woundposting

stop shaming people for being passionate about the things that they love. stop mocking people for having unusual interests. like, honestly, i'm so tired of feeling embarrassed for being "too much". if being too much means having deep interests that fill my life with romanticism and excitement, then let me be!!! i'd much rather listen to anyone ranting about their latest obsession with 16th century swords than have a boring ordinary conversation with those who shame passionate people

iiwaken

✶ the ocean at night ✶

vampire-yearner

Some travel journal spreads from The Hike Guy on flickr (downloaded them from pinterest)

queersatanic

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yimra

What the fuck

screampotato

This is absolutely fascinating. I've now been looking at Alex Colville's paintings and trying to work out what it is about them that makes them look like CGI and how/why he did that in a world where CGI didn't exist yet. Here's what I've got so far:

- Total lack of atmospheric perspective (things don't fade into the distance)

- Very realistic shading but no or only very faint shadows cast by ambient light.

- Limited interaction between objects and environment (shadows, ripples etc)

- Flat textures and consistent lighting used for backgrounds that would usually show a lot of variation in lighting, colour and texture

- Bodies apparently modelled piece by piece rather than drawn from life, and in a very stiff way so that the bodies show the pose but don't communicate the body language that would usually go with it. They look like dolls.

- Odd composition that cuts off parts that would usually be considered important (like the person's head in the snowy driving scene)

- Very precise drawing of structures and perspective combined with all the simplistic elements I've already listed. In other words, details in the "wrong" places.

What's fascinating about this is that in early or bad CGI, these things come from the fact that the machine is modelling very precisely the shapes and perspectives and colours, but missing out on some parts that are difficult to render (shadows, atmospheric perspective) and being completely unable to pose bodies in such a way as to convey emotion or body language.

But Colville wasn't a computer, so he did these same things *on purpose*. For some reason he was *aiming* for that precise-but-all-wrong look. I mean, mission accomplished! The question in my mind is, did he do this because he was trying to make the pictures unsettling and alienating, or because in some way, this was how he actually saw the world?

xradiorental

omf i never thought i'd find posts about alex colville on tumblr, but! he's a local artist where i'm from & i work at a library/archives and have processed a lot of documents related to his art. just wanted to give my two cents!

my impression is that colville did see the world as an unsettling place and a lot of his work was fueled by this general ~malaise?? but in a lot of cases, he was trying to express particular fears or traumas. for instance, this painting (horse and train) was apparently inspired by a really tragic experience his wife had:

iirc she was in a horrible automobile crash, as the car she was in collided with a train. i find it genuinely horrifying to look at, knowing the context, but a lot of colville's work is like that? idk he just seems to capture the feeling you get in nightmares where everything is treacle-ish and slow and inevitable.

jasminesapphires

“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

notthegrouch

“If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.” 

- Vincent van Gogh

absolxguardian

I'm kind of glad to hear that everyone does this. Because it means it isn't colonizer bullshit, it's what everyone does. It's just people discovering new things. Everyone goes:

"Oh hey these people have their own style of [language A's word for thing. Say, what do you call it?"

"Oh it's [language B's word for thing]."

"Got it, it's [language B's word for thing] variety [language A's word for thing]"

house-of-crows

added to which it is LITERALLY JUST LINGUISTIC SHORTHAND for 

[item] the way [culture] makes it. 

If you don’t want sliced bread, you want bread the way Eastern Indians make it you ask for Roti, not bread. Because Roti is bread THE WAY [EASTERN] INDIANS MAKE IT. Like fuck, it’s not that complicated a concept. 

OF COURSE it’s not colonizer bullshit! It’s just linguistic shorthand!

random-brushstrokes

Philip de László - Phyllis (Lady with a Parrot), 1913