Real Life Bird by Johan Scherft
Posts tagged Animals.
Ben Geiger dabbles in everything from design to photography to sculpture to create a world of his own imagination. In this series entitled Abstract Animals, the artist developed illustrations that blur the lines between realistic portrayals and his own inventive depictions of the creatures. The basic structure of each animal drawing is true-to-life, but then the artist uses his creativity to build complex textures with swirls of lines and color.
Your Pet and You is an ongoing series by Hamburg, Germany-based photographer Tobias Lang that juxtaposes pictures of people with portraits of their precious pets. They say that pets tend to look like their owners and Lang’s series shows us just how true that statement is. From the typical pets like cats and dogs to the more exotic breeds of owned animals like snakes and owls, the photographer’s images offer a diverse selection of subjects accompanied by their human counterparts. The dual subjects within each composed frame complement each other, almost echoing each other’s exact mood and personality.
Lang first embarked on his adorable pet project while at home with his roommate’s cat who took a liking to a wooden block in their living room. Upon snapping a shot of the feline and his roommate, he found other friends who, too, wanted portraits taken of their pets on this rustic block of wood. Eventually, the project evolved into something far more emotional by turning the camera on their owners and placing their images side by side. The lovely series exhibits an adorable look at the bond between people and their beloved animals.
The photographer’s growing collection of portraits is intended to be turned into a book at some point. Lang is currently seeking more subjects to photograph to offer even more diversity. In particular, he’s interested in people who own any of the following: chicken, goose, parrot, otter, meerkat, piglet, hare, hamster, frog, snail, reptiles. If you’re a proud pet owner that’s interested in being part of Lang’s project, he suggests contacting him via email or through the project’s Facebook page.
via MyModernMet
Random Assortments - Cally Whitham
Cally is a photographic artist from New Zealand with romantic notions of finding value in banality. Her work identifies aesthetic value where none appears apparent and invites viewers to reflect on our rural beginnings.
After graduating in photography in the early 90’s she went on to show and sell her work, which led to a number of awards. She worked in the industry until having a family in early 2000.
Her particular interest has always been in the fine art genre and recently this is where she has come back to.
Introduced to life under the sea in high school through snorkeling, Yoji Ookata obtained his scuba license at the age of 21. At the same time, he went out and bought a brand new NIKONOS, a 35mm film camera specifically designed for underwater photography. He devoted all his spare time – aside from his day job – to perfecting his art of underwater photography. Then, at age 39, he finally made the transition. He quit his office job and became a freelance underwater photographer.
But even for a man who spent the last 50 years immersed in the underwater world of sea life, the ocean proved infinitely mysterious. While diving in the semi-tropical region of Amami Oshima, roughly 80 ft below sea level, Ookata spotted something he had never seen. And as it turned out, no one else had seen it before either.
On the seabed a geometric, circular structure measuring roughly 6.5 ft in diameter had been precisely carved from sand. It consisted of multiple ridges, symmetrically jutting out from the center, and appeared to be the work of an underwater artist, carefully working with tools. For its resemblance to crop circles, Ookata dubbed his new finding a “mystery circle,” and enlisted some colleagues at NHK to help him investigate. In a television episode that aired last week titled “The Discovery of a Century: Deep Sea Mystery Circle,” the television crew revealed their findings and the unknown artist was unmasked.
Underwater cameras showed that the artist was a small puffer fish who, using only his flapping fin, tirelessly worked day and night to carve the circular ridges. The unlikely artist – best known in Japan as a delicacy, albeit a potentially poisonous one – even takes small shells, cracks them, and lines the inner grooves of his sculpture as if decorating his piece. Further observation revealed that this “mysterious circle” was not just there to make the ocean floor look pretty. Attracted by the grooves and ridges, female puffer fish would find their way along the dark seabed to the male puffer fish where they would mate and lay eggs in the center of the circle. In fact, the scientists observed that the more ridges the circle contained, the more likely it was that the female would mate with the male. The little sea shells weren’t just in vain either. The observers believe that they serve as vital nutrients to the eggs as they hatch, and to the newborns.
[Click Image]
[Artist At Work]
What was fascinating was that the fish’s sculpture played another role. Through experiments back at their lab, the scientists showed that the grooves and ridges of the sculpture helped neutralize currents, protecting the eggs from being tossed around and potentially exposing them to predators.
It was a true story of love, craftsmanship and the desire to pass on descendants.
Animal Screenprints Daniel Mackie
“This collection of art cards and prints started out live with the lose theme, “animals in their natural habitat”. As you can see, the creatures environment ended up inside the animal. Daniel took his inspiration from an unlikely source, navy tattoos! In order for the paintings to work with so much detail, the shape of the animal was key in the design, it had to be instantly recognisable as the creature it represented, here Daniel took his cue from Art Deco, keeping the shape of the animal as simple as possible.”
Sandra Dieckmann
Born In Oldenburg, Germany in 1983. My work eternally explores and expresses my personal love for drawing and observing animals and the planet we live on … bathed in all the shades of human emotion.
In a wider sense ‘I’ ,a human creature with the gift of reflection, also hold the responsibility to create a visual language and find a way to tell the story of our world as I see it. For you to view and think about!
