me studio

here is some more new (or recent) work, this time for the dutch national ballet, several posters have just been completed or are under way…

the ‘4 temperaments’ series will be used as a series of five posters, which i’m looking forward to seeing

the ‘nutcracker’ is also finally finished, we first shot the dancers seperately, printed them on card and reshot it as a mini staged photography set…

‘ballet 4 all’ was made by shooting the same jump by a ballerina (on a trampoline) with three separate cameras, from three different angles and these three viewpoints were then later comped back together…

the ‘ballets russes’ poster (shown below) was shot as is (no photoshop just a man lying on a large custom-built lightbox), although this one isn’t yet finished (work in progress) the type still needs some refining…

the matchstick model (see below) is a test for a large abstract tree we are going to be using in the ‘giselle’ image which is being shot next week and we are also going to be finally doing an underwater shoot somewhere next week with a ballet dancer which should be fun… more news on that soon

(p.s. all images are by ‘ruud baan’)

here are two book covers that i’ve just completed, the first is a historical novel set in the 1930’s ‘great depression’ in kentucky, USA (the original english tile was ‘sweeping up glass’ here translated into dutch as ‘broken glass’) the second is a semi-erotic novel entitled ‘passion game’ (original title ‘spending’) which features an artist whose work is based on ‘the passion of christ’

the second was made with the assistance of student designer ‘dylan polak’

the latest addition to the ‘define design’ assignment is from the ‘me studio’ french correspondent ‘farrar tallwine’ who sent the following contribution:

I followed up your invitation (on the website) to come up with definitions etc. regarding ‘design’. It’s quite a toughie. My first resort was the Oxford Dict. of Quotations (1,075 pp., for God’s sake).

So then I went for synonyms and came to the conclusion that your profession (like mine as a translator) was invented just to fill in time and pay for the beer and bacon. I tried – draughtsmanship; modelling; drawing; plan(ning); fashion; arrange; configure; sketch; schéma; project, etc., ad inf. Waste of time, except for the French painter, Jean Auguste Dominique INGRES, who said "Le dessin est la probité de l’art" or, rather better in English: ‘Drawing is the true test of art’.

many thanks to me french correspondent (also known as ‘dad’) for the ‘continental perspective’

the second stage of the bas berlin project is taking place in berlin on the 25th of october, if you happen to be in town…