I’d like to encourage you to look at things you love on the internet and to play with the inspirations to create your own works of art. On the photographs below I used the new skills I learned from Neil Tasker regarding lettering and the skills I learned from Kim Thomas regarding product photography during two classes that I took on Skillshare.

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To remember the new skills I will outline the two important things I learned from each course here:

a) LETTERING

- Start with guide lines. These are horizontal lines to draw your letters on. Also add a slant line for the slant of the letters. The letter spacing is spontaneous (use your gut feeing for that).

- Sketch with pencils.

- Scan your drawing and trace using Illustrator.

- In Illustrator first draw a point. The the second point needs to be dragged to form a curve before letting go of the mouse. When you’re happy with the result let go of the mouse.

- To convert lines to shapes with a fill, select the objects and use the command: Object>Path>Convert (make sure that both outline and fill are selected).

- Then use the pathfinder tools to combine the shapes.

- Work on details until you’re happy with the finished lettering.

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b) PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY

- Start with a custom white balance.

- Set up a stage near a window with a backdrop. I used two moveable wallpapers one as a table top and the other as a back wall. Beside the object I placed a white folder to reflect the light back on the object.

- Put your camera on a tripod and use a remote control.

- Set ISO to 100, use a high f-stop if you want the depth of the object to be sharp.

- Then select the shutter speed. Select the shutter speed so the product is over exposed. This is better for product photography.

- Once you have the photo on the screen save it on your computer.

- Correct the brightness and curves before you start to work on the backdrop colour.

- If you want the background totally white use a gradient tool (white to transparent gradient) and masks in Photoshop and paint the background behind the image to make all corners totally white.

That’s it.

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I hope you have fun with your experiments. Let me know what you did!

Lots of love

Hello dear readers,
my husband and I married in 2010. Yesterday I decided to write you the full story of my separation from the father of my first two children and how this has influenced me deeply.

My husband and I met in 2010 and have had a very “easy” and loving relationship which has been crowned by the birth of our son Julian 5 months ago. At the moment Julian is starting to sit and to eat solid foods. This is a very special moment for us.

We have created a website about our wedding which is still work in progress, but which I would like to share with you: WEDDING SITE.

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Above are the pictures of some of the printing work I did for the wedding. We also have a 120-paged book that I will be showing you soon. How was your wedding story? I would love to read your stories in the comments section below.

Here is my wedding video:

Lots of love

Hello dear readers,
I was following an online course about lettering on Skillshare by Neil Tasker.

letteringskillshare

I found it very interesting to learn how letters are composed by hand. This is going to be very useful for me for this blog. Of the many lessons by Neil Tasker I found the one about vectorizing the pencil drawings the most interesting.

Here is another video to start drawing your own handwritten fonts.

There is also a really cool website I found todays via Simply Shers. She wrote about an interesting video portrait project which I find really inspiring. One of the videos was about a lettering artist based in San Francisco called Jessica Hische. Have a look at this portrait

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Hello dear readers,
yesterday I was looking for some great new images for my and came across really cool ads by Juicy Couture.

When trying to find the credits for some of those ads, I found out that the following ad had been shot by Steve Meisel:
juicy-couture-ss-2011-viktoriya-sasonkina-daria-strokous-hanne-gaby-odiele-by-steven-meisel-styled-lori-goldstein-hair-orlando-pita-makeup-pat-mcgrath_1

Born in 1954 Steven Meisel started out as a fashion illustrator. He studied at the High School of Art and Design and then continued to study at Parsons The New School of Design. At a very young age Meisel would not play with toys but would use fashion magazines like Vogue or Harpers Bazaar to draw women.  According to Wikipedia he was deeply fascinated by rich and beautiful women like Gloria Guinness, who in his eyes personified beauty and high society. He was equally fascinated by his sister and mother and finally had a deep obsession for models like Twiggy, Veruschka and Jean Simpton.
meisel_steven_madonna_Naomi_campbell_times

He asked girlfriends to call model agencies pretending to be secretaries of Richard Avedon so he could get pictures of the models. He even waited for Twiggy outside a photographer’s studio, and stalked models outside the agencies to catch photographs of them.

To start off his career he worked for fashion designer Halston as a fashion illustrator, and taught fashion illustration as a part time job at Parsons. He then never thought of becoming a photographer. He later worked for Women Wear Daily and contacted Elite Model Agency where he was allowed to take pictures of the models. So he worked weekdays as an illustrator and on the weekends as a photographer. Some of the models took their pictures to Seventeen magazine. This is how he got his first job as a professional photographer.

He has shot every cover of Vogue Italia for the last 25 years. There are very few interviews in which he directly speaks to the media and he hates photographs being made of him even though he looks extremely beautiful with his long dark hair. He is said to be overtly homosexual.

One of the rare interviews was with Pierre Alexandre de Looz for 032c.com, click here to read it. One of the quotes from this interview: “During our conversations, Meisel confided that unlike many of his peers today he doesn’t constantly carry a camera. “When I think about it, am I really a fashion photographer?” The answer to that seems easy enough, unless of course you are Steven Meisel.”

I wish you all a really pleasant day

Image credits:
First image – Eliza Cummings, Hanne Gaby Odiele & Daria Strokous by Steven Meisel
Second image – Daria Strokous (Women) and Hanne Gaby Odiele (Ford) are back for the campaign lensed by Steven Meisel and now they have additional player, Viktoriya Sasonkina also at Women. The campaign was shot on November 15th 2010 and styled by the famous Lori Goldstein. Those blonde hair was by Orlando Pita and the make up was by Pat McGrath.
Third image – Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images, TIME Lists


I am currently enrolled in the Blog Boss workshop by Holly Becker. One of the lessons I have learned in this workshop is that I should be writing about things I am truly passionate about and I should do things I love and have fun doing.

So here I am. I’d love to tell you about some days ago when I met my great friend Tom Zeitlberger, who designs the best wallpapers I can think of and who I will be trying to meet to shoot a video portrait about for this blog soon. We ate lunch together and then went to the park chatting about our recent projects and where we are heading in the future. While we were talking I told Tom to contact one or two agencies or representatives because I truly think he should be designing for Versace and for Hermes (anyone have a contact for him in one of those companies, please let me know in the comments below).

The next day I opened one of the three versions of LeBook I was featured in (LeBook NY 2010, LeBook Berlin 2010 and Le Book LA 2010) and took photos of all the representatives listed there to send them to Tom. At this occasion I had all these adresses open on my iPhone and decided that I would also be contacting new reps again. For my style (which is rather edgy if not to say pornographic) it is much harder to find a rep than for Tom, but I never gave up hope. I already found the best gallerist in the world: Rudolf Budja to take care of my art. I am now looking for an agency or representative to take care of my design and illustration work. Preferably this someone shoud be in NYC.

Guess what! After sending all my emails to some of the agencies out there I received one reply from Liz Leavitt of LLreps – Levine and Leavitt. Liz said that she was busy after having been to London and that she would review my work and get back to me. I guess this was an email she sent to all the two hundred people out there waiting for replies from her. But still….
…I was so thrilled. Especially after having looked more closely at the great artists that LLreps represent. I had a closer look at the Behance profile of Adam Larson. And then at his website. And I found – GUESS WHAT – that he had worked for my big idol MADONNA!!!!

mogollon represented by LLreps

mogollon represented by LLreps

Going back to the website of LLreps I saw that several of their artists had worked for Madonna. Above you see two works by Mogollon (also represented by Leavitt and Levine Reps) for Madonna. So I figured that I had just received an email from a representative who is working for Madonna!!!!!!!

I am not sure yet. I wrote back to Liz Leavitt to ask her if she was the agent who had procured the client Madonna to those artists. But the thought is one of those moments in life….. ahhhhh!

There was another moment that happened to me about 2 years ago when I was reading on of the many biographies about Madonna. I had just seen the video about the “Making Of” of one of my favourite movies “” by Abel Ferrara (see video above) online and was investigating deeper into Abel Ferrara and Harvey Keitel when one of the biographies about Madonna arrived by post. And when I opened it, I just opened the page ABOUT MADONNA AND ABEL FERRARA (page 192 in the biography written by Andrea Morton titled Madonna, published by St. Martin’s Press).

Because Madonna loved the film Bad Lieutenant too (one of the of Bad Lieutenant was completely improvised by Harvey Keitel on the spot – it surely appealed to her). She contacted Abel Ferrara and asked him to direct a film with her and Harvey Keitel. The film was first titled Snake Eyes, but was then called “Dangerous Game”, and really had been a dangerous game played by Madonna. Abel and Harvey accepted to work on this project but the result was not exactly what she had had in mind. The film explored aspects of her identity that Madonna would have liked to leave uncommented. Madonna said later that the best parts had been cut away and what had remained were pieces that “ridiculed” her – or so she obviously felt.

I’ll be talking about this movie and other crazy things that happened to me in reference to my idols in other posts. These episodes in my life when “coincidences” like these occur give sense to my life and make me extremely happy and make me feel I am on the right track.

Video Credits: Helsinki Productions, Helsinki Productions is an independent film production & post-production company helmed by Michael Frost and Charles Wright.

Nina Levett creates edgy and provocative tableware and textiles. This blog is about her design process and graphics, ornaments, patterns and inspirations.
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