Brickfish

My absence has lasted longer than I expected. However, we have entered one of our images in brickfish.com photo competition. Please vote for it.

A Brief Absence

Thanks for checking here and keeping up with the Rosso Bella Project. I have a large deadline looming before me, so I am taking a few days off from this project. I should be back next Monday or sooner. Have a great week.

Superstition

Well, it is Friday and it seems like a great day to talk about superstition. Since we are still on parasols and umbrella, we will go that route. According to neoepiphany at answerbag.com there are several ideas behind it.

Open an umbrella indoors and bad luck will "rain" on you. But why? There are two schools of thought:

The most common stems from the days when umbrellas were used mainly as protection against the sun. To open one indoors would be to insult the local sun god (especially Ra) and invite his wrath on everyone in your household.

Another theory borrows from the idea of an umbrella as a protector against the storms of life. If you were to open one in your home, the household guardian spirits might think you felt their protection was insufficient, and then they'd leave in a huff. Once again, everyone in the house is cursed.

In truth, the superstition is probably coincidental. (Someone left his umbrella opened in the hall and had a terrible day--he told his friend to keep their umbrellas shut, and it spread.)

It isn't always bad luck to open an umbrella inside. According to some, it's only considered bad if any of the following apply:
-The umbrella was a gift.
-The umbrella is black.
-The umbrella has never been used outdoors.
-There is a sick person in the house.

Other bad luck umbrella superstitions:
-Never give an umbrella as a gift.
-Never pick up an umbrella you dropped (ask someone to do it for you).
-Never place your umbrella on a table or a bed.
-If a single woman drops her umbrella, she'll never marry.

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Blowing Smoke

This image is my response to this week's Illustration Friday Night. The theme was to do a piece inspired by someone else's past work. I could not resist doing this in response to this. I won't bore you with the heres and whys.

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A New Poll

Yes, we are now exploring umbrellas and their likes.

But before I talk more about umbrellas (how much can you really say about umbrellas?), I thought I would put in another poll. This one is on male painters. Which one is your favorite? There are also examples on the side bar.

On our last poll asking for people's favorite medium for the nude four out of five people preferred photography to paintings.

If you like this image above, you can bid on it at eBay.

Satellite

This is one of those wonderful Chinese parisoles, the type you fined at Ren Fairs and events of such nature.

However, did you know that a parasol is also a type of satellite?

Here is what answers.com from wikipedia.com has to say about it:

PARASOL is a French built Earth observing research satellite. It carries an instrument called POLDER which studies the radiative and microphysical properties of clouds and aerosols.

PARASOL was launched from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on on December 18, 2004 by an Ariane 5 G+. It will fly in formation in the "A Train" with several other satellites (Aqua, CALIPSO, CloudSat and Aura). These satellites, to be joined later by NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) in 2008, will for the first time ever combine a full suite of instruments for observing clouds and aerosols, from passive radiometers to active lidar and radar sounders.

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La Beaute

This is the last of the red stocking part of Rosso Bella and it is my tribute tot hose who came before me - the models on the French Postcard.

In honor of this fun topic, I thought you might enjoy a little trivia about the French Postcard.

French Postcard History

• Originally they were illegal to send.
• They were never meant to be sent.
• They were marketed in a monthly magazine called the La Beaute.
• This magazine was targeted for artist looking for poses.
• 75 nudes were included in each magazine.
• The images could be ordered by mail in the form of postcards that were either sepia toned or hand-tinted.
• Others such as street vendors bought these and resold them to American tourists.

Source: An Underground Education by Richard Zacks

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