings do represent this. My work is a search for my identity.

 Also, people are often surprised by the darkness of my works, even though this isn’t something I am always aware of. I think we Spanish love that dark tenebrism. I grew up in Seville, I remember the churches and cathedrals and they get into your mind. You can’t take that away.

Your work does feel very emotional – not only in terms of composition but the very materials you use, such as burnt fabric and used newspaper.  What’s the thought process here?

 If I draw on a rectangular piece of paper the drawings don’t have emotions and feel constrained.

 These days I find special materials on the street and use these to draw on and then sometimes I’ll destroy them. Sometimes you’ll use materials you find, like a table, and this itself has a history which adds to the work.

 I also create a lot of murals, I have some around London and around Spain. There is a real destructive and life-and-death element to creating a mural which I find attractive.

If you draw on canvas, the image could be there forever but with murals it will disappear, the image has a life.  The wall will start to crack, the building will fall apart, weather will affect it, someone may paint on top of the image – it is more likely to eventually disappear, it’s all a process. These life-and-death elements are a reflection of us – that we are not here permanently.

 Sometimes I burn my work, or put the fabrics in acid, and the fabrics will change in a way I can’t control. The images take on their own life – and this starts with me trying to destroy them first! It’s a good reminder that we don’t have control over everything. There are many things which will disappear from our lives.

I work in radio and once a piece is broadcast its gone – you can’t then retrieve it, hold onto it and obsess over it, and I actually find that very liberating. How do you feel about the prospect that your entire body of work could disappear?

Yes, I do think I could end up with not much work surviving and as you say, that can actually be very liberating. When you hold onto your own creations you end up loving and hating them over time. So sometimes you have to just let them go!

Some more fantastic prints from Shanghai’s excellent Idle Beats screen printing studio. Gregor Koertig has made these screen prints. They originate from some woodblock prints he created when he first arrived in Shanghai.

 The images are striking: bold uses of thick, flat colour yet compositions that are dynamic, and prints which look simultaneously retro and modern…I’m not sure I can describe just why they work so well, and often it’s the best things which are beyond explanation.

Gregor’s given a small insight into these pieces here:
 
“These woodblock prints reflect my first impressions of Shanghai. The gap between communist ideals and the daily run for money.
 
I arrived in Shanghai in the summer. I lived on a street with a lot of trees where the cicadas made their noise and along the street was a huge construction place. So I created the piece ‘Up and down’ (see image below).
 
Later I met a Japanese friend who was deeply impressed with this and found it very philosophical. See cicadas live in the earth for almost their whole lives and only just come up to the trees at the end of their life.  I had no idea about this.
 
And it might also illustrate the fast changes in Shanghai. Buildings rise and get wrecked a couple of years later…and so on.”
 
  
 
More from the series can be viewed and purchased here