mylifebyandrearaven

  Gil Elvgren (1914 - 1980) may not be a name you know well, but it is almost certain you have seen some of his fabulous work. He was a prolific commercial artist that produced illustration for calendars and advertising, working with oils on canvas the resultant paintings are truly magnificent. Nothing demonstrates the glamour of the 1950's more than Evlgren's wonderful illustrations. His work depicted beautiful women in an American utopia where everything was just fine.  The illustrations were primarily for advertising and calendars and as such were intended to depict someone the viewer found attractive and perhaps aspired to. He did some nudes but most of his output depicted women in beautiful clothes, with fantastic hair and makeup. These were true glamour pinups that teased the viewer, sometimes a little bit saucy and often showing a touch more than a girl would want to reveal. Ladies in their underwear were also frequent subjects with the lingerie superbly painted. His me...

 I read an article in the Daily Mail newspaper here in the UK a while ago about a trans woman called Diana Thomas. I wont go into the full details of the article as you can read it here:  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9280379/DIANA-THOMAS-spent-six-decades-man-does-say-trans-militants-stoking-intolerance.html The thrust of the article is really about how trans is dealt with by institutions, which in this case is the local health authority. The story concerns Brighton which is one of if not the most trans friendly places in the UK. It appears there are a number of trans-men who retain they female reproduction system from birth and wish to have a baby. In order to avoid upsetting potential trans-men they have changed some of the terms used, for example the maternity unit is now 'perinatal services' mothers are referred to as (gender neutral) parents and apparently the term for breast feeding is now chest feeding. As Diana says in doing this the health authority are i...

I love photography, I have thousands of photos on my computer, in the past, not so much these days, I printed a large amount of my work and often had it hanging on the wall, but as I say, not so much these days. That change was largely due to me losing interest, and being far too busy with work and life in general. I suspect millions of photos are taken every day around the world, it is so easy these days with a reasonable smart phone to capture life as it happens. Most photos probably go no further than the phone, but lots do surface on social media and many on photo sharing sights such as Flickr. They used to say a photo tells no lies, well that may have been the case in the days of black and white film, when press photographers took the photos and processed them before wiring them to the newspaper. The days when an accused person would be huddled into court with a blanket over his head to protect his identity. In general what the photo depicted was the real thing, but even then ...