Anna Rusakova Illustration

Every so often I see an illustrator's work that makes me never want to pick up a pencil again, because I know I could never be as good! Ukrainian Anna Rusakova's work definitely falls into that category. Check out her gorgeous Moleskine sketchbook pages, full of intricate drawings of everyday objects combined with fantastical ladies and a dollop of Asian/Russian influence.







Siiiigh. OK, off to burn all my sketchbooks now.
Her final illustrations are of course lovely too.







If you feel like getting an inferiority complex too, check out more work on Anna's Behance and Flickr.

P.S. Thanks for all the poll feedback coming in, it's really useful, keep voting!

POLL

I've added a little poll into the sidebar of the blog, just to ask what kind of posts you most like and don't like reading here. Please take a sec to vote, it'd be really useful for me to know! And if you have any other thoughts on what you'd like to see here, just leave a comment on this entry.

Bowerbirds - Upper Air

I got to see Bowerbirds again last night. It was at the Borderline, a slightly nicer but still quite scummy venue (they must have a lovely impression of London - though Phil did keep happily pointing out what a 'polite' audience we were), but they seem to bring a warm, intimate glow wherever they play.



They had a slightly different set-up to last time - last time was a violinist as well as Beth and Phil playing pass-the-instrument but this time there was bassist and drummer on a full kit. It made a rounder, more epic sound which worked well on the new tracks and brought a different feel to some old tracks, like Slow Down.



They previewed some tracks from the new album Upper Air (out July 6th) which sounds just as dreamy as their first album. Check out my favourite track, Northern Lights, below - a bad video I took of it live, and the mp3, which you can download from their label's site. It's a shame that Grizzly Bear have apparently taken Fleet Foxes' crown as 'folky breakthrough act of the year', because I think Bowerbirds are more than deserving for a little more recognition.

New-look blog

In case you read this blog in a reader or are extremely unobservant, I just thought I'd point out that I gave the blog a little makeover. It's got a nice clean retro-letterpress-inspired heading and a tidier layout for the content itself (which I'm still tweaking a bit). Hope you like it!

Flickr Commons

I always forget what an amazing resource the Flickr Commons are, until I click on at work looking for an image of something or other -- then before I know it, bam, I've lost a whole afternoon to enthralled browsing. Here are some of my favourite finds:

Unidentified young woman, gem tintype mounted on card, from the George Eastman House Collection



Petipa, from the George Eastman House Collection



A clergyman and two spirits, from the Collection of National Media Museum



Ship’s mascots on HMAS Sydney 1940, from the Australian War Memorial collection

The possibilities to use these images creatively is enormous. Vintage images are massively back in vogue and can look really contemporary in the right context. I knocked up this little collage-experiment just now.

Geek kitty toys by GEEKitty

...Speaking of cats, I just stumbled on a brilliant Etsy store that creates all manner of geek-themed felt toys for your feline.


Perhaps a Wiimote (Yoni goes mad for the real thing) or old-skool NES controller, or a traditional mouse - of the computing variety?


Or help them hone their Jedi-mind-control skills with a lightsabre?


Your cat can even HAS CHEEZBURGER! Made of win.

Yoni update

I've been quite restrained at posting cat photos here, but since Yoni is 5 months old today I thought I'd share my favourites so far. I wish I had a better digital camera!











Remember, follow Yoni's tumblr and my Flickr for loads more photos!

New Audrey Kawasaki works

Audrey Kawasaki just opened a new show in Japan. I love her latest work, including these intricate cutout pieces.



And I love the Japanese signs and lanterns in this one.



Photos from Arrested Motion, check out more here.

Yooouuutuuube!

This is my favourite new website, for the sheer pointless delight of it. Yooouuutuuube.com takes any video from YouTube and plays you each frame as a 80x80 box in sequence. You can then pan and zoom through every frame of the video simultaneously. The effect is like a zoetrope or maybe a more like a kaleidoscope - has to be played with to fully appreciate!

I ran some of my favourite music videos through it, here's some stills/links:


Human Highway - The Sound


Fatboy Slim - Right Here Right Now


White Stripes - Fell in Love With a Girl

Found via Booooooom - check out the comments to see more great examples.

Ephemera on Flickr

Wow, I feel like I struck gold finding takeabreak's Flickr stream. She has carefully categorised and made available for download thousands of vintage ephemera, including newpaper ads, postcards, money and much more. Brilliant for getting inspired!



Check out all the categories - you'll spend hours browsing through it all.