25 January 2014

Hôtel Tassel

photo © bananiel


 Victor Horta

Hôtel Tassel is a town house built by Victor Horta in Brussels for the Belgian scientist and professor Emile Tassel in 1893-1894.

 Summer (1896) by great Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist Alphonse Mucha

It is generally considered as the first true Art Nouveau building, because of its highly innovative plan and its ground breaking use of materials and decoration.

Hôtel Tassel is located at 6 rue Paul-Emile Jansonstraat in Brussels.

The influence that Hôtel Tassel has had on the architecture of Belgium and of Europe as a whole has been enormous. Immediately on its completion it filled the architectural and artistic periodicals and was heralded as the only true architecture of the time.

Such a revolutionary synthesis of art, technology and nature.


All photos below © ffbetancourthe









Sweet Art Nouveau voyage: the HORTA group @ flickr.


Tassel Twirling
Since English is not my first language; since I didn't know the existence of the noun tassel; since twirling made sense to me associated with Art Nouveau because of its curvy and twisted look – I though this youtube clip was about Hôtel Tassel. But no, it's not. Be aware: sensitive media with nipples!


Tassel Twirling


18 January 2014

Modern space art

Chesley Bonestell (1888 – 1986) was an American painter, designer and illustrator. His paintings were a major influence on science fiction art and illustration. He helped inspire the American space program. Author of photo-realistic images of distant worlds and spacecraft, Chesley Bonestell was dubbed the "Father of Modern Space Art".


 Assembling the Mars Ships



 Colony on Mars under Plastic Domes



 Crashing the Unknown (1950)



 From The Conquest of Space (1953)



 Fueling Rocket for Blast-off (1956)



 On Mars (1954)



 [Rockets]



 Satellite Orbiting Earth (1956)



 Ships Orbiting Mars (1956)



When Worlds Collide (circa 1964)


In 1932 Chesley Bonestell went to work for Joseph Strauss, chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge. He made perspective drawings of the inner-workings of the bridge and made number of contributions to the final appearance of the structure.



In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Tapestry, a young Captain Picard is involved in a fight with aliens at the Bonestell Recreation Facility, a spaceport named after the artist.

 Beverages

The Bonestell Recreation Facility is a gaming and food establishment located near Federation Starbase Earhart in the 24th century. The facility features various beverages and other services, including games such as dom-jot. It attracts a wide range of clientele.


 Dom-jot

I often watched Star Trek but not The Next Generation and the Bonestell Recreation Facility was unknown to me. On the web, all the pictures I saw were full of vapor. Did the Bonestell Recreation Facility's consumers smoke cigarettes?




10 January 2014

Snowy airports

 Boston, USA –photo by JEm / DoWnUnDeR iN BoStOn


 Cleveland, USA –photo by OmarActiv


 Dusseldorf, Germany –photo by Petro Custodio


 Korea –photo by SingaporeConcierge


 Paris, France –photo by Judie Stanford


 Philadelphia, USA –photo by Boyd Jones


 Pulkovo, Russia –photo by Mike Kareev


 Regina, Canada –photo by Crow Drunken


 Vancouver, Canada –photo by salbarnett


 Vienna, Austria –photo by ChefThomas


Warsaw, Poland –photo by Eoin Looney


07 January 2014

Snowy Montreal

William Tully (flickr)


Pretty cold these days in Montreal and I virtually go south – to visually catch some virtual summer breezes. First stop: a natural region of tropical wetlands in the southern portion of the US state of Florida, the Everglades, where the beautiful and elegant snowy egret can be seen.




ATEWITHREL (flickr)

Dan Pancamo (flickr)

Insu Nuzzi (flickr)

Jim Petranka (flickr)

Larry Selman (flickr)

Lumen Venator (flickr)

Paruula (flickr)

Reinhard Geisler (flickr)

Stan Hope (flickr)



Oooh thank you the web for making me feel warmer now. (I must admit I turned the thermostat up.)




03 January 2014

How to draw a kingfisher

Dear kingfisher, you are such a beautiful bird.


Source: Wikipedia


How to draw a kingfisher with Marcello Barenghi


 Andrew Mackay



 Ashley Brown



 Carl Donner



 Chris Cody



 Christopher Pope



 Claudia Flor



 David Prescott



 Dick Twinney



 Hans Kappel



 Ian Griffiths



 Julie Nash



 Nigel Shaw



 Richard Allen



 Richard Duffield



 Samuel Durkin



 Steven Lingham



zhuzhu



Common kingfisher