get on the carousel

Saturday, August 13, 2011

REACTIVATION

...coming back REALLY soon :)

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Get on the Carousel's ART INTERVIEWS - Dana

Hi there! As promised, I want to present you another FABULOUS artist that I have a pleasure to know! Her name is Dana, and she is a very talented lady. Her main artistic domain is drawing, as you will see in a second. All I can add is that I totally adore her simple yet precise drawings, and that I wait for her new works on deviantArt with a great impatience, and what I like the most is the fact that she cares so much about her heritage, too!

Just take a look!

name: Dana a.k.a. GordAfarid
where you can see her works: www.gordafarid.deviantart.com

Get on the Carousel's QUESTIONNAIRE:

Get on the Carousel: What is your main artistic domain?
Dana: My main artistic domain, is not only about be as good as possible, but one day I want to create my own artistic fashion with heavily influence from the Western, Japanese and Persian art style. It's just how am I going to puzzle together, is one of the things I had kept striving for.

GotC: What made you start creating art? When did you start it?
D: I've always loved drawing in general, I'm obsessed with cartoons, comics, mangas, everything that many movies can't show about. I even designed clothes at my first year in Gymnasium, because I wanted to be fashion designer, but my passion for writing and novels took over during the age of 15-20, so I did not draw much or very little in many years. It was first, when I've discovered Deviantart and many other Art communities, I wanted to DRAW again. And that was in year 2005 and I were still back then trying to struggle on university, which I failed couple of years later.

GotC: And, the music that inspires you?
D: Music... Well it depends mainly on my mood. My music interest switch very fast. Sometimes I simply listen to old Persian classic or pop music just to reveal my inspirations drawing something related to Iran.
On the other hand 70s Disco are one of my main favourite genre! The sounds shows you can feel beautiful, dreaming and even trying to dance without be too specific. But when I'm angry, I listen to metal! It fucking helps! On the other hand I still listen to old 80s/90s music for nostalgic fever like the happiness part of my childhood.

GotC: What do you use to make your art?
D: It depends. Mainly I use pro-markers and all markers I'm able to buy without too expensive prices. I love doing black/white art and therefore Adobe Photoshop CS4 and sometimes Adobe Illustrator are very helpful programs to make the main colour complete white and black. With markers however is difficult and I'm still trying to improve a lot of things that I'm not able to yet. But when I'm not working with pencils; I do Silkscreen and Etching. I hate however painting with pencils, with that I can hardly concentrate and gets very impatient.
Soon however I'm going to self-study a little with photography as well. As for realistic pencil drawings, it's definitely with pencils mainly h2, h3, h4 and B, B2, B4, B6.

GotC: Are you an autodidact, or you had a teacher (e.g. you were in the art schools etc.)?
D: I went to the public art schools for almost 3years to learn the basic skills and had 3 different teachers, but I even went to Manga course for improving the skills I hadn't learn yet and still now I forget a lot of things which is because of artblock and emotional stress. But I've also grabbed some tips from other deviants and close friends as well.

GotC: What do you want to achieve by your art?
D: Wow! Very good, but difficult question. That is something I had been wondering in years. What kind of art do I want to accomplish with?
First as a teenager I either wanted to be fashion designer or novelist. But now I had desire to be comic artist, yet I'm not fulfilled enough to start or even having energy for a moment. Right now I'm only trying to focus on rehabilitation by working at Yscreen in 6months, because of depression, the lack of motivation, no hopes and so on. It's the first time I ever got help to slowing start joining the labour market or at least have desire and energy enough to study again!

GotC: What do you feel when you create something?
D: Either I feel I get great result or great disappointment. I tenders to be so self-critic that sometimes I ask people for advise, when I can't solve the problem!

GotC: Show us your 3 best works:

*click on the pictures to see the bigger version*

Etching

Black/white

Colours with promarkers

GotC: What would you say to the beginners, who just started their adventure with art?
D: Start with the basic practice to get somewhere, by drawing with pencils and draw as much as you're able too! The longer you draw regular, the better.
Sometimes it helps with painting as well, some people are able make with one only tool and that's better than nothing! Just practice, but at the same time find your main tool for creation! First then you can continue and moving with the next level.

Amazing works, Dana! Keep on being so awesome, I am your biggest fan over there on dA! And you, people, make sure you visit her at www.gordafarid.deviantart.com

Sunday, January 2, 2011

HOW WE SPENT CHRISTMAS

Hello dear friends, as I promised, I will tell you something about my Christmas. Surprisingly, it turned out that I didn't take as many photos as I thought I did, but we'll manage :) I will try to post the most interesting ones and to write about them as short and simple as possible. I hope you will learn something new about Poland!

First, some of you may not know, here in Poland, we start celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24th - we have a special, elegant and NO-MEAT meal, the only meat we eat then is fish - and most of the people eat KARP ('carp' in English):

In my house, we also eat a meal that is called RYBA PO GRECKU ('fish in a Greek style', I have no idea why it is called like that!) which consists of fish and lots of boiled vegetables cut into tiny pieces or stripes - we usually use DORSZ ('cod') if I remember well:

and many more, but it always has to be WITHOUT MEAT. For The Christmas Day and the Second Day of Christmas (we celebrate the 24th, 25th and 26th), we eat meat. In total, we have also:

- bigos - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigos
- barszcz czerwony (z uszkami lub krokietami) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borscht#Polish_variants
- some families have kutia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kutia - but I never had it on my Christmas table
- various roasted meats, like steaks, tenderloins (my fav is the one stuffed with plums!), pâté and many more
- and maaaaany other additional things, like prepared horseradish with beetroots or mayonnaise...

I tell you, all these things are SO delicious that once you try it, you wanna stay here in Poland forever and just eat it :)

But hey, what is Christmas without the Christmas tree?

Our main tree looked like this:

You can also see our table. We always put an additional plate for 'an unexpected guest' - it's an old Polish custom, that on Christmas Day, if anyone suddenly knocked on your door and ask for a meal, you'd be prepared to host him.

The Christmas tree in MY room is just... OH MY:

yeah... :)

I didn't take any photos of my family because I didn't want to make them feel uncomfortable or something. I also didn't take any photos of my gifts, except this one, from my friend:

An orange - clove scent machine! :D

The last thing I wanted to tell you about is the tradition of breaking off and exchanging the Christmas wafer with family before sitting to eat the Christmas Eve Meal. We exchange it with blessings and good words - you can read about this custom here --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_wafer#Polish_tradition --- and, you have some additional info on how we celebrate the Christmas Eve.

I hope you liked this tiny info, sorry I posted only few photos...

If you are interested in any of those things, ask in the comment section, and I will be glad to answer!

Take care!

PS. VERY SOON we'll have another artist answering the Get on the Carousel questionnaire, so stay tuned!

Monday, December 27, 2010

Coming back soon!

Hi my dears, as you have probably noticed, I wasn't posting anything on the blog for a couple of weeks - the reason is very simple - Christmas was coming, my little exams were on, I was so busy! And also, I didn't want to post crap just to post anything. But, I am planning on writing a nice new post about how we spent the Christmas here in Poland this year, with lots of photos and my comments, I hope you will enjoy it!

Stay tuned,

Get on the Carousel.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

WINTER COLD

Is it THAT cold at your place too?

Recently, Poland had a real Winter Apocalypse - snow, cold, ice, cold, snow, cold, ice. That was terrible! -8 oC was the average outside temperature, as shown on my home thermometer. YIKES!

today, I went for a short trip to take some photos of the decorated city, here you have it:

*click on the photos to see the bigger versions*

Light-fountain next to the most beautiful hotel in Warsaw (in my opinion), the Bristol Hotel

Santa and his reindeers next to a Mexican restaurant on Nowy Świat, Warsaw

The display of CEPELIA, which sells some traditional & folk things, lovely & expensive but me luvs it.

Krakowskie Przedmieście - every tree that can bear the lights is welcome to be decorated.

Krakowskie Przedmieście - streetlamps decorated, xmas tree is raping your eyes for kilometres before you get to see it, with those zillion Watts power lights, what more would you possibly like to have? I ADORE IT!