I found this early version of the Pink Ball, by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472 – 1553)
Click the image to enlarge it, please. (Andrei’s blog is at the top of the Blogroll to the right)
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Click the image to make it bigger, please. (It’s a rare picture of the Articles and Texticles aesthetics committee, scrutinising a submission from an artist hoping to have his work hung on this site…)
Articles and Texticles is now functioning (almost) normally after changing web hosting company. Yippee, I say.
It was a somewhat fraught process though, and I nearly lost ownership of a domain name I’d owned and used for 10 years, which was a bit of a skidmark moment.
In short, the message is: Don’t move a domain name if it is within 10 days of renewal.
Even as I write, I’m still waiting for signs of life from a web domain that should have fully migrated to the new host by now. All very nailbiting stuff, I can tell you!
Coming next:
I offer my apologies to the people who kindly left comments just before the site moved house. I don’t think I used the very latest backup when I restored the whole shebang. Whoops!
Articles & Texticles is powered by WordPress publishing software.
I like the way that WordPress works and the direction that its open source developers are taking it.
From a webmaster’s point of view, WordPress is so much easier to administer when you compare it to the standard HTML based static website, especially when it comes to updating information and links. There are many other benefits beside these two, obviously, such as thousands of themes (templates) and zillions of plugins that add an amazing variety of functions to the core product, but effortless updating and creating new pages is one of WordPress’s killer features.
I thought it would be good to run my other websites using this versatile platform, revive them from their torpid state, and lay the ground for some new publishing ventures.
The trouble is that WordPress runs on a server database called MySQL, and the hosting package I’ve had with 1&1 hosting allowed me a generous 1 (yes: One) MySQL database in my Business hosting package. (You get 2 – count them! – MySQL databases nowadays, but I wasn’t allowed to upgrade to the new package without cancelling my contract and starting a new contract from scratch.)
Even more galling was the discovery that the Business contract that 1&1 offers in the USA was not only cheaper but also offered FIFTY MySQL engines. When I asked them to explain the disparity, the salesperson I talked to explained that it was “the nature of the market”, and No, I couldn’t have a second database for free because they had burned the server and blacked out my sites for several hours.
So: After 10 years, it’s time to move. To move to a host that is available on the phone without queueing for ages. A host that has a public user forum that shows the customers’ complaints and enquiries, warts and all, for everyone to see and doesn’t try to hide its shortcomings or failings. A company that’s honest, in short.
Best of all, the contract has “unlimited” MySQL databases included.
Moving hosts can be fraught with problems, and halfway through the process last week, I had to put everything back in place very rapidly when I realised that one of my domain names was just about to be renewed, as it must be every two years.
The risk was that the domain name might be half way between companies and be lost altogether if it were not registered with a hosting company at the moment of renewal.
Fortunately that moment of risk has just passed, and I can start the move all over again.
If you find this blog has temporarily vanished (you wouldn’t be reading this anyway!) fear not. It will be back in a day or two when the domain name servers that keep the web from descending into unimaginable chaos have put the word out about Articles & Texticles’ new home.
I look forward to seeing you on the “other side”, and if you’re curious about the new hosting company’s name, you’ll have to email me in the “About” page.
I don’t want to trumpet their name just yet, not until they’ve proved themselves to be as reliable, supportive and honest as they purport to be.
A couple of days back, I was looking at the work of Korean sculptor Do Ho Suh, whose work has often examined themes of individuality and identity in a crowded society.
(Click these images to enlarge them, if you like)
Here’s a close-up of the base of that plinth -
And then, the very next day, what do I see but the 60th anniversary celebration of Chinese communism being staged in Tiananmen Square.
Uncanny, eh?
You have to admire the training that resulted in this astonishingly precise alignment.
(Via)
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Continuing a series about Art Directors in the British film industry up to 1948, when the book containing these articles was published.
This chapter deals with Wilfrid Shingleton (1914 – 1983)
He is essentially a practical artist and there are few problems in art direction that he would not overcome.
Bonnie Prince Charlie, 1948. Conté, London Films.
(Click the image to show it in Vistavision!)
WILFRID SHINGLETON wanted to get into films at a very early age (18 yrs old!). Living with his family at Ealing he got the opportunity in 1932 and started as a junior assistant in the art department at Ealing Studios under Edward Carrick and Clifford Pember.
He was very studious and took his responsibilities very seriously.
When Carrick left Ealing Studios, Shingleton took over the art direction and in 1938 was designer for ‘Four Just Men’, followed by `Proud Valley’, ‘Saloon Bar’, and ‘Convoy’.
Returning from a very interesting wartime experience on naval camouflage, he joined Cineguild as Art Director on ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘Take My Life’, on which films John Bryan was Production Designer.
He recently left this set-up to join Andrejew as associate on ‘Anna Karenina’ thus renewing a friendship made when as a draughtsman he had worked on ‘The Dictator’, Andrejew’s first picture in England.
Shingleton spends quite a lot of time lecturing on art direction to schools and youth clubs and writes about films from the technical viewpoint.
He is essentially a practical artist and there are few problems in art direction that he would not overcome.
(Excerpted from: “Art & Design In The British Film” A Pictorial Directory of British Art Directors and their work. Compiled by Edward Carrick, 1947 )
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If you look at Shingleton’s profile in IMDB, you’ll find that during his long career he was the art director or production designer on some seminal films, including Polanski’s Dance of the Vampires, The Blue Max, The African Queen, and the wonderful Pure Hell of St Trinians.
I also find it wonderful that Shingleton spent time “lecturing on art direction to schools and youth clubs”. I’d love to see a modern day art director anywhere near a school or youth club.
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This is another post based on photos from the recent holiday in Liguria, Northern Italy.
I came across this curious little one seater car on very hot day in Sanremo. Its driver had parked and gone off somewhere, leaving the keys in the ignition.
I was so tempted to jump in and have a ride, but I figured that: 1) It might spoil the guy’s day to find his tiny car missing, and: 2) I had no idea of how to drive it.
(All these images get bigger if you click on them.)
Another rather whimsical thought struck me; That the little car might be magical. Apart from its unusual shape and size, and its very modern looking curves, there was a striking and arresting anomaly:- The bamboo broom clamped onto the side looked just like the besom that Kiki rides in “Kiki’s Delivery Service“.
But enough of such whimsy…
The picture below shows the strange combination of hi-tech car, and lo-tech bamboo broom. A wonderful mix.
The interior is a bit sparse, to put it mildly…. That dashboard / control panel will never win any prizes for style.
I was intrigued to know who made such utilitarian cars, and was surprised to find the name of a very famous Italian motorbike company on the badge…
The “DUC” part is from “Ducati”, makers of legendary superbikes, with names like “Monster” and “Streetfighter“.
There are two branches of the Ducati group of companies, and the little single seater DUC is a product of the electrical engineering side of the company.
Here’s a link to their website, and a downloadable brochure that gives you all the vital statistics you crave.
The car in these photos is the hybrid- petrol / battery version, which gives the driver a range of about 40 kilometres ( about 25 miles) which is enough sweeping for anybody in one day….
Although that rear end isn’t exactly pretty, the picture shows the two independent motors that propel and turn the rear wheels, without the need for any clunky steering mechanism.
To finish, I leave you with a link to a (translated) French website, that shows how many of these new types of vehicles are already available today. Most of them are designed for urban transport, rather than street cleaning, and what’s so striking is the new cartoony aesthetic that pervades so many of the novel designs.
There’s a real sense that this market for electric and hybrid vehicles is maturing in Europe..
And furthermore, there aren’t really any mean streets in the belle epoque gentility of Sanremo. But you knew that, anyway.
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1: Lecturer in Design (Illustration & Animation) at Blackburn College
( The application deadline isn’t stated in the ad, but I imagine it will close within a couple of weeks)
2: Demonstrator in Computer Animation at Bournemouth University
Application deadline: Midnight on Thursday 24 September 2009
Sign up to Jobs.ac.uk if you want to receive a daily email of jobs in universities and colleges. For animation jobs it’s best to sign up for the Creative Arts & Design and the Media & Communications emails.
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While preparing a salad in the kitchen of the house in Liguria, I nearly jumped out of my skin when this fierce looking scorpion scuttled out onto the work surface. Amazingly, I happened to have the camera handy….
(Click to see terrifying detailed view.)
More photos coming later….
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What and where is the building shown in the picture below?
You an click the thumbnail to enlarge it, if that helps.
OK. Here’s the rather surprising answer to the mystery building question:
You’ve obviously twigged that it’s a Russian Orthodox church from the onion domes. What’s unexpected is the location: Sanremo, in the Italian Riviera, close to the border with France.
It’s the Church of Christ the Saviour, St. Catherine and St. Seraph, erected in 1912 by rich Russian emigrés who liked to winter on the Riviera.
I came across it while on holiday recently, when the town was lit by the warm late afternoon light of “golden hour”.
(Link to the church’s website – in Italian)
The church was designed by Alexey Shchusev, who also designed Lenin’s tomb in Red Square in three breathless days.
The church is undergoing a bit of restoration at present. All the bells were stored in the vestibule, as you can see in the bottom left of this next picture.
( Click on these pictures to enlarge them, please. )
The church has a slightly magical quality with its icing sugar decoration, and it suggests to me something that might easily figure in a landscape dreamed up by Maurits Escher.
Have you ever seen pictures of the churches on Kizhi Island?
More pictures from Liguria and the Italian Riviera coming soon….
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From A Ligurian Spring Henry La Thangue
(Click to embiggen it)
We are all off to the mountains in Liguria. Back in early September. See you then!
Born in 1859, Henry La Thangue began studying art at the Royal Academy Schools in London, where he won a Gold Medal in 1879.
In the years up to his death, La Thangue concentrated exclusively on scenes of village life in northern Italy. He died in 1929.
He was strongly influenced by our old friend, Bastien Lepage.
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