Slava Snow Show, Montreal

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On Tuesday we went to see Slava, a Russian [Siberian] clown and his entourage. Visually, it was stunning. Every movement, every scene, the costumes, the colors, the sound, the movements, the expressions and the scenes were like an illustration, atmospheric like an Andersen story. Intense, sadly funny and just amazing!
Thank you, Kati!

[For now, here's a quick pencil + watercolor sketch of Slava and the colorful balloons. I wished I had brought my camera. This little sketch does not do the show justice... ]

Neo-primitivism

"Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning." Igor Stravinsky

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A Russian art movement originated from the book Neo-primitivizm (1913) written by A. Schevchenko.

This book introduces a new style in painting with elements of cubism, futurism and traditional Russian folk art. The work Neo-primitivism in the West is also used as a wider term to describe the work of artists who aspire to the aesthetic of primitivism. One of these artists is Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky [June 17th, 1882 - April 6th, 1971], who was a Russian composer. He is considered by both the West and his native Russia to be the most influential composer of the 20th century. An example of primitivism in music is Stravinsky's third ballet, The rite of Spring. When it first premiered in Paris, a riot erupted in the audience — spectators were shocked and outraged by its pagan primitive sound, its harsh dissonance and percussions and the pounding rhythms — but but it too was recognized as a masterpiece and influenced composers all over the world.

Homage to a Flemish master

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The image I created, is a copy of a detail of the painting "The farmer's dance", by Breughel, which I originally did in pencil and then digitally manipulated. It turned out as if it was a woodcut or lino. I'll post the original pencil drawing soon.

My hero, or at least, one of my absolute heroes, Pieter Bruegel (the Elder) was a Flemish artist active in Antwerp and Brussels, famous for his paintings and drawings of landscapes and scenes of robust peasant life, and founder of a dynasty of artists that remained active well into the 17th century. Bruegel's art is often seen as the last phase in the development of a long tradition of Netherlandish painting beginning with Jan van Eyck in the 15th century. This tradition transformed the abstraction of medieval art into a more empirical view of reality.

Examples of peasant folk subjects include "Peasant Dance" and "Peasant Wedding" (both 1568). The two stamps both show a detail from the painting "Peasant Dance". With this work Bruegel created an entirely new genre: the farmer and his life were artistically immortalized for the first time.

Throughout his life Bruegel felt attracted to the harsh life of farmers, who until that time was only tolerated at best, but in "Peasant Dance" became a hero. The painting belongs to the Albertina Museum in Vienna.

Ornery or ill-tempered

Does he personify "The pet peeve" ?

Miffed ? peeved or p***ed off ?

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And what does it all stand for ?

[Pet Peeve]: "The term originated from the word 'peeve', and is relatively recent - its first usage was in 1919.
The term is a back-formation from the 14th-century word 'peevish,' meaning ornery or ill-tempered." A "peeve" is something that annoys or irritates one, and since irritation is a highly individual emotion, one's "peeve" mileage may vary from one's neighbor's. I am "peeved," for instance, by people who assume that my license plates (which refer rather cryptically to books) mean that I spend every waking hour rooting for the Buckophiles, conversely, are probably peeved at the cool disdain with which I disclaim any pro-Buckeye sentiments. For a word that expresses a universal (one presumes) human emotion, "peeve" is a remarkably recent coinage, first appearing in print as a verb only in 1908 and a noun (the thing that peeves) in 1911. Both "peeves," however, arose as what linguists call "back-formations" of the much older term "peevish," meaning "ill-tempered," that first appeared in the late 14th century. Back-formations, the derivation of a "root" word from a more complex form, are common in English -- the verb "to sculpt," for instance, was formed from the much older word "sculptor." "The precise derivation of "peevish" is uncertain, but it may be related to the Latin "perversus," meaning "reversed, perverse." The original meaning of "peevish" was simply "silly or foolish," but by about 1530 it had acquired the sense of "irritable, ill-tempered or fretful." Surprisingly, it then took several hundred year to develop "peeve" as the word for the irritating agent or action "pet peeve," meaning the one thing that annoys you more than anything else, first appeared around 1919. The "pet" (in the sense of "favorite") formulation probably owes its popularity and longevity to its mild perversity ("favorite annoyance" is a bit oxymoron-ic) as well as its snappy alliteration."
[source: here]

A strange conversation...

This is one out of a series of illustrations about magic folktales.

[For those of you who are waiting for the continuation of SuperHero's adventures, unfortunately, he's still sick and being pampered by the nice nurses in the hospital. Little Mouse needed a rest, so he's quite content to have long talks with dr Lukas and occasionally he'll sneak into SuperHero's room to check in on his friend. But, they all will be back in a few weeks or.. maybe earlier. 'till then!]

Mouse at the doctor's

To tell you the truth I am getting carried away with this story.

Initially, it was just a fun way to draw a superhero with a carrot nose or a king
who is to big and too obese to sit on a chair. And then a little mouse who is
minuscule and ignored.In fact I am getting hooked on this story. Every week I think
I know [sorta] what my direction will be with the characters and then 'they'
arrange a slightly or drastically different direction. The more I draw, the more I am
dictated by unknown events with the writing and the story.

[here is the first quick sketch]