A Photo Blog for Your Enjoyment (Thank You Awesome Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi)
In lieu of tax returns, I decided to treat myself to a new toy. I had been scrimping and saving for months, to no avail, for a new digital camera, so I was quite thrilled to finally be able to buy the new Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi, one of the newest and top-selling cameras in the digital SLR line. It is a more advanced "starter" camera.
Although I've only had it for two days, I find it extremely easy to use, and quite awesome. It has a newly designed 10.1 MP Canon CMOS sensor plus a host of new features including a 2.5-inch LCD monitor, the exclusive EOS Integrated Cleaning System featuring a Self Cleaning Sensor and Canon's Picture Style technology, all in a lightweight, ergonomic body. The Digital Rebel XTi is proof positive that Canon continues to lead the way with their phenomenal digital SLRs. I've had some fun in the past couple of days taking pictures and playing with them in photoshop, as I love to do, so I have decided to share with you a few of my favorites. I hope you enjoy!
Floating lily...
Flowers for Algernon...
A scavenger at work...
A Bird of Paradise, fully bloomed...
I've got my eye on you...
Time fix that leaky faucet...
Sad puppy...
"Snails see the benefit, the beauty in every inch..."
Stay tuned for more from the new camera photo gallery, coming soon!
Tali Shapiro. She pretty much rocks my world. If you don't know who she is, you should. She's a rockin', super-talented 24 year-old arts student and lover of pinups and retro American culture. She's also been busy creating her newest (and quite fabulous if I do say so myself) pin-up girl art, but we'll get to that shortly. First, let's take a step back into history and explore the world of pin-up culture...
A pin-up girl or pin-up model is a model whose mass-produced pictures see wide appeal as pop culture. Pin-ups are intended for informal display. Pin-up girls are often glamour models, fashion models, and actresses.
"Pin-up" may also refer to drawings, paintings and other illustrations done in emulation of these photos (see the List of pinup artists). The term was first attested to in English in 1941; however the practice is documented back at least to the 1890s. The “pin up” images could be cut out of magazines or newspapers, or be from postcard or chromo-lithographs, and so on. Such photos often appear on calendars, which are meant to be pinned up anyway. Later, posters of “pin-up girls” were mass-produced.
Many “pin ups” were photographs of celebrities who were considered sex symbols. One of the most popular early pin-up girls was Betty Grable. Her poster was ubiquitous in the lockers of G.I.s during World War II. Others pin-ups were artwork, often
depicting idealized versions of what some thought a particularly beautiful or attractive woman should look like. An early example of the latter type was the Gibson girl, drawn by Charles Dana Gibson. The genre also gave rise to several well-known artists specializing in the field, including Alberto Vargas and George Petty, and numerous lesser artists such as Art Frahm.
The term “cheesecake” is synonymous with “pin-up photo”. The earliest documented print usage of this sense of “cheesecake” is in 1934, predating “pin-up”, although anecdotes say the phrase was in spoken slang some 20 years earlier, originally in the phrase (said of a pretty woman) “better than cheesecake”. In the 1950's, for example, there was a magazine called Cheesecake that had a young Marilyn Monroe in an itsy bitsy yellow bikini on its cover in 1953.
These days men can be considered “pin ups” as well and there are male equivalents of attractive and sexy actors such as Harrison Ford or numerous male models, but really who wants to see pin-ups of men. Women are so much sexier!
Some famous Pin-Up girls include (to name a few):
-Bette Davis
-Joan Crawford
-Mae West
-Judy Garland
-Rita Hayworth
-Audrey Hepburn
-Grace Kelly
-Doris Day
-Faye Dunaway
-Mary Tyler Moore
-Jane Fonda
...and many more
And now, Lesbiatopia is proud to introduce, courtesy of the fabulous art of Tali Shapiro, your newest pin-up girl (just in time for Valentines Day)...
DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!
Lesbiatopia's own Editor-in-Chief, Lesberita!!!
You might remember back to the beginning of January when Paula the Surf Mom introduced us to Tali, dubbing her (quite enthusiastically) as the Pin-Up Queen (yeah baby!). Paula talked about how Tali was "bringing cheesecake back in vouge" and boy did she ever! I was ecstatic when Tali agreed to make my shining face into her Valentine's Day pin-up girl. To Tali, Valentine's Day is very much a love hate relationship, as she explains on her website:"Some of us love it and celebrate it with our beloved, and some of us spend it sitting alone, in a dark corner of a bar, muttering bitterly how Valentine's sucks. This design captures the duality of the love/hate relationship most of us have with Valentine's day. Love it or hate it, tell everybody how you feel about it with the 'Valentine's is for Pussies' bitter-sweet pinup, and click on one of the items below!
I know I've had my moments of loving (and hating) Valentine's Day too, and I think pretty much everyone can relate to our culture's rollercoastery attitude towards a holiday whose historical significance dates back to the days of Chaucer and his poem about St. Valentine and looooove:
"For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Anyway, whatever feelings you desire to express on V-Day (love, hate or delicious ambiguity), be sure to check out Tali's little shop of pin-ups (and her pin-up blog, too!), where retro pop-art meets the modern-day women. Is that sexy, or what?? MEEEE-OOOOOWW!!
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese [choose] his make [mate]."
Freedom To Love: Artist Speaks Out About The Wesboro Baptist Church
A few weeks ago, after getting an e-mail from friend and artist Danielle Kerese, Lesbiatopia posted an article about the gay hating members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka,Kansas.
The disgust for these people and their spread of hate and negativity is felt by many. But instead of letting these bastards get the last word Danielle Kerese , who is straight, decided to do something positive and designed the artwork for a t-shirt on threadless.com as a form of positive counter statement to the WBC crazies.
Danielle Kerese says on the website:
I have just learned about a church group called The Westboro Baptist Church. These people are hateful and disgusting. Seeing their message displayed on the news is disturbing to say the least. Its really enough to make a person sick. I did this illustration as my own personal protest against their bull@#$^ and everyone else who preaches such ridiculous nonsense!
This design is about love, not hate.
So, I'm asking all of you to take time out today and vote on her design at threadless.com. Considering Danielle has supported us I feel it is our duty to support her. If Danielle's design gets enough votes and positive feedback then the shirt will be available for all of us to buy and wear proudly. But don't delay we only have five days left.
Click here to vote
Keep spreading the good gay word!
Beebo
(an editorial note from Paula the Surf Mom)
Our regular readers have over the past couple weeks been noticing that every Friday Lesbiatopia's talented exclusive resident artist, Muchachita has been posting her wonderful little cartoons here and I think they are quite honestly just adorable.
But just today I got an E-Mail asking me who is Muchachita? Well as I read the E-Mail I happened to think to myself how rude of us here to have not properly introduced her to all of you.
Muchachita is from Spain, but she is currently residing in the United Kingdom, where she is a student. She draws her cartoons for us and does all of our special art projects for articles and such. She is also quite the sweetie, as I think you can tell from her work. Muchachita is pretty humble, but every artist wants to know people like their work, so please let her know what you think if you like what she does, because for Muchachita it is a labor of love.
Roses are red, violets are blue, please leave your comment, after your reading is thru. Read More......
Make a Lesbian Fashion Statement
See u soon!
muchachita
Roses are red, violets are blue, please leave your comment, after your reading is thru.
The Pin up Queen: Artist Tali Shapiro brings Cheesecake back in vouge
I have always been quite partial to a little cheesecake. Yeah I really like those cakes that are made of sweetened cottage cheese, but that is not the cheesecake I’m referring to.
No what I am talking about here is the particular school of art, one that I think is frequently misunderstood, but one that became fashionable and popular in spite of these misunderstandings that features minimally attired, sexually attractive, ladies in coy, flirtatious and seductive poses.
Recently I very fortunate to meet an incredibly talented and interesting 24-year-old artist who hales from Israel by the name of Tali Shapiro and Tali
does some very unique works of art. What makes Tali Shapiro’s artwork so unique is, you see, she also has something of a passion and an eye for cheesecake; Tali Shapiro is a pin-up artist.
Pinups and the pin-up girls have over the years graced everything from hardware store calendars to the noses of World War Two bombers and since the early part of the 20th century have seen some extremely wide pop cultural appeal. But some scholars of serious fine art have long viewed pin ups, as only so much pop- art and others think of it only as simple vulgar commercial illustrations and even as pornography.
Pinup as we know it today is radically different to its humble origins that can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century, a time when sexuality was both scrutinized and suppressed. For instance a woman showing a bare ankle was considered risqué and the word "sex" itself was not even used publicly. As ever people found a way round even the most stringent of rules and the desire for images of an erotic nature was overcome by the birth of portraying scantily clad ladies as an art form. In the 1940’s such famous pinup artists such as George Petty and Alberto Vargas created calendar girls that very soon adorned the walls of garages and workshops everywhere and such images art were quickly deemed acceptable by the society of the time and many of these early drawings and illustrations that are considered the roots of the pinup genre.
Pin up were often humorous, with captions or a bit of dialog, differing from cartoons only in being full-color paintings and not just simple line art, the portrayal of the model is "provocative" but not obscene. Used in advertisements, on posters, tin signs and so forth, for years, previous to color photography being widespread, pin ups were the main medium for publicity pictures of movie stars.
Tali Shapiro work is also in this tradition. Tali told me she has been drawing ever since she could pick up a crayon and that her parents kinda dug their own grave, by encouraging her in her art by sending her to art school, in Israel (where she was born and, still lives).
Now when I asked Tali, who is a straight as they come, why she choose to become a pin up artist, an art form that has long been traditionally a male medium, she told me that she has always drawn women, even as a child, that she found something fun and flexible about them.
Tali also said,
“I've also always been drawn to pinups, especial Gil Elvgren's. It's got something edgy and crispy to it, even though it's old. I think there's a lot of beauty and creativity in the way men portray women, it's a different take. You may like it or hate it; I think it's fascinating. Be it poetry literature, sculpture or painting.
I like pinups mainly because they're a lot a fun. I've been deliberately drawing pinups for a few good years, but only lately have I really felt confident enough to show them off. It never really had a starting point. It just happened. You draw women, or fashion illustrations, or a comic character and it all adds up. In the end, no matter what project I was working on, there'd always be a girl with garters.”
Tali told me that her inspirations are mostly the great pin up artist like Vargas, Elvgren and Frahm, but that she thought that are so many newer artists doing incredible things out there, and that she found new inspirations in their works as well.
When I first viewed Tali’s artwork I was exceedingly impressed with it; I thought it clean, crisp, playful and fun. Her drawings naturally give us the clearest sense of Tali outlook on life. Tali’s work brings the pinup back to the to the mainstream, but she still keeps that pop art levity and provocativeness that made pin ups so well loved in the past. And quite frankly I think they are hot and make great T-Shirts… one that I think would make one heck of a lesbian fashion statement if someone were heading out to their favorite dyke watering hole or club. If you were looking to catch a few eyes, Tali’s artsy Pin ups surly would do it.
If you are interested in viewing more of Tali Shapiro's work and see some of her additional views on this exquisite art form, Tali has a website called The Pinup Blog. So all of you fine Lezzie art Lovers head over and check her and her pinups out.
Roses are red, violets are blue, please leave your comment, after your reading is thru.
-dubbers
I considered Origami a fun, yet pleasantly challenging art form until the instruction book somehow flew out of my hand and into a pane of glass in my livingroom window. Despite the book's claim to be for "ages 10 and up," I decided I wasn't mature enough to fold cranes and dramatically gathered every last, perfectly squared piece of paper and dumped it into the trash.
CURSES!
Roses are red, violets are blue, please leave your comment, after your reading is thru. Read More......
Posts
All Comments
|
Got Lesbian News or Happenings? Call Lesbiatopia's 24 Hour News Tip Line (252)562-0761 |
What would you like to see more of on Lesbiatopia?
