I've made a collection of Leon Bakst (or "Baxt") costume illustrations from images found around the web (two pages).
Bakst was a Russian artist who shook the early 20th century world of theatre and ballet with his brilliant designs. I adore his use of color and pattern, and I'm amazed by the fluidity and animation of both his designs and his illustrations. Even the white space in his sketches seems to have form and motion.
You can view brief details on him in the info for the first image in the collection; for more, you might want to check out this geocities page which seems to have more background than other sources.
Okay, this kind of blows my mind (yes, it's a small thing, and not that hard to blow, but still...): In Peacay's post about an 1800s photographer, I pointed out this photo (or here for zoom-able Flash version), and said "She's sort of got this Jennifer Anniston thing going on (though she looks like she's about to hurl here)" and peacay said he didn't really see the resemblance... And so I looked some more, and googled up some pix of Jen, and thought, "Hm, yeah. Maybe not, after all". Here's the lady in question:
But then I thought, "okay, though - let's see what she would look like as a modern woman with modern hair, using modern cosmetics". So I started photoshopping - but changing only those things that a normal woman can effect with ordinary makeup. And this is what I ended up with:
I tweezed the tiniest bit from under the inner, thicker part of the brow, and used "eyebrow pencil" to fill in the sparse outer part of the brow. I applied mascara on top and bottom lashes, and eyeliner under the eyes. I used concealer on the outer edges of the eyes where they droop down a bit too much and on the upper inner corners of the eyes, and used eyeshadow a couple tones darker than her skin tone (as per this photo, anyway) on her upper lids. I removed the age flecks from this area of the photo so she wouldn't have spots all over her face, and I gave her a new hairdo.
I didn't touch her facial structure, except that weird bulge on the left outer side of her face, which is an artifact of the photographer's touching up (he did something with the hair on both sides closest to her face, that I noticed in an extreme enlargement). I also gave her an eye color approximate to what it looks like she might have had, and removed the smudge from her chin, which was either more bad touching up, or bad lighting... and anyway, even if she did have a freakishly discolored chin, foundation would take care of that. The only "cheating" I did was to lighten the whites of her eyes, but you gotta give me that one, right?
Anyway - taadaa! Does she not look like Jennifer? (She doesn't have the Jennifer jaw, but to me, her other features seem quite similar.) You may think that that was me, painting Jennifer on to her, but I assure you I don't have the skills for that, and couldn't possibly draw or paint an identifiable portrait of anyone to save my life - quite literally. You may not believe this, and even I admit that maybe I have some heretofore untapped talent, and subconsciously affected the outcome, but check this out: I overlayed the makeover image on top of the original image, and asked photoshop to find the outlines, then I reduced the opacity to make it semi-transparent, and inverted it so that the lines would show up white:
So. Anyway. Yeah. That's how I spent my Saturday morning, what's it to you? Stop looking at me like that.
Amazingly, each 16-panel set can form 20,922,789,888,000 different possible pictures. Wheeeeeee!
Ah! I forgot to say that the geekycool thing on this last one of mine is the pattern design in the background; there are actually three different patterns that tile seamlessly with each other. I really should have done four, to have four panels each of each pattern, but I got exhausted at three.
Says
Feel my ribs
Hear my voices
See my eyes roll
This is like, what? A doll for THE EXORCIST? I love to think of the R&D team who identified a need and filled it with this toy. Sadly, I didn't find any photos of the original dolly. I came across this 1930s ad at dollreference.com, here, where indeed, it is affirmed that in addition to "squeaker voice in legs", one "can feel the doll's ribs".
Speaking of feeling ribs, I've lost almost 20 pounds since the beginning of July, which makes me officially not-overweight. I'd still like to get back to my "favorite weight" range, which is at least 10 pounds away That would be a lovely thing for the new year, and a dramatically different paradigm - beginning the new year with my new year's resolution already resolved. To continue in this fashion, I would need to fail to resolve to start exercising regularly, say, in 2007, and then do it. This appeals to Obtuse Me.
Anyway, as to the weight loss, I knew that I was losing it little by little, because I've been checking the scales (not every day... and for a while now, only about once a week - the last three pounds were a total surprise!), but since it's been gradual, I didn't really feel or seem to look (to my eyes) that much different. Until it got colder. I recently pulled out some of my winter clothes, and found, to my delight, that my old winter trousers now look kind of like clown pants on me... or maybe something worn by an aging hiphopper who really doesn't "get it". These pants I'm wearing right now? I could totally fit a whole other butt in here. Heh.
Found Poems on the theme of Passion Served Chilled:
Pink
Beautiful dark haired
Frozen Charlie.
Entire body is tinted pink
_________________
Clenched
Frozen "Charlie" in a trunk...
blue painted eyes, smiling mouth,
black short hair with
brush strokes around face,
arms outstretched, clenched.
_________________
Some of the most fascinating Frozen Charlie images can be found via an Ebay search, like the rather haunting Charlie I used as my top photo The range of expression, from utterly vapid, to fairly surly, is great. This guy, for example, looks like he should be called "Flaming Charlie" (face close up here). I call this guy "Frozen Charles". He's my frozen crush.
From the same site as below, several pages about a peculiarly charming doll called "Scarey Ann".
Some Scarey Ann found poems:
This is what Happens
This is what happens
when the lever
is pushed!
Ann's hair stands up.
_________________
Missing
This is the professor.
His hat rim is missing
and his go-tee is missing.
_________________
Very Rare
This is the only
"left looking" Ann
I have seen.
Must be very rare.
_________________
What is Known
The chinaman
is known
in both swinging
and fixed arms versions
_________________
A Popular Figure
The Sailor
must have been
a popular figure.
Hat and nose move
_________________
From this page, and this page; more Scarey Ann info here (scroll down for more photos) and here (the patent).
So, I've been looking at a lot of antique toys and dolls recently, though I'm not a collector type, and some sites keep reeling me in every time I stumble back over them because I keep finding pages of text and images just strike me as irresistibly poetically surreal, and I thought I might share a few of them today:
Images from this page at oldwoodtoys.com. From the same page, a couple of accidental poems on the theme of Time, Adversity, and possibly Mischance:
Long Ago
Parts for Negro Dude, ca. 1920.
Repainted long ago.
_________________
Long Ago ii
Hobo with very nice suit.
No hat belt or scarf.
Head repainted long ago.
Here's a photo I took today. The title is a lot more provocative than it should be, considering that this is actually the back of an office suite.
I really like Christopher Cousins' paintings *. They remind me of the ordinary staining and scarification of everyday stucco, concrete and plaster exterior walls that seems to me so poetic - these passive surfaces silently accumulating the stigmata of time and neglect, changing imperceptibly day by day. Natural graffiti is so much more poignant than the spraycan variety, I think... though I must say, sometimes a wall tagger really gets the feel of his/her medium:
From Ternua at Flickr. Also at Flickr, two great "natural wall poems" (my term) by a user called "only because mushroom asked me to" (gee, thanks, mushroom!). The first one has a link to a nice, big version, but the second one, very sadly doesn't.
* note:In the Christopher Cousins individual gallery pages, you can click the images to see large views; unfortunately in my browser they open in non-resizable windows too small to view the whole image. In Firefox, you can just drag the image to another page to see the whole thing.
