The wonderful work of Brian Biedul

This series of paintings by Brian Biedul just made my heart skip a beat. Not only do I find them very sensual but the stark white background is like a breath of fresh air to me, with nothing to detract the viewer from the subject.

Brian Biedul concentrates his art in an articulated space, where the boundaries are the edges of the canvas.

Brian studied art under Siegfried Hahn in Paris, and on moving home to the USA he graduated with a BFA from Art Center College of Design. His art influences have sent him in many directions it seems. From figurative painting, abstract expressionism, installations to film - a very talented artist!

The Brick Artist

My two sons loved building with LEGO® when they were growing up, and I guess the old saying "you can never take the boy out of the man" is true in the case of Nathan Sawaya. He has turned a childhood love into an art form with over 1.5 million lego bricks in his studio!

Nathan is based in New York and his work is currently showing at Stamford Museum in Connecticut until August 18th and has a very busy schedule of exhibitions through till 2010.

Some of my Favourite Lampwork Beads

Orson Welles was born today in 1915, he would have been 93, happy birthday Orson!

I have added the StumbleUpon button to my website today. If you enjoy my Lampwork Bead website it would be great if you could let StumbleUpon know!

My blog is only in it's early stages, but I would appreciate any comment you may have. If there is something in particular you would like me to add, please let me know.

Today I am adding here some of my favourite beads I have made in the past, yes it's time to give myself some accolade!

Amazing Paper Art

The work of Peter Callesen can be described in one word - amazing. Peter is an artist from Denmark who has brought his original paper art to the world.

In reading about Peter Callesen one conceives that he must have had a wonderful childhood, as his inspiritation is often derived from reconnecting with his memories of fairytales and growing up as a child.

His works interpreting staircases demonstrates his knowledge of architecture which Peter studied in 1990-93.

Peter's work has been shown in many exhibitions over the past 11 years around the world, such as London, Berlin, Korea, New York and Copenhagen.

If you would like to see more of this amazing art, please visit Peter Callesen's Website.

Planet Photo Effect

I don't profess to having a great knowledge of Photoshop, quite to the contrary. I utilize Photoshop for sizing my images and that is about my limit, but I found this really cool planet tutorial and had to give it a try. I've written out my steps for you just under my photos.

This is the photo I began with, taken by myself on my visit to Chicago in 2005.



And this is what I have done with it in Photoshop -



Tutorial Steps:

• Select a panorama or landscape photo.
• Select image size, have 'Constrain Properties' off and make the height and width the same value so as to make your image square.
• Select Filter - Distort - Polar Coordinates in the menu bar.
• Select Rectangular to Polar
Hey Presto!
• Select Image - Rotate Canvas - 180º

There are more steps in the actual tutorial for cleaning up the join, etc. but I haven't had the time to play around with those steps as yet.

I hope you have fun with this!

Paper Art

This is another piece of art I have found, once again I don't know its origin, but I thought it was very clever. On first glance I thought it was just a bunch of square pieces of paper until I realized they all throw a shadow of a face profile just by the way the pieces have been skilfully creased.



I have updated my website today. There are many new pieces of work to be viewed, if you have a moment please pay a visit.

Natural Tree Art

Isn't this an amazing tree with an equally amazing background. Couldn't find any information to go with this image, so unfortunately I have no idea where or when it was taken.

I have been adding new items daily to my Etsy store, and tomorrow I will be uploading my monthly website update. I have a new quiz every month on my website and one winner receives a $20.00 gift voucher to spend with Glass & Splinters.