Congrats ...

... to Thomas Vogler, the owner of Jazzbar Vogler - the #1 jazzbar of the world. you could celebrate its 10 year anniversary yesterday. The bar definitely is a great place to spend the evening at.

And thanks to Frau Klugscheisser for the information (in German).

Search Terms 4

Another set of search words which led to my site.

• distract me stop me doing work I hate
• Jazzbar Vogler Munich (one of the best days this year - or the past years??)
• "the lady has me temporarily off the bottle"
  
• Christine Castro naked (I´m not sure whether she thinks that it is funny, when people are looking for nude pics of her.)
  
• "you love blow"
• pushed you aside when you entered ( entered where?)
• dita von teese tied up (I want to see her like this too ;) )
  

Through the eyes of a child...

The son of one of my friends made a drawing of Benjamin and myself. As Benjamin blogged about it today, I´m posting the card for the people to see.



It shows Benjamin and myself standing near the Sukkah. Every year during Sukkot we invite the Kindergarten children to the Sukkah for a pancake breakfast. I guess that left an impression on them. I´m glad that he drew us smiling.

Fantasy Filmfest 2007

The Fantasy Filmfest - the 21. International Festival for Science Fiction, Horror and Thriller is running in Munich right now. Our babysitter didn´t have any time during the festival week, but yesterday one of my best friends took care of the kids. We left them at her place for more than 5 hours and watched 3 movies non-stop. I always enjoy going to the movie theaters and I love horror and thriller - though there are almost no good movies in these categories. But we were lucky with this years selection:

NIMMERMEER
Toke Constantin Hebbeln
One night he will “fetch the silver from the night sky” – Jonas loves his father’s magical stories. When Helge dies, Jonas ends up in an orphanage whereupon dreariness and discipline rule his life … until a group of circus performers appear in the village.

KALTMIETE
Gregor Buchkremer First-timer Gregor Buchkremer puts himself on the map of German directors to watch, with this impressive mood piece. Inhabitants of a shared flat slowly go nuts over a roommate, who has locked himself up in his room. With subtle use of stylistic means Buchkremer creates an eerie atmosphere and tops his tale with a brilliantly surprising ending.


THE BOTHERSOME MAN
DEN BRYSOMME MANNEN / Jens Lien
“For office drone Andreas, suicide is preferable to a world where everything is spotlessly clean, everyone’s nice, and every home looks like an Ikea showroom. [This] delightfully droll sophomore feature by Norwegian helmer Jens Lien creates a surreal dystopia that’s only a taupe-colored shade from a realist depiction of contempo Scandinavia.” – Variety “Hell, heaven or dark mirror of urban yuppie life today, Lien’s Bothersome vision makes you feel Andreas’ cold sweat and quiet desperation – which may be our own as well.” – Chicago Tribune

Eisbär by Nouvelle Vague

This is a cover version by Nouvelle Vague of a NDW (Neue Deutsche Welle = New German Wave) song by Stephan Eicher Grauzone. I have never been fond of the NDW music (there are exceptions) though I have been to a lot of NWD parties in my teens. Somehow my friends never seem to like the same music I like.
But this cover version sounds very different from the original and it fits wonderfully to my current mood. I wish I were an ice bear somewhere in the quiet loneliness between all the ice and snow.
Thanks to Umino for this tip. I hadn´t heard of Nouvelle Vague before.



Nouvelle Vague - Eisbär

Ich möchte ein Eisbär sein im kalten Polar
Dann müßte ich nicht mehr schrei'n
Alles wär' so klar

Ich möchte ein Eisbär sein im kalten Polar
Dann müßte ich nicht mehr schrei'n
Alles wär' so klar

Eisbär
Kaltes Eis

Ich möchte ein Eisbär sein im kalten Polar
Dann müßte ich nicht mehr schrei'n
Alles wär' so klar

Ich möchte ein Eisbär sein im kalten Polar
Dann müßte ich nicht mehr schrei'n
Alles wär' so klar

Eisbär'n müssen nie weinen
Eisbär'n müssen nie weinen
Eisbär'n müssen nie weinen
Eisbär'n müssen nie weinen
Ich möchte ein Eisbär sein im kalten Polar
Eisbär'n müssen nie weinen
Dann müßte ich nicht mehr schrei'n alles wär' so klar

Greeting Cards

It is nearly the end of the Kindergarten year. Friday afternoon we had fun on the summer fest we celebrate right before the beginning of the summer holidays.
In addition to the Kindergarten teachers every year we have a new guy (doing voluntary work in the social sector during a gap year) taking care of the kids. As he is leaving soon he received a gift and I drew this card for him with all the kids and parents as fish on it. Anybody has an idea, which is my fish family? ;)



And here are the cards I drew for the Kindergarten teachers:

Diary 2008 Project

Lucy started the Diary 2008 Project. Every page of the diary will be designed by a different artist. Here´s the tree I drew first:



And here is the final page for the diary (with date and web address):

Happy Birthday, Casey!

Today is Casey´s Birthday. Hope she has a great day with lots of pink champagne and french pastry.



Here´s your tree of life. Hope you´ll experience a lot more of those 21 years. ;) In case no one has sung for you yet, listen to this. :)

Final Call for llustration Contest

Only 9 more days left to send in your images for the illustration contest. Check out the rules here.

Only some of the entries to give you an idea of the contest:

Art Video by BLU

This animation was done in Berlin. More of blu´s artwork here and a link to his blog.

Bedroom Window

This is our bedroom window...



...and the view out of our bed.



In the rare cases I´m "allowed" to sleep a little longer, the sun shines through the window exactly at 9 am and tickles my nose.

Amsterdam

Woo hoo! I finally booked a flight and hotel for a week in Amsterdam. I hadn´t realized that the city would be that expensive during the summer vacation (also due to my late booking). An extensive search with our travel agent lead to expensive hotels rather far from the city center.
So I cut back on my wishes and booked everything by myself on the internet.



This will be my hotel for 8 days... tiny, perfectly situated in the centre of the red light district, close to everything and full of life.
The hotel has been rated as "pretttty dodgy", "rather depressing" and "dreadful". The club in the basement seems to be "EXTREMLY loud" till 5 am!
I´m only hoping that the shared shower and toilet are clean. But otherwise I´m pretty happy to have found an affordable accomodation right in the center of Amsterdam. See you there!

BTW: Zurich won the votes, but only by 26%. I was already looking for a place to stay there, but then decided that Zurich is a city where I am quite often anyway. So the Giger Museum still has to wait for a little while.

Art course - Acrylics

Last weekend I attended my first art course. Unfortunately I could join the other participants only on the second day (Sunday).
The course had the intention to show us different techniques of using arylics. I have never drawn or painted with "wet" colors, so this was new to me. Boy, I really do have a lot to learn yet. The day went by fast and we all had a lot of fun.

In one of the excercises we had to choose a basic form and draw it on 3 pieces of paper. Then we had to use the primary colors (red, green, yellow) to paint the paper using differnet techniques.



Techniques from left to right:

with a sponge :


with a spatula:

This one was the most annoying to do, but the one I like the most.

with a roller:


It was strange to spend a day without drawing a new picture, just doing excercises. But I enjoyed it a lot.

It´s fun...

(؛ ˙uʍop ǝpısdn ǝʇıɹʍ noʎ ǝʞɐɯ oʇ ˙˙˙

Subway Life

António Jorge Gonçalves, travels around the world drawing sketches of people on Subways. The site is really interesting.
Tokyo, Lisbon, Stockholm, New York, London, Moscow, São Paulo, Athens and Cairo are the cities where he has already sketched in the Subway. He is mostly a comic strip artist and illustrator.

© António Jorge Gonçalves

"When people are shut in a subway carriage they look for something to do during their journey. They read the paper, listen to music or brood on something unpleasant said to them at work. I prefer to draw the other people." António Jorge Gonçalves

I Have Been Tagged! (2)

I have been tagged by biteyourowntail.



8 (food) facts/habits about myself:

1. Last year I read the sentence: "eat mangoes naked and lick the juice off your arms." I haven´t been able to forget the sentence and find it very stimulating .
2. Ice cubes are a great invention. They make me hot and cold at the same time! ;)
3. My favorite hiding place during my childhood (in India) was a tree in the backyard. Whenever I wanted to be on my own (sometimes to eat a whole piece of "stolen" chocolate from my mom or a mango or to read my books) I climbed up the high tree and had some peaceful hours to myself - specially as no one knew about it. When I was 19 years old I returned to India on a trip and saw the tree. It was huge and I didn´t know how to get up there. I must have been fearless as a child.
4. I love fruits (pomegranates, cherries, mangoes, strawberries, ...).
   
5. I just have/had to try crazy and unhealthy food stuff: green ketchup, strange looking and strange tasting asian sweets and desserts (I could die for japanese sweets).
   
6. My favorite courses of a meal are starters and desserts. I don´t mind omitting the main dish.
   
7. My favorite tastes: spicy or sour. I love any kind of spicy food so I favor Asian food, Mexican, ...
   
8. I´ve tried everything from worm to sharks to turtles to snails to lamb balls to ... (a long time ago). I´m open to almost anything... but I don´t ever want to try something living
9. To sum all 8 facts up: I LOVE EATING! :)
   

The rules:

1. post these rules
2. each person tagged must post 8 random (... hopefully interesting) facts about themselves
3. tags should write a blogpost of these facts
4. at the end of the post 8 more bloggers are tagged and named
5. go to their blog and leave a comment telling them they're tagged
   
   

I´m tagging:

This time I´m not tagging anybody. But in case anybody wants to be tagged by me, please let me know. I´ll draw a pic for every person (not more than 8) who sends me a link to his 8 fantastic facts.

IFN: The Dead

This weeks theme on Illustration Friday Night is "The Dead". The idea for the theme came from this post.



The drawing is based on motives by Egon Schiele. His drawings and sketches of people very often remind me of death. They somehow don´t really give me an erotic feeling - which is usually said to be his main motive.

Old Etchings - 2

This one was my first try. Not my favorite, but with this simple first piece I learnt that you can make a lot of mistakes in the process of etching.

Old Etchings

I tried printing this etch in different colors. Unfortunately the best colors and versions of it were gone quickly. These are only pics of the ones I still have got at home.

Old Etchings - 1

About 10 years ago I had the chance of using a printing-press. I didn´t have any experience with etching, but just wanted to try it out. I did 3 or 4 etches and I had so much fun doing this. That´s when I got an idea how wonderful it must be to have your own studio... just for trying out new stuff, being on your own and having lots of space for your art and for a printing-press! ;)
I haven´t stopped dreaming yet, though the dreams have changed a little bit!



Based on a motive by Unger.

Search Terms 3

No time currently to draw. :(

So here is another set of search words which led to my site.

• urethra art
• how to cook a wolf zurich
• Clonazepam blow
• hood clito
• Face Book, Tar or Honey
  
• how to remove a cast myself ( ; - I guess there are more people who can´t find a doc. )
  

Circoripopolo - A Great Comic Duo

Sit back and watch what the the Belgian comic duo Circoripopolo do to your browser.

Thanks to Spreeblick for the link!

Where shall I spend my next vacation? (Poll)

I frequently used to go on vacation by myself until I met my husband, married and had kids. Last year I went on vacation alone, for the first time after 7 years and I enjoyed that so much. It is wonderful to have the power of decision for a few days.
So I decided that I will get myself some time off the family once a year on a regular basis.

This year I´m not sure where I should go to. If you have any recommendations let me know and take a second to vote at the poll on the right side please.
These are a few cities I would like to visit:

• Amsterdam (I love the city and the grachts, and so far I have been there 3 times, but always only for a day or two. I remember one time when all of us slept in one Fiat Punto throughout our visit. That´s pretty small room for 5 persons!)
  
• Madrid (There are still a lot of (Picasso related ) places I still haven´t seen there)
  
• Paris (I love the city, the food, the wine, the cafés, ...)
• Zurich (I would love to visit the Giger Museum in Gruyère)
• Valencia (Another beautiful Spanish city - not that I want to visit the food fight festival La Tomatina).
  
• Kassel ( I want to visit the Documenta - no chance to do that with the kids, but spending 7 or 8 days in Kassel??)
  
• Los Angeles (My favorite city originally named "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula" - "The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels on the River Porciúncula" - but I guess way too expensive for this short trip)
  
• Other city (Any ideas? I love to visit new places)

So far I think Amsterdam is on my plan.

Last year I spent 9 days in Madrid, Spain and it was beautiful. I was specially lucky as Spain commemorated an overlap of Picasso-related anniversaries — from that of his birth 125 years ago to the 25th anniversary of the arrival of "Guernica" in a democratic Spain as stipulated in the artist's will. I couldn´t even have a look at all the Picasso events and exhibitions during my stay, but I enjoyed the larger ones.

Face Transformer

It´s a lot of fun to use the Face Transformer. The last time I used it was about a year ago and I didn´t have a blog then. Now I can post the pics here.

These are the original pics:




Portraits ;) by Alphonse Mucha:




Portraits by Amedeo Modigliani:





Portraits by Sandro Botticelli:




And the most interesting transformation at the Face Transformer is the is feature what you are going to look like when you are an old person. I´m going to be a happy person if I really do look like this when I´m older.




Try it. It really is fun. Anybody who is afraid of growing old, should not try that special feature though. ;)