Non dairy Diary

Photopaint

This is a photopaint. It was made not from a photo, but with a photo, using the photo as a tool. You can recognize easily a photopaint because it keeps the weird perspective of our modern 32mm  camera lenses. Just look at an icon size of the picture. Looks exactly like a photo?  It's a photo. An artist copying from a photo will unconsciously correct a few ugly perspective details.

Durer used some device. Vermeer painted  with the help of a camera obscura and Gustave Caillebotte used the first wide angle photo cameras to help him.

The important thing is not painting reality with realistic details. The important thing is what you say with your picture. Durer depicting a large turf, Vermeer showing a woman reading a letter and Caillebotte depicting the new Paris as transformed by Haussmann are saying very different things. What is important is what they say, if it touches you or not. The dexterity of their technique? I'm not sure. Technnique is a part of art, not art itself.

I'd rather paint, but photopaint is fun from time to time. Would you like me to make a tutorial?

La traduction est ici

 

Don't show this post to babies

(French is written in blue, English is written in black)

Eloignez les bebes de l'ecran, cette image fiche la frousse a mon fils!
Sans dec' Angel, c'est pas pour la Boulette :)

L'autre jour j'etais dans la chambre de mon fils apres un gros calin-biberon apres le jeu...en regardant autour de moi ca ressemblait a ca:

Ⓒdel4yo-Delphine Doreau 2007

Don't show this picture to babies. It frightened my 3 month old son. Bad.

I'm so sorry! I just exagerated a little bit the feeling I had in his nursery.
Big googleeyes are really fashionable in children toys these days.

Franchement je trouve ca un peu effrayant tous ces gros yeux, et il semblerait que mon fils n'en raffole pas tant que ca...les jouets a gros yeux il tape dessus. Ca le defoule, hum.J'ai fait une photo pour que vous vous rendiez mieux compte:

eeek!

I noticed he kicks on google eyes toys and play gently with the ones with simple black eyes. I keep the colorful and googly eyes ones for sporty play time.
I carry around the house a bag of the ones with gentle eyes and cute colors we prefer, for  the more quiet playtimes. Anyway, these days he is more interested in his plush bunnies, and he has just invented the concept of security blanket.

I think he'd like to grant a patent.

Du coup je me ballade dans la maison avec un ses jouets preferes, ceux qui font les yeux doux, dans des couleurs qu'on aime bien tous les deux, dans un petit sac, et je garde les gros yeux pour les moments les plus sportifs. Il aime particulierement shooter dans la coccinelle, houla. Ca fait deux mois qu'elle en prend plein la tete la pauvre.

Ceci dit ces derniers jours il prefere ses lapins en peluche. Et il vient juste d'inventer le concept du doudou.

Je crois qu'il aimerait bien deposer un brevet.

Color me ugly

They say babies love vivid colors...But do they have to be ugly colors?
Vivid colors can be nice and cute, but the usual toy maker doesn't know about it.
I think it participates to colorphobia in occidental world. How can you like colors if the ones you had to play with were ugly?

Ⓒdel4yo-Delphine Doreau 2007

I would love to find toys in the vivid colors of beautiful saris, English Smarties or Hungarian embroidery. No way. Here you are, stuck for the afternoon in the nursery, looking around while the baby gets asleep, watching this ugly brilliant yellow paired with a scarlet red , an eye killing royal blue, and the annoying office green. England only escaped a century ago from a 50 years long trend of aniline mauve for you to find it paired with all the other colors of your child's toys. Talk about an education!

What a chart:

No color is ugly. It's the way you put them together that will make them ugly or not.
Aniline mauve is beautiful on a Victorian dress. But paired with this green? ouch.

It's really possible to have fun with vivid colors and still have a pleasant result.

I'd love to find more things like this:

or even like that?

It's my own taste of course. Maybe you would like kahki and beige, navy blue and red, or orange and purple toys? I'd love some plain orange too!

As an adult I'm free to choose between a lot of styles and colours when I want to buy an outfit or an object. I'd be glad to have more choice for my baby, and find some stuff that will suit my style.

I found some relief here :

Oompa toys and Moolka toys,
with brands like Haba, Sigikid , Latitude enfant, and our (me&Bibu) favourite: Jellycat.
we also love Wee Gallery for their black and white apealing pictures.

Si vous voulez une traduction dites-le dans les coms, je m'y mettrais...