Ali Shaw

Strange and Beautiful Things

Ooser

I was back in Dorset the other day and had the chance to go to the county museum in Dorchester.  I hadn’t been there for several years, but wanted to go very specifically to see this fellow… This is an Ooser, of which there were probably more, if not several, kept throughout Dorset.  One by …

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Clouds

The Guardian website has two great pictorial featurettes on clouds today, courtesy of Gavin Pretor-Pinney, whose book The Cloudspotter’s Guide is an incredible tour-de-force of all things meteorological.  Recently I’ve been dipping in and out of a dozen books about the sky and the strange things that fill it, but Pretor-Pinney’s is the stand-out publication …

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Lucinda Schreiber

Just wanted to share something amazing.  This is by an artist and animator called Lucinda Schreiber.  Stop motion chalk drawings moving from blackboard to blackboard.  I absolutely love it. Firekites – AUTUMN STORY – chalk animation from Lucinda Schreiber on Vimeo.

Leaf Insects

I’m currently writing a short story which includes a masked ball and a leaf insect, so I’ve been trying to draw a few costumes and bugs to imagine them better.  It’s amazing that evolution threw up an animal like this.  Here’s a real life one in a plastic tub, with somebody playing cards (I think) …

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