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Items by Mark Frauenfelder

News From Elsewhere

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  What did Da Vinci look like?Boing Boing

  Posted: April 1st, 2008, 1:01pm EDT by Mark Frauenfelder

  
  This was one of my favorite talks at Ted. It's only four minutes long.

  Siegfried Woldhek knows faces -- he's drawn more than 1,100 of them. Using sophisticated image analysis and his own skills as an artist, he's come up with a fascinating discovery about Leonardo Da Vinci.

  Leonardo Da Vinci's life and work is well known -- but his own face is not. Woldhek used some thoughtful image-analysis techniques to find what he believes is the true face of Leonardo. Here, he walks viewers through exactly how he did it.
  

  Link
  
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  Al Jaffee profile in NY TimesBoing Boing

  Posted: March 30th, 2008, 12:10pm EDT by Mark Frauenfelder

  The New York Times has a loving profile of Mad magazine idiot gang member, Al Jaffee, who at age 87, recently completed his 400th Mad Fold-in!

  “When he brings in fold-ins now, a lot of times, it’s, ‘Geez, this guy’s painting better than ever,’ ” said John Ficarra, Mad’s editor.

  And Sam Viviano, the art director, seems in awe of Mr. Jaffee’s old-school technique. “I think part of the brilliance of the fold-in is lost on younger generations who are so used to Photoshop and being able to do stuff like that on the computer,” he said. “It’s matching the colors and keeping the sense of what exists at two levels, the original image and the folded-in image. We’ve never actually known anyone else who could do that.”

  Mr. Jaffee does have a computer, but its main benefit, he said, has been to make the typographic tricks in the fold-in easier to create. He doesn’t draw with it, which leads to another surprise: the master of the fold-in never actually folds.

  “I’m working on a hard, flat board,” he said. “I cannot fold it. That’s why my planning has to be so correct.”

  “The computer would make it so much simpler,” he added. “But I think I’m going to remain a dinosaur.”
  

  Link | Interactive Fold-In gallery (Thanks, Coop!)
  

  

  
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  Coop's paintbloggingBoing Boing

  Posted: March 26th, 2008, 3:42pm EDT by Mark Frauenfelder

  
  

  The supremely talented Coop is working on a new painting, and he's letting his blog readers in on his work process and thoughts. Fascinating stuff. I wish more artists would do this.

  This painting has been a particularly strange beast, fighting me every step of the way, and revealing itself in unexpected ways. It is now almost completely different in composition that the day I started to apply paint to canvas, one of the major surprises being the most recent step. The line art that first became a stencil, then this Napthol Crimson overlay, was not part of the original plan at all. Strangest of all, it wasn't until I drew the original drawing of "Lil' Mort," that I realized what the subject of the painting was in the first place. When I realized that it was what it was, everything else fell into place. I felt like a safe cracker, listening through a stethoscope as the tumblers fell behind the steel door, locks clanking open to reveal... what exactly? I still don't know. This painting isn't finished yet, though everyone who has seen it so far seems to think that it is complete. I still have at least two major steps to go, one of which will completely change the way the painting looks right now.

  Weird, huh? Strange as it might sound, this is all part and parcel of the creative process, and after 20+ years of doing this for a living, it is the only part that still excites me.
  

  Link
  

  

  

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  Pulp and Archie détournementBoing Boing

  Posted: March 14th, 2008, 1:47pm EDT by Mark Frauenfelder

  Here's a clever détournement using panels from Archie comics and the lyrics from Pulp's Common People.

  It reminds me a little bit of Graham Rawle's brilliant novel written from snippets of vintage women's magazines, Woman's World.

  Link (Thanks, Moe!)