Let them eat cake! one the wall of Lovecrumbs cafe in Edinburgh

Enjoy the cakes, some artwork on the wall and (watercolour) cats in the window:

Let them eat cake! at Lovecrumbs

Throughout the Festival August, as we call that month in Edinburgh, I am invading the space of my favourite cafe in town: Lovecrumbs in 155 West Port. My French Revolution / Marie Antoinette inspired ladies are on display there until the end of the month!

Lartigue in colour

The biggest surprise of the photogrpahy festival in Arles was seeing Henri Lartigue's work in colour! The exhibition of his work during Les Rencontres d'Arles followed his life with (and without after their separation) his muse and first love Bibi, featured some colour slides and also stereoscopic images that one had to view through special binoculars planted in the walls of the gallery.

It is fantastic when one's favourite artist, whose work one knows so well can still surprise and uplift. I have managed to sneakily take an image of his colour work on my phone, isn't it beautiful? Instagram was not first with crazy colours and people documenting their fabulous lifestyles in the south of France:

South of France

So from Ukraine we went to Arles - a little bit of a busman holiday if you'd ask me, as Simon and I we went there to participate in portfolio reviews that accompany the photography festival (Les Rencontres d'Arles) to show our personal photography work. It was very productive, we stayed in a lovely place, met old and new friends, scoffed huge amounts of baguettes, croissants and saucisson and almost saw a corrida!

A fellow illustrator working on a mural ^

All the cats were huuuuge and well fed, especially one in our street, which was the size of a baby tiger...

Ukrainian sketchbook: a sleeping Cat

Here is one of the two dacha's cats, a watercolour from my sketchbook from Ukraine:

Post holiday part 1 - a trip to Ukraine

I do not think I've had such a long time of non stop travelling before (ok, maybe about 8 years ago when we've used to own a sailing boat and we've sailed around Baltic to St Petersburg). I've had to refuse lots of interesting jobs (sorry clients! no internet connection where I was going + no access to the flatbed scanner either) and stress a lot about simple things (like toilets) but after about 8 weeks I am able to sum it all up: that was a great time! (Thank you husband for dragging me out! My poor stressed out head had such a fantastic time!) and my Russian has greatly improved from a leap from non existant to understanding a almost being able to communicate without introducing random words in Polish and English.

We've started our 3 weeks trip with a visit in Krakow and from there via train, to a longer stay in the south of Ukraine. I've had some blissful time of making apricot jams almost every day at our friend's dacha  by the Dnepr river, some kayaking and drawing in my sketchbook under a tree in the garden.

Have a look first at the images from my iPhone:
Art Nouveau in Odessa, cat at the dacha, hot, vast landscape (no wonder that the Ukrainian flag represents their blue skies and fields of grain producing plants stretching up to the horizon), famous Einseinstein's steps in Odessa, train station in Odessa

Dear Santa, if you are listening...

... I would be very interested in this Leica X3 camera. I promise to be really good!

http://www.vincentsall.com/78547/1145869/work/leica-x3

Seriously, what a cool piece of design this is! It is a concept of Vincent Säll. 

It even has my favourite focal length of 35 mm! Pity it is a bit improbable, but oh well, I bet that this is what people were talking about electricity ;)