Type sketch art

Humans have always found ways to use and push technology in ways never originally intended, especially to create art. Human ingenuity has enabled for example music to be created using the clicks and whirrs of a floppy disk drive, in earlier times expert use of the typewriter was used to create artworks. The use of typewriters to create images goes back to the earliest days of the typewriter in the late nineteenth century.

It can still be done nowadays but the heyday was undoubtedly when millions of people daily used typewriters for work in the first half of the twentieth century. One example from the early 1930s was a competition in the New Movie Magazine for typists to recreate photographs of movie stars using their typewriting skills in this case Greta Garbo.

Two old postcards

Postcard from the Past is a wonderful twitter account (and book) which is about old postcards and random snippets from the messages on them. As I recently received two postcards via eBay (included free with something else I had bought) I thought I would scan them and post them here. Unfortunately it would be very difficult to find out more about these messages, did Aunt Mary ever get up again for example?

First off a postcard from Branksome posted in 1950, a simple holiday message: "We are having a nice time and weather up till this week."

Secondly from Westcliffe-on-Sea in 1908: "I am sorry to hear that dear Aunt Mary is not yet able to get up"

55 Broadway (Hidden London)

Another Hidden London tour, however this one i wasn't 100% sure about when i booked it earlier in the year. 55 Broadway is the headquarters of Transport for London so it was a tour of an office block not railway tunnels or a disused station. An old office block mind you, 55 Broadway was the first skyscraper built in London back in the late 1920s but still... an office block. Would this be as interesting as say Charing Cross or Aldwych?

I needn't have worried, the tour was fantastic. Maybe even the best Hidden London i've been on yet! 55 Broadway is a wonderful building in the Modernist style with Art Deco flourishes. If i could choose an office to work in it would be here. The views from the roof of central London were also fantastic. I highly recommend this tour when they run it again next year. You can see my photos here.

Paint Along With Nancy

The first TV programme i can remember was Paint Along With Nancy starring Nancy Kominsky which always seemed to be the first programme on ITV after the overnight shut down ended at about 9am. I used to watch it at my Nan's. Here are the titles.


What used to amaze me (even as someone about 5 or 6) was that she seemed to paint with a knife not a brush! Also i loved how she built up a painting from nothing. Almost like magic! (Well i was very young). I'd love for the series to be reissued on DVD.

A couple of years ago i tracked down a copy of the book which accompanied the series. Maybe one day i will actually try and emulate my first hero...

More Victoria Line tile motifs

Since writing about the tile motifs of the Victoria Line (each station on the tube line has a unique tile motif on the platforms) i have visited 3 more stations on the line and photographed the motifs. You can see them below.

Vauxhall

Pimlico 

Euston

The art of movie posters

Movie posters are a wonderful art form, classic film posters are nearly as memorable as the actual film in many cases (especially in early cinema). This poster for the silent horror film Häxen is particularly striking though. I don't think it leaves much to the imagination, i'm sure you would go into the theatre knowing what you were about to see!

The film actually is being shown next month in Leicester though i'll just stick to watching it on Youtube perhaps.