Minni Havas: Michelle Obama Fashion

First lady Michelle Obama’s fashion has made headlines around the world. She’s known for taking risks - with color, accessories, and lesser known designers. Her interesting choice of clothing has given her a signature style and earned comparisons to Jackie O. as the chicest First Lady in the White House since the Kennedy's. During the campaign trail for the preliminaries, Michelle Obama repeatedly won over the fashion critics with her fresh take on what a future First Lady should wear. Minni Havas is an illustrator represented by Pekka Agency. She is from Helsinki, Finland and she works with colored pencils and masking inks. This image of the First Lady clearly shows her passion for fashion, given the pose she's in, and was a way for Minni Havas to further emphasize Michelle's fashion sense to the public. Michelle is seen here as a powerful figure, not only in the political world, but in the fashion world as well. Prior to Michelle Obama, First Lady's were seen wearing dress suits and drab color schemes. She has definitely brought a new take on the First Lady and Minni Havas has done a good job in portraying that. Michelle Obama is fresh, modern and clean.

Week 7: Untitled

I found this one while browsing an art folder and it immediately caught my eye. I'm not sure, but I believe the artist's name is Shinkiro. I do know that this piece was done for the videogame company Capcom (most likely for "Resident Evil") and the artist is one of the guys who worked on "King of Fighters". If you look at Shinkiro's work, his style is the closest that resembles this piece. There are several things that make me love this illustration. First of all, I was drawn to the photographic quality of it. It almost looks like it was a real picture that was edited in Photoshop to look like an illustration. Secondly, the imagery is fantastic. at first I noticed a pretty woman with a gun to her head. I was forced to go back and look hard to see why she was about to shoot herself and I noticed that she's surrounded by a horde of zombies. It's interesting that the color guides your eye though out the image which I think tells the narrative the way the artist meant it to be told. The expression on the woman's face really drives the point home. Her blank stare says that she's tried everything and she's giving up.

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger's Insects

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger is a 20^th century scientific illustrator from Switzerland. She is best known by her illustrations of bugs affected by radioactive residue left behind in Chernobyl. This series got her an article in the UK’s version of ‘Wired’ Magazine. The attention to radioactivity’s affect on insects, plants and animals in fallout zones has also made her a leading force within the art activism community.

Her work is highly detailed and more colorful than most scientific illustrations. Although she often uses watercolors to achieve muted colors that best mimic the actual color of the insect that is being portrayed. She also often has an array of insect shells on grid paper to compare the various ways a particular species has been mutated.

She also decides to, as an artist; crop out the heads of the specimens as often as possible. This is most likely an attempt to take the gross factor out of the insect, so people can look past it and see the mutations. Often in her work the mutations are hard to see, because this is how the insect really appears and she makes no attempts to embellish the mutations.

She has quite a few toxic places on her website.

Touko Laaksonen aka Tom of Finland

WARNING! If you look further than this post you will see sexually explicated illustrations. For four decades Touko Laaksonen, a Finnish artist notable for his stylized fetish illustrations of gay men, become the twentieth century’s most influential producer of gay pornographic images. He created over 3.500 illustrations. His style in the late 50’s early 60’s partly influenced by the U.S. censorship codes that restricted the depiction of “overt” homosexual acts. His work was published in the beefcake genre that began in the 30’s. By the end of the 60’s the beefcake market collapsed, but his work changed attitudes about male frontal nudity in magazines and movies. His most prominent work was a comic series called Kake, which included the archetypes of lumberjacks, policemen, sailors, bikers and leather men. Just think of the popular late 70’s music group “The Village People.”

Mary GrandPre

This is the first cover illustration for the Harry Potter series which was done by Mary GrandPre. She has done not just all the Harry Potter covers and chapter illustrations, but other children picture books such as Chin Yu Min and The Ginger Cat, Pockets and several others. I felt that this piece was successful because when trying to grab a younger audience bright colors are very helpful. Also when Mary made this cover (and all of the other Harry Potter covers) she selected images that were used in the book to help show in one collaged image what the story would be about. What I found interesting about this was that every image she chose did not do anything to reveal any secrets about the story. So giving nothing away Mary was able to communicate what Harry Potter was about in an interesting and eye catching way for not only children but even adults.

Week 7 Blog Post

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian painter, and a part of the Vienna Secession movement. He made paintings and murals, and lived from 1862-1918. He mostly painted women. This is Mäda Primavesi, an oil on canvas painting he made in 1912. The painting is of Mada Primavesi when she was nine years old. It was made as a gift for André and Clara Mertens, in memory of her mother, Jenny Pulitzer Steiner.

I found this painting interesting because most of the portraits I see are of people with a sort of blank expression; as if they were so bored they just wanted to leave. But if you look at this girl’s eyebrows she seems more determined, ever so slightly. This is backed up by her pose, with one arm bent to her hip, and her legs spread out. It’s almost like she’s saying “what are you looking at?” Instead of being passive as many portraits are.

The background looks to be an assortment of textures and colors like most of Klimt’s paintings. I like how the green and pink in the background matches the flowers on the girl’s dress, and I think the artist did well separating the matching tone of the background and the girl’s dress and legs so that you can tell they’re separate. Also, the texture on the dress is rather interesting. I like how the dress has three different textures in it, and they make it look like fabric would.

I think it’s a very good portrait: I usually find portraits boring, but I really like her expression and stance, and the background is well designed. The green in the background seems to frame the white floor in a way that leads your eye to the girl, and the pink wall in the background contrasts nicely with the green floor.

"Blondie" Chic Young

I was looking through my lecture notes and I came across "Blondie." I pretty much forgot what the strip looked liked or even contained, but I was really happy when I actually looked further into the strip. "Blondie" created by Chic Young is cartoonist that knows how to bring about good story and great drawing skills. What draws me the most to Blondie is the design to one of the main characters "Dagwood." This guy is hilarious, and I just love how he has those big eyes, and crazy looking hair. I could spot him out in a crowd, if need be. Also, the main Blondie, is a very cool, strong minded character. For me he captures that attitude in Blondie in the character he designed and that really makes a drawing more than just an awesome drawing.

Whats more about Blondie, is that it catered (and mostly likely still does) to the middle class, I guess what one could call "every day people" with its illustration of life day-by-day. I was reading a little bit about Blondie on the Internet and found that it came out during the depression and it highlighted themes of love, family, etc;Things people could relate to. A great example is this strip here. Very funny, great layout and drawing ability and does a great illustrating the thought process of certain men. Below is another strip(one strip repeats, could not get off)