Kelly Lyles "Leopard Bernstein" and her Art House

Kelly Lyle's house was featured on HGTV and in is one of the most fun and inspired houses I have seen in a long time. Since this is Art Car Central we do have her art car covered in the wild kingdom of wild cats.


Photo by Bagel!

Leopard Bernstein is a 1989 Subaru DL wagon. We've travelled to art car events and parades all over the U.S. My vehicle is quite modest compared to the other spectacular sculptured, glued, welded, transformed autos you'll see on these links and in my paintings.

Bernie is covered with hundreds of big cats -- lions, tigers, leopards, and cheetahs. He has welded ears and a tail. Driving an art car is a definite ice-breaker at cocktail parties and a definite deterrant to road rage.

My best comment came from a child - "Look mom, it's a party!"

Copy taken from kelly spot

sorry i was a bit lazy on this on!

Strange and Weird Cars By Top Gear

Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear presents a segment about some really strange cars and compares the pros and cons of each. Ultimately one question remains to be answered in this piece, which one is the fastest on the track. Take a look as a motorized couch, dumpster, shed, and on-road powerboat are put to the test.

Hendrik Kerstens: The distant view of the other

Hendrik Kerstens is one of those artists who have managed to develop a career seemingly concentrating on one subject throughout the years. In his case, the model has been his daughter Paula. How different is she as a subject because of being his daughter? Not very. Which is as powerful a revelation as any. After all, one would expect some closeness, some special insight. Nothing of the sort. What we get is a serious young lady, as serious now as she was on the pictures being only a few years old. A gaze that refuses to talk. Our only partner in dialogue seems to be the light that paints the face gently, yet at least on surface, without the love one would expect. We see all the Vermeers and other 17th-century Flemish painters participate in this creation, yet this, here, is darker, less inviting. It doesn't pretend that something can come out of this encounter. Nothing more than a picture, a gaze, a world that is forever there, for us to admire, but not to discover.

Valentine's

I found this at Happy Famous Artists. It was dated February 14. How come this seems fine on Valentine's Day, but has something offensive about it today?
Maybe it's because VD is for the individual, while today is for the group. And so, today it implies that this is the value I find important in a woman. While on February 14, it is about this one individual being gorgeous. Yet, isn't there something disturbing even about this appearing on Valentine's? The fact that what we celebrate is beauty?
Beauty. Can't live with it, but would have a hard time ignoring it either.

ART IN THE SERVICE OF EVIL

An artist designed pretty flourishes into this little piece of metalwork ...



... on an instrument of torture which was inserted into a victim and expanded by means of a screw device to tear through the victim's internal organs, causing an excruciating death.

Not only did artists design this object with an aesthetically pleasing look, they updated its design over the years to keep up with the latest fashions.

An aesthetic object such as this poses interesting questions at each stage of the production process:

• The client who commissioned it could have settled for a plain, functional tool. He was sensitive enough to desire a pretty design, yet totally insensitive to the piteous howls of his victim;
  


• The artist who designed it summoned all his taste and talent to put the most beautiful design on a tool for mutilating human beings;
  


• The victim of the torture was faced with a most inhuman death which his tormentors took special care to package in a stylish, civilized form.

But this week, we don't care about any of those questions because after all, this is a blog about illustration art. Instead, we care about the question: Does the sponsor affect the quality of the art?

We often hear that illustration is an inferior art form because it is commissioned by corporations to serve commercial interests. Here are some pictures from the 1960s by the great Bob Peak. They were bold, innovative, well designed drawings but they helped to sell cigarettes.





Does the morality of the sponsor's goal affect the aesthetic quality of these images?

If you are fortunate enough to visit the Spanish town of Santillana del Mar, you should spend time in their Museum of the Inquisition. Seen from one perspective, it provides a blood-curdling record of fiends who tortured in the name of religious piety. But it can also be viewed as a conventional sculpture museum, displaying the beautiful work of very talented silver smiths, iron workers and artisans in wood. You can be horrified by the content and still be impressed by the form.

I've never found a rule that governs all art, but a good starting point for some serious thinking might be:

There should be no argument in regard to morality in art; there is no morality in nature.

Rodin said that. And here's an additional perspective:

Many mediocre pictures of lofty subjects hang in art museums. Many brilliant pictures of dishwashing detergent can be found in magazine ads. Nobody has yet established a clear connection between purity of motive and quality of art.

I said that.

Various sketches

cutesy character design, just for fun:

some random studies and practice stuff i did in OC with Davi, the duck is his idea..:
i only colored this Udder-baby (Davi's, in OC). See more of it here.
another study, dynamic poses are fun:

Deathdealer Tattoo

belated post of a tatt i designed for Stark (commission) last month