matouenpeluche

Ruben Toledo encore!

It's Wednesday! I think the perfect thing for Wednesday is more Ruben Toledo! Regular readers of this blog may recall seeing a previous post I did on Ruben Toledo back in April. I love his work so much I had to ask him back for an encore! Enjoy!

The top two images are from Cool & Chic Style Fashion. The third and eighth images are from image venue.  The fourth image is from Newstarsinfo. The fifth, sixth and seventh images are from PBC Style and the last image is from Kingy 2011 Design History.

Two Friends + a very big visitor!

Two Friends

These are two birdies I drew on the weekend. Their names are Nathan and Randolph. Even though they have bills that are finch like, they are in fact a figment of my imagination! There are no powder blue fat cuties like this in the wild unfortunately. *sigh*!

 

In other news, I was up at my usual time yesterday morning sipping my coffee and surfing the internet when I heard all these helicopters and light aircraft buzzing around. I racked my brain for some special ocassion that would warrent such activity and nothing presented itself. Then, at the bus stop I heard a woman excitedly tell a friend "Oh yes the Queen Mary is in town!". Whoa! The last time I saw that regal gal I got a crick in my neck looking up at her!

Here she is direct to you from downtown Sydney yesterday morning:

I went down with my Dad to see her after work yesterday afternoon. Boy! She was not hard to spot! According to the Wikipedia entry about her, she is the largest ocean liner ever. She leaves today so I was glad I had a look at her again - she is truly a sight to behold.

I trust everyone's week is progressing in an orderly manner!

Images from The Sydney Morning Herald.

The Year in Review: 2010

These photos are from top: The northern lights as seen through the ash that exploded into the atmosphere at the beginning of the year from that volcano in Iceland, hay bales along a beach in the Gulf of Mexico absorbing the oil from the BP oil spill, twin girls in Ireland after their first communion, champions Spain at the end of The World Cup.

With only a few days left of the year 2010 most newspapers and websites are doing round ups for the year that was. I've seen a few, and for my money you can't go past The Guardian.

What the papers didn't mean to say - scandalous stuff!

I rediscovered this little gem of a book my Dad had bought way back when. It was published in Britain in 1965 by an Austrian flautist of all people. Its  gentle humour is pretty lovely and despite my sophisticated 21st Century self I laughed out loud to a couple of the newspaper bloopers.

...and in other news, Sydney has been having unseasonably warm weather: 29 degrees for goodness sake!! Anyway, it was rather lovely for walking around in - I shall post the photos we took tomorrow.

I trust everyone is having a lovely Sunday!

The Art of War.

 

Yesterday, as you can imagine, the papers were full of essays, commentaries and reflections on ANZAC Day and what it means in 2009. There was a very interesting article in The Weekend Australian newspaper about the art of war. It was specifically about how Australian artists have never depicted soldiers in battle heroically but rather as ordinary people stoically perservering through "the stuff of nightmares". To illustrate this article they chose two paintings by female artists which I thought were rather lovely despite the melancholy subject matter.

The one above is by Australian artist Stella Bowen. It is called "Bomber Crew" and was painted in 1944. All the subjects were lost in action.  Below is Nora Heyson's "Transport Driver" painted in 1945. Both of them hang in Canberra in the War Memorial.

You can read the article from The Australian here.

Baby Badger Boys.

I have a terrible confession to make: I read "The Daily Mail" on a regular basis! And when I say regular I mean twice a day type of regular. But generally, I don't read it - I don't read all the political stuff I go straight to the scandalous gossip about Royals, Hollywood types and B-grade British celebs and have a good gander at the frocks, style disasters etc. I notice the Sydney "broad sheet" papers must also read it though because they usually pick up on any celeb gossip and re-print it word for word usually about two days after! I always feel very superior at that stage and say: "Oh for goodness sake! We all know that already!"

Anyway, the point to me telling you that is because the second place I go to after drinking in all the latest scandal is the animal photo section. A few weeks ago they had an adorable story about eight or so tiny wee little badger pups only a couple of days old who were found abandoned somewhere in Britain. I think the mother had died actually so the tiny little badger cubs had been taken into care - and they were darling! So, here they are - little badger cubs re-imagined by me on their first birthday or something like that anyway!

They can be found in all their small striped glory here in my shop as a large print!