reading a book

Thought behind the thought:

Books are actually doorways to unimaginable worlds. They manage to hold your hand and lead you down a path to a place you have never been before. These places can be real or fictional but what’s interesting is the journey. Every time we place a book down after reading it, we have travelled to a far off place and back. A good book remains with you long after you have finished reading it. It has managed to unlock your mind and allowed you to explore possibilities that you have never before entertained.

About the Art:

Illustrating children’s books is a huge challenge. The colours, the characters, the theme, the drama has to be so engaging, that even a child with a minuscule attention span becomes engaged with the book. Some of the great children’s book illustrators have created characters, places and events for us that have been a huge part of our growing up years. Even as adults when we think of these characters they instantly bring a smile to our faces and we revisit a place in time when life was easy and anything was possible. The conviction and earnestness of the storyteller makes even an impossibility or farce real to us.

Whether it’s a Cat wearing a Hat, or a Rabbit wearing a coat, what makes it believable is the author and the illustrator. Authors and illustrators are both artists and craftsmen. One, painstakingly creates the story, the characters, the drama and the thrill. The other, makes it a visual reality for us. The illustrator’s job is a tough one because he needs to be completely in tune with the style and manner of the author. When the two people are aligned in their ideas and vision great results are produced A.A Milne and E. H Shepard- Winnie the Pooh, René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo- Asterix, Roald Dahl and Sir Quentin Blake- Novels by Dahl . A lot of authors have held the distinction of being great illustrators like Dr Seuss and Georges Remi who wrote under the pen name Herge.

Paolo Domeniconi is an Italy based illustrator for children’s books. His books have been published by Italian publishers Agaworld, Arnoldo Mondadori, EDT, Franco Cosimo Panini, La Coccinella, Pearson ltalia, Sinnos Editrice. What is unique about his work is the strong use of colour and creating ordinary scenes with extraordinary treatment. He draws potential from the characters and transforms them into unreal and unimaginable creatures. The narrative is so strong in the illustration that it perks your curiosity and binds you to the story. It creates interest and one wants to delve more into what the book has to offer. He not only shows you an interesting visual but sets you off on a journey, a journey of wonder, discovery and imagination just like a wonderful book is supposed to.

Credits:

http://mestresdarte.blogspot.in/2011/05/paolo-domeniconi.html

http://www.athenna.com/children%E2%80%99s-illustrations-by-paolo-domeniconi/athenna/web_design/design-foz/

http://www.cuded.com/2013/02/childrens-illustrations-by-paolo-domeniconi/

give and take

Thought behind the thought:

It’s interesting how friends are constantly doing things for one another and there is absolutely no record that one maintains about who did what for whom. There is an innate understanding with which we instantly know who should be the giver and who should be the receiver in a situation. We all reach out to our friends each day for comfort, advice, care and sense of belonging. Lucky are those that find friends who reciprocate the emotion.

Soul

Finding love

Give and Take

During love

About the Art:

Lorenzo Quinn is a figurative, contemporary, Italian sculptor. Michelangelo, Bernini and Rodin have been his inspirations. Son of the famous Hollywood actor Anthony Quinn, Lorenzo is internationally known for his monumental public art and even smaller exhibits. In a series called ‘Give and Take’ he has explores the use of hands to indicate communication between individuals. Quinn believes hands are the most powerful parts of the human body to sculpt because hands have the power to love, to hate, to create, to destroy. Friendship transcends all forms of love. It is a selfless bond that connects people regardless of gender, age, race and class. Quinn’s sculptures echo this undying bond and give a visual imagery of how we reach out to people and respond to others needs. The sculptor’s passion and faith in human values can be felt through his work.

Credits:

http://www.halcyongallery.com/art/during-love

http://mightyhike.com/2012/03/11/quid-pro-quo/

http://www.fineartblog.co.uk/?cat=74

http://www.fineartblog.co.uk/?cat=74

humour

Thought behind the thought
Humour is the elixir of life. A man, or a woman for that matter, is worse than dead if humour is not an important part of his existence. A life without humour is a boring life indeed! Because the ability to laugh at whatever situation life puts you in, is what can keep you going. A hectic day at work can be made bearable by a witty colleague, the grim news on the front page can be offset with a single cartoon, and simple word play can bring an accidental smile to your lips.


Word craft
People who bring humour to other people's lives are worthy of the highest awards that could be given for the service of Humanity. Like P.G.Wodehouse, the master of the craft, who has brought 'Something Fresh' to so many of my days.

The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P. G. Wodehouse was born in 1881 and educated at Dulwich College. After two years with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank he became a full-time writer, contributing to a variety of periodicals including Punch and the Globe. He married in 1914.

As well as his novels and short stories, he wrote lyrics for musical comedies with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, and at one time had five musicals running simultaneously on Broadway. His time in Hollywood also provided much source material for fiction.

At the age of ninty-three, in the New Year’s Honours List of 1975, he received a long-overdue knighthood, only to die on St Valentine’s Day some forty-five days later.



Selected lines from his books, that will put a smile on your face!

Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons. (Blandings Castle)

I saw my Aunt Agatha for what she was - not, as I had long imagined, a sort of man-eating fish at the very mention of whose name strong men quivered like aspens, but a poor goop who had just dropped a very serious brick (Very good, Jeeves)

.... there came into his eyes the sort of look which would come into those of an Indian chief - Chicagook, let us say, or Sitting Bull - just before he started reaching for his scalping knife. (Very good, Jeeves)

The jaws fell, the ears dropped limply. He had been looking like a dead fish. He now looked like a deader fish, one of last year's, cast upon some lonely beach and left there at the mercy of the wind and the tides. (Right ho, Jeeves)

"Maybe his bark was worse than his bite."
" Ver possibly, though, I cannot make any authoritative pronouncement, the old relative never having actually bitten me." (Barmy in Wonderland)

The waiter brought the menu, and Barmy's stomach caught Barmy's eye in a congratulatory sort of way, like a stomach seeing the approach of the happy ending. (Barmy in Wonderland)

"It's incredible. Don't you ever stop eating, Phipps? Digging your grave with your teeth, that's what you are doing. Oh well, tapeworms will be tapeworms," said Mervyn Potter philosophically.

'So!' he said at length, and it came as a complete surprise to me that feelows ever really do say 'So!" I had always  thought it was just a thing you read in books. Like 'Quotha!'  I mean to say, or 'Odds Bodikins' or even 'Eh, ba goom!'


Credit and Source of information
http://www.wodehouse.co.uk/
www.pgwodehousesociety.org.uk.