Credits, clockwise from left:
01: Tomer Hanuka. 02: Audrey Kawasaki. 03: Kinga Rajzak, POP Magazine #21. 04: James Jean. 05: Marilyn Minter. 06: Mammatus clouds, Jorn Olsen. 07: Manfredi Beninati. 08:Christina Aguilera for Versace.

The weather in Brooklyn has been a daily roulette, swaying from pseudo-spring winds, rainstorms and snow, so clouds have been on my mind, lately. Inspirations were thunderstorms, hints of warmth, crisp wet clean minimalism, softness. Nice to explore a more subtle color palette; I’m especially fond of aqua in combination with its split complements.

I am thinking of exploring this idea further via an illustration. Which means: AHA! Success! Idea generation through idle play! Ideas are always good.
I often get stuck in ruts where I feel either uninspired to create outside of work, or as if I am “not creative enough” (which is something I may write about more in depth later this week) so I think this mini collage-making is a good exercise for me.

PS. Hey! Creative types! Tell me if you’re reading this and if it sparks your imagination. I want to see what you’re making. I know you lurkers are out there; I can see you on my analytics!

Okay, that’s a lie, I don’t completely hate party photographers. In fact, I am cordial with a few of ‘em, here in NYC. But what separates the professionals from the party poopers are two beautiful things called interaction and participation.

About a month ago or so, my friend GammaRay and I came across the ultimate example of party-photog failure at TURRBOTAX®. Right from the start, Awkward Photographer Dude (they’re always dudes) was there lurking in the shadows taking photos only when he was sure that nobody was looking at directly him. Whenever we acknowledged his presence, by smiling and looking directly at the camera, he hurriedly looked off towards the bar and pretended to be disinterested. (It then became a game to catch Awkward Photo Dude with his finger on the shutter and “accidentally” ruin the image by making a gruesome face.)

Now, living in New York, you can’t throw a free drink without hitting a party photographer if you’re out, so I’ve seen my share of amazing and amazingly awful photographers.

Here are my suggestions on how to do it right:

OWN IT

If you’re at an event taking photos, do it at a hundred percent. You’re there to take photos of the people there, because they are sexy, well-dressed, interesting, insane, and having a damn good time. You’re there to document that good time. Take photos that make people wish they had been there. Take photos to document the crazy-ass shit that happens in this city. Love what you do and love where you are. Otherwise, dude, just stay home.

MAKE NICE

You know how your mom always said “you’ll catch more flies with honey…”? Yeah, well, hypothetical photographer dude, you’ll catch more hotties with a little eye-contact and a sincere smile. It’s okay, don’t be shy! Those of us who go out to dance parties are not rare and elusive buttonquails. We’ve had our photo taken before. We will not beat you up or give you a verbal lashing for taking a picture. If you are worried about permission, just ask! It’s an excuse to make conversation! Most camera-shy girls will feel so much more at ease knowing you’re not some creepy up-skirt photographer, that they’ll smile beautifully and you’ll have a great shot. And then they’ll drag all their friends over, and you’ll have even more great images.

FOLLOW UP

Get a website. Get a business card. You can get both for free and cheap in this modern age. (Two words: Flickr & Vistaprint.) Now that you’ve done that, hand both out with reckless abandon. Every time you take a photo, give your subject a card with your site on it. They will may be too drunk to remember your name and the phone number you wrote on on their arm will probably sweat off, but business cards will indubitably be pulled out of a back pocket the next morning and be remembered.
Share your photos. Put ‘em up fast. If you take more than a week to put up your pics, they’ll be long forgotten. Put ‘em up the next morning, and you’re on your way to stardom. (Why do you think BronquesLastNightsParty was the first party photographer to get a book deal?)

LEVEL UP

Even if you’re just a hobbyist, it doesn’t hurt to step up your game. Develop your eye. Learn a little about lighting. Pick up an off-camera flash. Know what the hell an aperture is and how to use it. The more you flatter people and the more you catch those one-of-a-kind moments, the more likely people will remember you and what you do. And the more you treat your photography as an art, the better off you’ll be. And hell, you might end up ditching nightlife photography altogether, à la Nikola Tamindzic, formerly of Ambrel.net, who now produces some beautiful high-fashion work.

HOMEWORK

Check out the work of these NYC photographers. NSFW!

• Nick Rhodes – NickyDigital (Personality & charisma!)
• DJ Jess – Indierotica (Pure beauty, great with light.)
• Nate “Igor” Smith – DrivenByBoredom (Catches the craziest moments & all the boobies.)

So, obviously, I don’t really hate party photographers, but I do hate when they act like creepy voyeurs or are standoffish jerks. Participation and interaction is the secret ingredient. Get deep!

Tada! Let me introduce to you “Visually Delicious”!
I have, over my thirteen years on the internet, amassed a sizable collection of images that inspire me visually. And instead of letting them lurk on my hard drive, I figured I’d share them with you weekly! I cannot guarantee that they will all be credited, since many have been on my laptop for years and years, but please let me know if I happen to post work that is yours or you know who I can attribute it to!

Alexander McQueen was one of the reasons I dreamed of being a designer as a kid. I imagined the entire fashion world as this wonderland full of confectionery dresses and claw heels and butterfly hats, and I was so, so inspired by his endless imagination and vision.
McQueen was never just a designer to me, but an artist who sculpted in the real world to create fantasy characters that women could embody and wear.

It’s hard to hear that someone so unbelievably talented could be struggling enough to take his own life, and even more tragic to lose such an incredible revolutionary.

“When I’m dead, hopefully this house will still be going. On a spaceship.”
-Alexander McQueen in LOVE Magazine

(via DailyMail.co.uk)

Lenora Jayne, Illustrator & Graphic Artist

Lenora Jayne is a Brooklyn-based and Neptune-bound pink-haired space cadet. A recent dropout from Parsons School of Design, she has since expanded her exploration of the universe to new creative disciplines including illustration, design, fashion, photography, painting and modeling.

Lenora’s mixed-media hyper-pop artwork uses bright, multi-layered and often luminous surfaces to create a visual depth that is both appealing to our sensibilities and intricate to the eye. Her materials include traditional media such as spray paint, gouache, collage and colored pencil seamlessly mixed with digital imagery and Photoshop. As a technophile, her interests include futurology, space exploration, and the effects of technology on human interaction. Her artwork also often explores themes of femininity and identity within the context of personal narrative and storytelling. Lenora work has been described as a “grown-up Lisa Frank on acid.”

This is my statement, which made me pretty happy to write. It’s a nice summation of what I’m obsessed with right now. And it’s really good to finally feel like I’m understanding exactly what my voice is, as an artist, and what that means. For a very, very long time I felt like I didn’t have any direction as an artist and just drew cute, fashion-y girls. Really, I think I’ve just learned how to re-contextualize it and understand why I do what I do.

I’m starting to conceptualize my pieces for the show now. I want to make a series of imaginary digital love-letters, things never sent or said. I’m tentatively planning on working with typography and digital prints, paper-cutouts, spraypaint and colored pencil, and including some of my old writings, as well. (Yeah, it’s my dirty secret: I used to write poetry.) We’ll see, sometimes I get overly ambitious.

Anyway, I’ve never written one of these statements before.
What do you think? Anything I left out? Grossly exaggerated?
Not enough florid, pseudo-intellectual terminology?

Well. I think I figured out the problem!

Photography by Chris Carr of EatTheCakeNYC for Rosetta Stoned’s All I Think Is Pink digital release project. Illustration, Photo-editing & Modeling by Moi!

Do you love her or hate her?

I am filled with utmost LOVE for her, or at least for her brilliant Haus of Gaga design-squad. They’re unprecedentedly putting futuristic and avant-garde fashion into the eyes and mouths of many, and I could not be happier about it. The future is now, kids. Prepare yourselves.

About the illustration:

This was done in Photoshop with a combination of hand-inking on paper and digital coloring, with the addition of photographic textures.
It was done for a “Celebrity Portrait” assignment in an Illustration Concepts class I briefly attended last semester before I left Parsons for the bazillionth time. Such is the life of the Art School Dropout, sigh!

(As an aside, said class was taught by Peter Hamlin, whose work I once described to a friend as “psychedelic neon nanobot Bosch”. Yep, way awesome, check it out.)

Web designers are much more than pixel pushers. They have a wealth of knowledge about the Web and how users interact with it. They also understand design techniques, including grid systems, white space, color theory and much more. Treating designers as pixel pushers wastes their design experience.

It is therefore wasteful to micro-manage by asking them to “make the logo bigger” or to “move that 3 pixels to the left.” By doing so, you are reducing their role to that of a software operator and wasting the wealth of experience they bring.

- Paul Boag, “10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites”

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Did this illustration today at work. Was hoping to have more veggies and greenery popping out of the grocery bag, but sometimes I have to give myself a stopping point before I get overzealous with details.

It’s done with a combination of Illustrator and Photoshop, pulling the vector layers in to add some glowy layer style business and the transparent leaves. I’m starting to work more and more in Illustrator because of the speed and the editing capabilities you have with the lines. Though I still think there’s something that’s more sensitive about inking linework by hand, especially as it’s easier for me balance the line weights that way. But, as my design partner pointed out to me the other day, hand-inked artwork really doesn’t doesn’t scale too nicely, and it kind of gets jagged at small sizes. Boo!

This, by the way, is to promote “5% Day”, on January 6th, where five percent of your purchases at the Bowery Whole Foods in Manhattan goes to benefit The Lower Eastside Girls Club (where I work).
Do it! Peer pressure!