Yes, shades of pink are soft and a bit feminine. Why is pink viewed as feminine? When you really sit down and ponder on that question, it is rather a good question to ask yourself, It doesn't have to be feminine, but since it is viewed that way, and society helps along this concept, here we are. Personally, I never was big on the color pink, but as I became an adult I found myself loving pink and all of it's many shades. It isn't that bad, it is a rather soothing and happy hue. So, today I bring you shades of pink. What are your thoughts on pink?

apple candles, champagne bucket, mug, plug, bouquet, stationery

With all of this warm weather I find myself thinking of the beach and the beautiful ocean. Though some oceans do not appear to be blue, I associate blue with the ocean and vice versa. Well, I felt that it was only fitting to share with you shades of blue. I chose a selection of fun and tasteful items that made me happy. Do you enjoy shades of blue?

box, lamp, jewelry box, waste basket, pouf, bowl, candle holder, glass, cookie cutter set

"Stuff I find here and there, scanned and cataloged for your enjoyment and mine."

Collection from flickr user Big Red Robot.

Well, we broke another contest entry record with the RYZ shoe design contest.  1,600 designs were submitted... awesome work.  Now comes the hard part of trying to find a winner from so many great designs.  This is where you spread the word about your designs and get your friends and family to vote for your shoe.  Good luck!

Remember, winner takes home the grand prize - $750 cash and $250 store credit to the RYZ shop - plus free sponsored memberships at COLOURlovers.

Vote Now at RYZ

Details from RYZ

It was tough work, but with the help from our friends at COLOURlovers, we were able to find the Top 9 COLOURlovers pattern designs out of the over 1600 submitted. In keeping with our voting process, we are seeding the voting gallery - top 9 selected by our COLOURlovers Creative Panel are on page 1, then the top 9 selected by our internal RYZ team on page 2. All other designs are listed on following pages and have equal chance in winning.

With the onslaught of multiple designs submitted, we have created a new feature where you can remove an entry from the competition. For those who have entered more than 3 designs, we'll give you through the weekend to self-select your favorite three (you probably shouldn't remove your design if it's in the top 9) - after that we will go through and remove designs for you. Go to your Contest Portfolio and select the "X" to remove a design from the contest. It will be returned to your Personal Design Workspace.

Remember everyone has a chance at winning - post your shoe to your networks, invite your friends and vote often!

Good luck to all and thank you again to the COLOURlovers community!

This is a guest post written by Howard Sullivan who together with Tom Phillipson make up the London based design agency Your Studio. You can see the original post on their blog.

“Underneath Day’s azure eyes, Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite’s destined halls.”

As the sun rose and the art-crowds flocked, the great palazzos threw open their doors this weekend marking the opening of Venice’s 53rd Biennale, curated by Daniel Burnbaum and open

Francis Upritchard’s ‘Yellow Dancer’ from ‘Save Yourself’, installation for the NZ Pavillion, Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, Venice Biennale, 2009

For the next four summer months. This showcase of the world’s best and most diverse art talent is the modern treasure within not only the amazing crumling palazzos but also at the ‘Arsenale’, a grand industrial L-shaped sequence of double-height brick warehouses and at ‘Giardini’- a large open park scattered with rambling pavilions and outbuildings.

We first encountered Francis Upritchard at Kate MacGarry’s Vyner Street Gallery for the show ‘Feierabend‘ with Martino Gamper and Karl Fritsch.  ‘Save Yourself‘, Upritchard’s show representing New Zealand at the Biennale at Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana is both entrancing and unmissable.

Francis Upritchard’s ‘Save Yourself’ for the NZ Pavillion, Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, Venice Biennale, 2009

Entering the decayed splendour of the top floor rooms of the palace, you feel like you are aparty to something private, privileged to enter a kind of magical assembly. A bande of beautiful and intriguing miniature figures in a kaleidoscopic array of colours sit, dance around, lie back in ecstacy atop long grey formica tabletops which sail into the antique mirrors lining the walls.

A beautiful and tranquil-looking figure from Francis Upritchard’s installation ‘Save Yourself’ for NZ, Venice Biennale, 2009

The power of these colourful characters, made with intricate details, tiny hands and fingernails perfectly crafted, is that they permeate a feeling, from meditation, transcendance to personal bliss, we seem to be witnessing all of them in some state of subtle and personal peacefullness.

Lost in a state of personal bliss- detail of ‘Rested’ figure from Francis Upritchard’s installation ‘Save Yourself’ for NZ, Venice Biennale, 2009

The figures don’t look at us but turn their gazes inwards in some form of compelling transcendence, you can’t help feeling beckoned to join them.
Francis Upritchard explains the subject-matter of her work herself:

“…like dark ages craft adjusted and repainted by some futurist revolutionary caught in a wild dream.”

‘Richard’ from Francis Upritchard’s installation ‘Save Yourself’ for NZ, Venice Biennale, 2009

Amongst Wolfgang Tillmans’ works exhibited this year are beautiful single chroma-coloured photographs hung simply tacked onto the walls in deftly colour-coordinated clusters spanning the gallery corners.

Wolfgang Tillmans at the Venice Biennale, 2009

Also in rows behind Perspex vitrines folded, crumpled and scored chroma-coloured photogrphs form colourful sequences.

Wolfgang Tillmans at the Venice Biennale, 2009

What these photos were of it was impossible to know but you got the sense that you were looking at a detail of something that had been ‘photographed’ as opposed to just a randomly chosen block of colour and part if the enjoyment seemed in deciphering what these close-ups might come from. Your mind can’t help wondering what the image would be if you zoomed out to see the full picture.

Cildo Meireles in the Arsenale presents a series of chroma-coloured walk-through installation. Over a sequence of five rooms, you journey through orange, yellow, green to violet to blue, each room with an enticing doorway giving a sneak into the next saturated super-colour.

Cildo Meireles’ walk-in installation at ‘Making Worlds’, the Venice Biennale, 2009

The corner of each room at eye-level houses a monitor playing what seems to be a view of the corner behind the monitor, but as we move, the colour flicks to one discordant to that of the room, so orange on blue and yellow on green. As a development from his original ‘Red Shift’ installation from 1967-1984, where the red colour theme of the room is made of a myriad of found objects, all in the same hue of red, this work is like climbing into a techno-rainbow, boxed by Tadao Ando. Your mind can’t help responding to the super-saturated brightness of the colours; effective chroma-therapy for the jaded art traveller.

Our final stop away from the main trail of the Biennale was at the Punta della Dogana, the much anticipated second location of the Palazzo Grassi on the tip of the lagoon on the Grand Canal. Squeezing itself literally into every last inch of it’s triangular plot on the tip of the lagoon on the Grand Canal, Guiseppe Benomi’s 17th century Venetian Customs House has been transformed into a double-height shrine to the very best of contemporary art. ‘Mapping the Studio’ the current exhibition there curated by Francesco Bonami and Alison Gingeras sets the personal art collection of the French magnate Francois Pinault (the man behind the Gucci Group) against the waterside views of Venice. And it literally feels like you are walking through a collection of the best art in the world.

Matthew Day-Jackson’s skull piece at the Punta della Dogana, Palazzo Grassi’s amazing new alternative space at the Venice Biennale, 2009

Amongst the amazingly colour-saturated glossy pictures of Piotr Uklanski and the classics such as Sherman and Koons, our favourite was the work of the relative newcomer Matthew Day-Jackson. A row of wax sculls along a series of shelves morph as they progress upwards through the colours of the rainbow from realistic skulls to gradually more hybridised faceted volumes.

A duo of highly engineered polished cases with glass fronts and infinity mirror backgrounds display two hybrid-skeletons. Certain selected elements of the bone structures have been replaces such as the ribcage is now a series of polished brass coils. Unfortunately, photography of the collection was strictly forbidden (and strictly enforced!) so we were unable to picture this work. The work however, feels totally fresh and part of a new colourful movement of artists adding a metallic, psychedelic twist to classic celebration of the dark and macabre.

Haegue Yang’s ‘Symmetric Inequality’ installation inside the Korean pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2009

Bridging our step from colour to works on an interior scale is Haegue Yang’s ‘Symmetric Inequality’ installation inside the Korean pavilion at the Giardini. Made from a series of multi-coloured blinds constructed the pseudo open dwelling, part hut, part temple flutters in the breeze as the fans surrounding it sporadically turned on and off.

One of more quirky installations but one we loved was Chu Yun’s ‘Constellation’, also at the Arsenale. Described as ‘various household appliances divorced from their usual setting’, Yun has created a miasma of flashing, flickering twinkling lights from a landscape of objects whose LED lights flash on standby.

A modern-day cosmos of domestic white goods/ white Gods Chu Yun’s installation ‘Constellation’ at the Arsenale, Venice Biennale, 2009

Howard and Tom were lucky enough to catch the installations and performances of these other artists: Liam Gillick’s installation, Ttéia 1 | C’ by Brazilian artist Lygia Pape | The Scottish pavillion and Palazzo Pisani with the work of Dundee-based artist Martin Boyce | The work of Yoko Ono | and Charles Ray’s “Boy With Frog”.

See the additional coverage. More on Kate MacGarry & Francis Upritchard.

Photos & Content © Howard Sullivan

A selection of patterns from the COLOURlovers' group Complex Pattern. Oops, I didn't read the rules of this group before selecting these and I've included some patterns other than x_1013_x.

Group devoted to Complex pattern by x_1013_x. What it means to us, showcasing and picking our favourites. For me it was like discovering a brand new island. Lovely experience. The pattern's secrets are inside, ways to use it and categories for you to post your patterns in. The complex pattern is by hard the hardest pattern to master. It has so many options to it. It's just impossible to find the perfect colour scheme. So our goal is to master it.

Here's a great collection of film posters and matchboxes from India. They were collected by English artist and illustrator Matt Lee.

Matchboxes

Matchboxes from the Subcontinent. Collected during my time working from Bangalore, these matchboxes are the tangible memories of my various travels and experiences through India. The random and disparate juxtapositions of the imagery encapsulate the mix of historic, mythological and contemporary visual culture in India. New matchboxes are added regularly. An interview about this matchbox collection can be read over at www.60over90.com.

South Indian Film Posters

Macho Men and Flirtatious Women. Local language, hand drawn lithographic film posters and the larger, glossier offset film posters contribute largely to the visual culture and character of the streets of Bangalore. Below is an ongoing gallery of these film posters I have been photographing as well as a one minute video sketch of the lithographic printers responsible for a large part of this output. The video was made in collaboration with video artist Smriti Mehra for the City One Minutes art project.

Three out of the four topics in today's post came from the colorful blog that deserves some love, today and tomorrow.

Optical Illusions

The Best Color Illusion We've Seen

Akiyoshi Kitaoka’s incredible optical illusion website

Via @colourlovers; the best color illusion... posted first at Akiyoshi Kitaoka’s incredible optical illusion website and found over at Discover Magazine's blog.

"You see embedded spirals, right, of green, pinkish-orange, and blue? Incredibly, the green and the blue spirals are the same color. At first I thought Richard was pulling our collective legs, being a trickster of high magnitude. So I loaded the image in Photoshop and examined the two spirals. In the two squares displayed below, the one on the left is colored using the same color from the blue spiral, and on the right using the green spiral."

3gen

Flickr

"This is the desription of the Flickr set 3gen by |||||||||||||||||||: ▲ 3 üç üçgen triangle three trois 三 ג ๓ ٣ III ► ◄ ▼ drie Գ ३ γ´ Ⅲ trys trejetas sān колмо 叁 tri ∆.
Everything clear?" - today and tomorrow

Art

Works by Sarah Spitler

Sarah Spitler

"Colorful chaos." - today and tomorrow

'Color Field Paintings' by Michael Demers

Michael Demers

“Color Field Paintings” by Michael Demers. The color tiles of each painting will be generated randomly, based upon parameters established for each piece. Each painting will exist for approximately 10 seconds." - today and tomorrow

A downloadable application for the iPhone/iPod that uses the location of the device to generate a color field on the screen. Gallery visitors can download the app on their own iPhones/iPods and place the devices on a shelf in the space, creating various color field paintings.

Website visitor generates a series of browser windows, each with a randomly assigned color based upon parameters established for each piece.

Salmon is a great and fun color which is rarely used and seen. It is a nice change and a great way liven things up a bit, while also softening a look as well. Do you like the color salmon and are you currently using it in your home?

[image above: wallpaper, pendant, diamond bedding, patchwork bedding, tray, pillow, knob]

Brown and beige are rather serene and natural colors. Brown is dark and heavy and beige is light and creamy. Yes, the two can also be viewed as bland and boring, but like the many different colors that exist it can be beautiful and even chic when done the right way.

[image above: rug, dinnerware, frame, pendant, tray, lantern, pillows]

Creating interaction through the experimentation of new media and physical computing, the Shanghai Based 'multi-discipline design company,' Super Nature makes things that make me wish I could experience them first hand. And though I suspect the images do them no justice, the videos provided on their site for each of their projects can at least give us a secondhand look at the imaginative color interaction of their installations.

Co-articulation Color Construction

C.C.C. is a synthesis structure of color terminology and new vision of geometrical forms that could be perceived as a visual metaphor through time, space and the sense of movement. It uses water as a medium for visual display as water is a common chemical substance that is essential for the survival of all known forms of life. A simple visual form could be articulated by extending the “color wave” and forms a three dimensional form within a liquid space. Through user interaction, color, sound and form transformation are synchronized with the kinematic movements that controlled by the user’s hand movement. For more information: C.C.C. (Co-articulation Color Construction)

The Windcatcher

“The Windcatcher” represents the flow of air and moving in motion. It is an art exploration of searching feeling, color, motion and visualization in a space. This installation is designed like an experimental laboratory which translates wind energy to visualization. “The Windcatcher” embraces a new understanding of nature forces and bringing back our childhood dreams and memories. It conveys good messages pertaining to our natural environment and the connection between human and nature. For more information: The Windcatcher

Rabbit Wonderland

Rabbit Wonderland is a series of innovative outdoor LED interactive sculptures that aims to bring color, laughter and warmth to the streets of Shanghai during the Shanghai eArts Festival 2008. It Is a crossover project with W+K Shanghai. The iconic symbol of "Rabbit Wonderland" is the friendly and lucky Rabbit, which traditionally enjoyed favour among the Chinese for its representation of auspice and peace.

Gorgeous and intriguing; macro shots of soap bubbles perfectly captured by artist Bogdan Chesaru. And I can't help but agree that the name of his website is also a good description of his work: a kind of magic.

Artist Statement

“A Kind of Magic” gallery depicts the natural iridescent colors you see when light catches a clear soap bubble.

Simply put, I photograph light interference on soap film - a physical phenomenon that surrounds our everyday lives and yet it goes largely unnoticed.

As seen through the camera lens, a vibrant scenery of shapes and patterns, swirling and dancing on the edge of time, arouse both the eye and mind with a sensation of spatial elasticity. Driven by a strong minimalist impulse, my work is a venture into this playground of the most faint air currents, molecular forces and gravity’s relentless pull.

Viewers are invited to freely construct their own visual narrative as they catch a glimse into the ephemeral universe of the soap bubble.

Breathe… click… exhale… The eternal torn from the momentary. A Kind of Magic.

How It's Made

A flat soap film is made by dipping a wire frame into the soap bubble mixture.
The frame is held above a dark surface, and a studio light is aimed at the bubble. The camera is aimed so that the reflection of the light will be seen over the entire surface of the bubble, and a macro-photograph is taken of that reflection.

All images are created completely in the camera with minor contrast and saturation adjustments.

Please take a moment and see where your imagination takes you.