Black and white photo of a young pale skinned woman with chin length hair wearing an elaborately layered and embroidered neckpiece with scalloped edges. A rose sits on her left shoulder, she stares at the camera with an unsmilling, but not unkind, face

If you want me I’m painting bows on my nails out in the treehouse.

Posted on Author NataliePosted in Fancy5 Replies

Black and white photo of a young pale skinned woman with chin length hair wearing an elaborately layered and embroidered neckpiece (or dress?) with scalloped edges. A rose sits on her left shoulder, she stares at the camera with an unsmilling, but not unkind, face
I love Tumblr for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it introduces me to artists I haven’t come across before. This photograph is the work of Annelise Kretschmer, a German portrait photographer. I love it for the fancy neckpiece/ dress and the expression of the subject because most of us smile for a photograph, it’s instinctual. We’ve been conditioned to smile and put on a happy face because smiling people make for nicer memories I guess; our faces aren’t naturally smiley though. I like unsmiling faces, they are much more natural even if they seem less welcoming (I don’t like drawing smiling women for this reason).

Photograph of a pale skinned hand displaying a manicure where the nail is painted beige (to match the skin tone) and a pink polka-dotted bow sits on the top of each nail.
No real insightful commentary on this hot nail job by WAH Nails of London but I’m gonna give it a go, that’s for sure.

Embroidered drawing on brown fabric of two girls in a bed, one with red hair and the other with brown hair, with a blanket of white lacey fabric drawn right up to their necks.
Another Tumblr find… the embroidery of ¡no confíes en los artístas! on flickr this time. I love embroidery and want to play with it a bit more. The stitches are so small and perfect on this!!!

A photo of a small one room treehouse on stilts in a very lush green forest setting. Lots of potplants sit on the front balcony.
Adding to my collection of dream gardens is one of my favourite things. This little one room treehouse would sit perfectly in my dream mountain house. Perhaps I could use it as my studio? Oooh good idea Natalie, but chuck a comfy chair in there for reading too. This photo was taken by turnintosomething.

A photo of a wall mounted deer head that has been dressed up in a honey coloured wig, earrings and a frilly neckpiece trimmed with pearls.
It’s a fancy deer. I have no words. (Ganked from Jessica’s Tumblr.)

5 comments

  2. Interesting comment re smiling, me and my students were trying to figure out when smiling became the norm in photos a few weeks ago. Especially family photos, most early ones are SO SERIOUS. Even photos of individuals, celebs in the 1920s were more likely to be not smiling. Maybe 1950s? I asked a lecturer in photographic history and he had no idea, someone should research it, I’m intrigued.

  3. I remember hearing/ reading somewhere that because exposure times were so long in ye olden days of yore, the subjects would be sitting there for any length of time so they would wear facial expressions that were most comfortable to hold. I have no idea if this is true, but it makes sense!

  4. Hi Natalie
    I enjoyed looking at your stuff here….I agree about the not smiling in old photos…my father always thought his grandfather was a terrible mean man until I suggested that he had to sit still with a straight face for a long time while the photo was taken.
    love the treehouse and the deers hairdo! I remember seeing a fabulous cable knitted deer’s head on etsy…but then it vanished
    and the embroidery….I did some with little stitches like that (but I can only find pictures of 3 of the 4 pieces so I haven’t uploaded them) I’d love to show you so let me know if you would like to see them.

  5. Pingback: #dittowatch: From Evans to my wardrobe | definatalie.com

Comments are closed.