Fruity Kiwi Surrealism

"OMG! It's so delightfully...pointless!" -- somebody would say. "Just like life!"
"Thank you", I would answer, feeling just a bit more alive.

The idea for this little scene came as a natural thing; I shot this fruit -- half a fruit -- from a few angles, with an inkling that some inspiration might appear. And voilà. I call the image Kiwi Conversation:

For some reason (I might've said this before) mere photoshopping as an end in itself doesn't really appeal to me. So I keep those partly coarse black lines, they somehow contrast nicely with the realism we could've had as the kiwis grow perfectly hairy legs.
"No artist tolerates reality", as Nietzsche said.

Last but not least: Some kind of ladyfrog. Why not? We're by the lakeside -- Lake Mälaren, W. Stockholm -- while the grass was shot in the southern suburbs. Ribbit.

From Transylvania with Love

The illustrator had fun sketching this little book cover. Our beloved Count Dracula biting the flag of the European Union was the author's brilliant idea.

(The treatise is about Romanian relationships with the European Union, economics, politics and other tasty stuff. There's also a Romanian version out there somewhere, so that the Count can read it.)

As soon as I stopped laughing -- of course I fell in love with the idea -- I hurried to put together this, with a looming castle, Transylvanian bats and the works.

Yummy! Served with a fresh glass of something red, I suppose.

Angry Oil Company Bears

Once upon a time there was a quaint little seaside town in W. Sweden known as Lysekil.

And all too near the town (on the same planet, actually) there was a huge oil refinery run by a company named "Preem". They had a yellow logo with a friendly bear, drawn in round, childishly wide green outlines. (Every Swede has seen it.) And under the sign of this friendly totem animal they wanted to double the size of the plant...

Fortunately, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency said No. The relatively rare Natterer's bat [Myotis nattereri] happened to live nearby. Next, the Court said No, and that's where we stand at publishing time. So, hooray for bats. (More about this here.)

Sorry, Lysekil. To turn your coat of arms into something more toxic (for that is what oil refineries do; they refine poison) was sort of irresistible...

...but my main target was that idiotic yellow Preem Bear. (You can see it, for instance, on their homepage where they tell you things as true as yellow bears are.*) So, here you get two angry ones (as if the one present wasn't bad enough) as some sort of heraldic supporters (sometimes known as Attendants, the Wiki says).

I took great care to make them as un-friendly as at all possible, and possibly a bit wicked at that.

One sometimes feels insufficient as an artist; what I can do is visual comments. The real battle, insofar it has been won (and don't say it's over yet) has been won by others. But one hopes to put light on stuff, or perhaps to inspire somehow. Someone has to blow the bugle.

---

* I believe that healthy bears tend to be white, black or brown? These poor yellow teddies (the green patches look a bit too chemical too) will suffer from preem-ature death, I'm sure...