Web comic with a sinister and sometimes absurd sense of humour

A friend of mine introduced to me a wonderful thing: Tragedy Series. These one frame stories are delightedly morbid or tragic. The maker of these depressing situations is Benjamin Dewey, who is a professional comic book artist. I did not want to brake the copyright, so you just have to trust me on this and open a link.

Here are some of my favorite tragedies, I hope you find yours!

http://tragedyseries.tumblr.com/post/10035771842

http://tragedyseries.tumblr.com/image/30596138619

http://tragedyseries.tumblr.com/post/10690639839

Gothidays 2012 Day 4: metal covers of Burton's Nightmare before Christmas' songs

I believe every little goth has at least at some point watched Tim Burton's Nightmare before Christmas during the Holidays, or even held it as a tradition to watch it every year. I must admit that for me the magic of Nightmare before Christmas is wearing off during the years, but I do enjoy the songs. Especially the new versions of those songs, made by well-known artists.

This is a relatively new Christmas thinggy for me, since I just learned about it a few days ago from a friend. Here are some of the songs on youtube and an article in wikipedia. They can also be found in Spotify. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=popPQmikR9w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3WM6sFfsvk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Revisited

Gothidays 2012 Day 2: Black Christmas Tree

Lovely Professor Z's Gothidays 2012 are on, so check it here and participate! I for one am very interested to see how other goths do their Christmas decorations, and maybe apply those witty ideas to my own Holidays.

I do not have that much decorative stuff for the Holidays, since I am a student so there are many other things to invest my money than cookie-jars that look like Santa Claus. But some things I have bought and one of them is a black Christmas tree. I found it from a random shop two days before Christmas and I was thrilled. Since it was so close to the Grand Day, the tree decorations were at least -50%, so I bought silvery and purple-y glass balls to go with the tree.

Oh, Joker is peeking behind a tree!

After that I have slowly bought more Holiday themed stuff, but always at the after-X-mas sales. 

Sophistiqué Noir's monthly theme post: maxi skirt

The winter has arrived to my home town, so maxi skirts are a sensible way to dress against the frost and ice.

I went to a nearby park to take some pictures of me and the amazing weather. In the pictures I'm wearing a winter coat with fake fur collar. The hat is mink, but it was inherited from a relative so I do not have a bad consciousness about it. The maxi skirt is a product of Raven and it is some weird fake material. Though sometimes it looks like leather and sometimes like PVC.  I bought it 2006 or something, so it is a good product, there is no abrasion or anything.

Here are the other participants of Sophistiqué Noir's Monthly Theme.

Pearls from Finland - creepy graphic novels

This post is about two graphic novels from my home country, which I think should be translated but probably never will. I thought it would be nice to talk about artwork, which normally would be left unnoticed outside the linguistic area (meaning Finnish speakers). The stories are creepy, despairing and beautiful. These novels deal with jealousy,  fear, greed and fear, so the themes are quite sinister so they should fit to a blog with gothic aesthetics.

First one is Alinka, Stories from the town of Sleepy Crane (a rough translation) by Ville Pynnönen. It was published 2004 and it tells about art school, it's pupils and headmaster. The world is slightly twisted reality with a hinch of fantasy. The story could be described as a psychological thriller. I consider all the characters to be borderline  insane, because the world the live in starts to turn into a creepy and dark place. On the other hand, the darkness seems to flow from some characters personalities, but it can also be seen as something alien that intrudes their minds.

Alinka also deals with the question what is an artist, or what it is to be an artist. I think that is a very interesting question, since these days we have so much celebrity novelists and visual artists, for example Andy Warhol or Salvador Dalí though they are kind of old but still a good example of modern society and its heroes.

The second graphic novel I'd like to introduce is something I got as a birthday present two weeks ago. Lauri and Jaakko Ahonen's Pikku Närhi, which can be translated as The Little Jaybird, was published 2012 and it is literally a graphic novel. I am too lazy to actually count, but in 150 pages there are about 15 speech bubbles. The words are simple yet very powerful, the pictures do the storytelling so it would not be hard to translate.

The Little Jaybird is a claustrophobic story about a little bird who lives with his mom in a creepy old house full of old portraits of dead relatives. The mother is paranoid, she believes the outside world is full of evil others, so she has nailed all windows shut and barricaded doors. Her son has never seen the outside of the house and now the mother is old and sickly, unable to get out of a bed. She has raised her son to be as fearful towards others and poor little jaybird is alone, trying to take care of his mother and the big old house. Here is a little sample of the novel.

Goth Mary Poppins' Creative Goth (Summer) Weeks: 25-29 tasks

Summer is over, but as Goth Mary Poppins pointed out, there are still some things one can do to manifest ones creativity in a healthy and productive way.

From last summer. It is a part of an art installation called The Official Garden. It is made out of silk ties.

Here are the tasks 25-29. I shall fulfill the tasks 22-24 on a better time, though I do not know any children so I probably just try to draw what I would try to make if I had a young relative or a friends off-spring I would want to make happy with a gift.


25. Have you ever got handmade gift from someone? If not, what would make you happy?

Well, I am happy to announce that the answer is yes. I once got a hand made perfume as a solstice present. Also I would like to believe a relative of mine has given me knitted socks, but I can not be sure. It was probably a granny or something.


26. The other side: have you ever gave handmade gift(s)? Was it a success, or a fail? Or never tried? For the next occasion, try!

When I was about 12 year-old, I made small stuffed and knitted dogs for all my family members. They are still there, sitting in a bookshelf.


 27. Handmade thing(s) you bought/ plan to buy.

Last Christmas I bought a handmade glass ornament from a Christmas market for my mother. I am visiting them next weekend, so I can take a picture of it and add it to this post. It is a blue star and I am happy to say she keeps it in sight all year around.


 28.  Share your best tips about DIY.

Don't know if this is wrong to say, but I think handmade things should not look handmade. I mean in my little world of words and their meanings I consider "handmade" to mean something that is a bit sloppy, rustic, bohemian and so on, which can look adorable, don't get me wrong! But when trying to achieve an elegant gothic look rustic is not exactly the word you are looking for, if you catch my drift?

Of course, when one examines all those wonderful bloggers and their DIY tips one must admit it is hardly sloppy looking. It is just that I myself need more practice to achieve that same level, but that means a bunch of quite moderate outcomes before my skills develop, I might add.

Therefore I have no great tips about DIY, except that "simple is usually best". Like me changing buttons to a jacket and it instantly looks more glamorous.


29. What/who is your inspiration?

This is a really hard question, since I draw inspiration from different things in different situations. If I would have to name something or someone at this moment, it would be The Underworld movies, especially the first one. Visually it is great!

Bizarre art, aka. Greetings from St. Petersburg!

Since I really have nothing of my old projects ready, the art book about renaissance is still not finished and so is with the DIY jewellery, I'm going to post a few pics from St. Petersburg. I was there three days and had a two-day ticket to Hermitage Museum and there were some really bizarre artworks.

In one of those huge rooms the walls were filled with 18th and 19th century paintings, they were all huge and portrayed hounds attacking something. Like a bear or a bewildered horse or a panther or each other. Those paintings were in a way extremely grotesque. The pics are not that good because I was not sure if photographing was allowed. Turned out it was in most rooms.

I also visited the local zoological museum and it was too a bit creepy. There must have been some really enthusiastic taxidermists, since there were everything from house pets to hundreds of penguins. I mean literally, there were several glass boxes filled with them but for some reason I did not take a photo of them. Guess I'm not that big a penguin fan as the Russians  I can't help myself to think that person who went to the South Pole and killed all 75 baby penguins and their parents, stuffed them to shipping boxes and sent to St. Petersburg.

But I did take a picture of a seal with anger management problems and a sad looking baby bear left into a cabinet with no relatives.

Artistic creativity in taxidermy: revealing the inner beast of a seal

Finally two pretty pictures of an excessive decor.

A room in Hermitage