PlanetOddity.com » Lifestyle

Artistic Subway System Of Stockholm

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:54:14 +0000

When you enter the subway system in Stockholm, you’re not sure whether you’ve entered an art exhibition or a transport system. That subway system is said to be the longest art exhibition in the world, about 110 kilometers in length. There are 100 subway stations around Stockholm, and about 90 of them are decorated with old and new art. Everything from sculptures to paintings.

150 artists have participated in this project to make the Stockholm subway an amazing traveling experience, and it is part of a long tradition. When you sit on one of the trains and travel underground you feel like you are traveling through time. In some stations the roof has a bright and crazy color.

Another station looks like an archaeological excavation, while others have modern style several arrows painted in different directions. You can find all kind of art, and it’s open for everyone. Something completely opposite is this abandoned subway in Cincinnati.

Unbelievably Realistic Paintings

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:15:28 +0000

At first I thought this was real black and white photographs, but then I realized it was paintings. Amazing is the perfect word for Spanish painter Juan Bautista Nieto’s work. And if you wonder how he can draw such perfect human bodies, the answer is: he studied medicine before studying art.

He uses a combination of acrylic and oil paint, and he paints with an air-brush method. He uses a lot of time on each painting because he wants it all to be very detailed, so he produced a couple of paintings every year.

He says himself that only one painting take about 6 to 9 months to finish. In his work you will see a lot of female bodies, either dressed or half undressed.

The work is so delicate that you can sit a really long time just staring at them trying to figure out one flaw that would make it look more like a painting than a photo. Other realistic paintings are these cinematic paintings.

Dark And Raw Movie Posters

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:00:49 +0000

These actually look like book covers, but they’re not, they are movie posters. Flickr User Traumatron Illustration form UK is the person behind them. He is drawing the movie posters with probably darkness as inspirations.

Because they are dark and raw, just like the covers of horror or fantasy books that you can find in the library. The movies that are represented are The Shining, Black Swan, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and many others very known films.

If you take a closer look at these movie posters, you will notice how scary the characters are, more scary than in the actual movies. The “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is working its creepiness. Some other amazing posters of famous movies are these minimalist ones.

Beautiful Vintage Photos Of Moscow

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:03:25 +0000

Moscow is such a beautiful town with so much to see. It has always been that way it seems. You can see some amazing photos from 1909 of this capital. They were taken by an American that came to Moscow on an exhibition tour with a group of American champion trotting horses. The traveler had a Graflex box camera and took about 400 photos from the trip.

He was even arrested several times for taking unauthorized pictures, so he did experience a lot. Only 38 of those photographs are used in the museum exhibition “Empire and Empathy – Vintage Photographs of Russia”.

The photographer was obviously skilled or at least he got a lot of practice because the photos are amazing, and the obvious black-and-white style makes it even more adventurous in a way.

It’s always exciting to see how the big cities looked like back then. Some other photos of the whole Soviet that are worth seeing are these ones from 1922 – 1991.

Beautiful Parts of West Siberia We Didn’t Know About

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:06:42 +0000

Photography with an “above-view” has always been popular. Here we have a selection of those kinds of photos of The Novosibirsk region which is a part of the West Siberian Plain. It’s a huge area that’s about 178,2 thousand square kilometres. It’s mainly plain but in north there are some huge woodland with lots of marshes.

There are two main rivers of this “oblast” (Russian for region) , the Ob and Om, and the biggest lakes are Chani, Sartlan, Ubinskoye, some with salt water which looks completely white. They all make wonderful nature that can be seen on the photos.

The region has a continental climate, -19C in winter and 19C in summer. Animals can also be spotted in the photos, but the green vegetation is stunning. You may also notice the border with Kazakhstan.

There are also some population here and there, and some farmlands. All in all a beautiful but forgotten part of this world. This lovely Siberian nature has been used to express art as well; the frozen lake of Baikal is now full of huge circles made by a talented artist.

Photos by Gelio.

Anamorphosis At Its Best

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:52:58 +0000

Without a cylindrical mirror these paintings would look meaningless. This kind of art is called Anamorphosis and comes from the Greek words meaning “formed again.” It’s basically paintings that can be viewed only with a special device. In this case a cylindrical mirror is the solution, and the amazing paintings are made by Indian artist Awtar Singh Virdi.

He holds a record in Guinness World Record for the largest anamorphic portrait made in 2004. He started with anamorphosis when he one day saw his distorted reflection on a very clean car at at Mercedes Benz training center at Jamshedpur where he worked some time. He went home and practiced each day his skills on making amazing anamorphosis paintings.

He makes portraits of very known people like George W Bush, Mother Teresa and Amitabh Bachchan among many others. This kind of art can remind somehow on this artist’s work; he makes enormous portraits that can only be viewed from the sky.

Stunning 150 Years Old 3D Photos

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:15:20 +0000

We are all aware of the fact that there were no 3D effects 150 years ago. Well, maybe that’s just a theory, because they actually had something alike 3D that they called stereo photography. It was pretty popular during the Civil War in 1861. Here you can see a selection of Civil War photographs that have some kind of 3D effect.

They were all released by The Library of Congress recently. They basically used two 2D images and “melted” them together, so it would look three-dimensional.

The method they used was some sort of digitally converting that made the two images into an anaglyphs, that can be viewed with 3D glasses.

The library has its own Flickr page and website where you can find thousands of photos. Looking at the 3D photos without glasses can be a bit disturbing.

Photoshop didn’t either exist back in the days, but here are some amazing photo montages that are done without it.

The Stunning Sherlock Holmes Museum In London

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:18:24 +0000

When stopping with the metro at Baker Street station in London you will see the known silhouette of Sherlock Holmes with the hat and pipe. The reason for that is because Sherlock Holmes museum is located in 221b Baker Street.

The non profit organization Sherlock Holmes International Society is running the museum. These photos was shot by photoblogger omnesolum.

The museum is dedicated to the famous detective Sherlock Holmes that was a character created by Sir Conan Doyle.

The museum is a house of four floors. In the first one you can find a gift shop, second one is the bedroom and living room of Sherlock Holmes, third floor is where the house owners, Watson and Mrs Hudson, live, and the last floor has wax figures of the characters from the story.

The bathroom is situated in a separate loft. Every corner of the house is perfectly decorated just like it was described in the books.

Sherlock Holmes hat and pipe is also there as well as his other detective stuff. Really worth visiting. You can also check six must see tourist attraction in London.

Artists Celebrating 20th Anniversary Of Edward Scissorhands

Tue, 24 May 2011 17:47:36 +0000

It has been 20 years since Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder played in Edward Scissorhands. The romantic fantasy film directed by Tim Burton was a sensation. It’s the story of an artificial man named Edward, an unfinished creation, who has scissors for hands. He falls in love with a teenage girl, but it gets complicated.

To celebrate the 20 years anniversary a bunch of artist have gathered and made their interpretation of Scissorhands. 40 beautiful illustrations were made and here you can see some of them. The styles are very different but extremely unique. Some are prints, others are paintings or drawings.

There were no limits, something that every artist desire. The art pieces are all gathered in Gallery Nucleus, but also on a blog of artist Seb Mesnard which dedicated that blog especially for this 20th anniversary. Enjoy the contributions. A similar thing was done to celebrate the Star Wars movies by gathering 100 artists that made their unique Darth Vader helmet.

Realistic And Stunning Cinematic Paintings

Thu, 05 May 2011 13:32:39 +0000

These are oil paintings, some very realistic ones too. The talented artist Joe Simpsons is the one that’s painting these breathtaking pieces of art, you have probably heard of him already. It looks like different scenes from movies, and that is the effect he wanted. Theatrical lighting and wide screen format is the tricks that he has been using a lot. If you can notice, every painting has some sort of sad plot.

Either it’s someone that is leaving or someone writing a painful letter. Dark colors and rain is also used to make it all look dramatic. Not to mention how detailed the characters on the paintings are, you can easily read their face expressions. Other amazing painting pieces are these paintings of Skype models, some of them famous actors.