Sailing into November

Yay, November brings me a book cover I really like! It’s the light periwinkle blue that is the main attraction. It’s also apt, as a periwinkle is a type of sea snail, as well as the more familiar flower. I also like the contrast between the stylised illustration and typography of the title section, and the more realistically drawn ships above.

For those of us in the southern hemisphere it’s also a lovely forecast of summer locales and shoreside festivities to come.

Happy November!

A New Spin

Whether you need a chuckle, or some colour inspiration, check out this chart of rock and roll paints, putting an amusing spin on musical theory crossed with the colour wheel.

The chart was shared to Flashbak, a Facebook group and is thought to have come from an early-to-mid-70s Scholastic magazine. There are some good ones there – I’m not sure which is my favourite pun!

Click the image for a larger version.

The Adventurers

Could any books seem more dissimilar? The book cover on this month’s calendar page makes me laugh, evoking as it does a story of adventurers, involved in desperate deeds. A quick read of its Wikipedia entry reveals that this book, published in 1906, is based on a true story set in Alaska about corrupt government officials seizing gold mines from prospectors. It has been made into five movies, the last being in 1955, which makes it ripe for yet another Hollywood remake.

September’s book cover, The Doctor, by Ralph Connor – which I endeavoured to ignore for the entire month – struck me as drearily designed in brown monotone. It was published in 1907, and according to reviewers on Good Reads, it is a worthy moral tale about a young countryman who overcomes poverty to realise his dreams of becoming a doctor and travelling the world.

I feel no hankering to track down and read either of them, but I certainly prefer to look at the more promising red cover.

Happy October!

Strong Colour, Weathered Edges

Day 15: Close-UpAs a contrast to the previous month’s soft focus Photo Challenge, I wanted the opportunity to play with some really strong colour and sharp detail in the June collection. The Estrada 83 film is one of my favourites, with its weathered and water-stained instant film edges that changes with every use; the texture can also be edited. Those water-stained edges match well with the blurred edges of the Anne-Marie lens – also one of my favourites – while the Jolly Rainbo 2X flash negates its bleached vignette.

When I put this gallery together, I chuckled as this statue of Hercules (above) immediately follows my Croatian copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which is illustrated with a picture of the author himself, who could have been a model for the statue!

Check out the complete gallery here.

Day 14: Literary

Southern Charm

I was happy to turn over another calendar page just for a change of scenery after the dismal cover of Frank Norris’ The Pit. This month features a delightful illustration of The House of Fulfilment, a book about which I can discover little except that it draws portraits of five American women of the North and South, each ‘types in themselves’.

The lines of this drawing a curvaceous and pleasing, perhaps alluding to the soft and cushiony shapes of the female figure. The blustery landscape and coquettish look of the young woman immediately brings to mind the heroine of another book: Scarlett O’Hara. I’m not inspired this month to hunt out this book, but I might revisit Gone with the Wind the film!