Ive Never Seen Anyone Else Make This Post, So I GUESS THIS IS UP TO ME:

I’ve never seen anyone else make this post, so I GUESS THIS IS UP TO ME:

So waaaaaaaay back in season one of Steven Universe, we got our first ~new fashion~ opportunities for the gems in the episode “Beach Party” where the gems generate cute new beach outfits. Garnet: cute. Amethyst: ultra cute. But Pearl’s didn’t quite sit right with me.

A part of me thought: “Well I guess this shows that Pearl has no idea what a ‘beach party’ entails and is concerned with being proper, thus highlighted by this far-too-fancy dress.” And also “I guess the writers and artists know better than I.” But really at the time I couldn’t get over that it felt somehow too … feminine for Pearl.

Of course this is all pre-”Rose’s Scabbard”, pre-”Jail Break”, pre-lots of things.

Because come seasons three and four we got this:

And then this:

And let’s not forget this look:

And so far capped off with this:

So in conclusion: I am both happy that I always knew it my heart that Pearl is a total butch lesbian, and understand now that the SU crew had to maintain a certain plausible deniability (“oh look at Pearl in this ~nice dress~”) for a while before they could go “just kidding, everyone is super gay all the time.”

Daaaaaang!

Someone in the notes of the last Leyendecker post I reblogged mentioned having difficulty telling his work and Rockwell’s apart, and I know from experience that many people get them confused, which is somewhat astonishing as, to my eyes, their styles are very distinct. Leyendecker was Rockwell’s idol and mentor, but they were very different people and were interested in portraying different aspects of humanity, even when the basic subject matter was the same.

Surface-level, here are some differences:

Leyendecker smoothed out faults and imperfections (in the young. he stylized them in the old); Rockwell exaggerated them to mild or moderate caricature

Leyendecker approached his paintings as sculpture- even the merest clothing folds are carved out of the paint; Rockwell approached his paintings as drawings- the underlying contour always shines through.

Leyendecker used broad hatching brushstrokes and areas of smooth shine; Rockwell used more naturalistic texture and lighting

Leyendecker created idolized, larger-than-life figures that feel Hellenistic in their perfection; Rockwell created intimate scenes populated by figures that feel familiar in their specificity

Leyendecker’s best and most comfortable work was as a fashion/lifestyle illustrator; Rockwell’s best and most comfortable work was as an editorial/humor illustrator 

Leyendecker created beautiful still lives with his figures; Rockwell told compelling stories

Leyendecker often created erotic tension in his paintings; Rockwell almost never did.

See below: Two paintings of soldiers with women, but in Rockwell’s there is a clear punchline, and while the poses are contrived for the sake of composition, they’re not self-conscious. The women are pretty- as demanded by the central joke- but not truly sexualized anywhere but in the mind of the young soldier who is being overloaded with cake and attention. 

Contrast Leyendecker’s soldiers with a young nurse. Everyone in this image is posing attractively- no one has their mouth full or ears sticking out. Each crease and fold is sharp and sculptural, and the light picks out their best features- in particular the shoulders and posterior of the soldier facing away from the viewer. There is neither joke nor story, merely a group of beautiful young people, portrayed with deft brushwork and graceful lines. (and check out that hatching! That’s indicator #1 that you’ve got a Leyendecker image)

Leyendecker was very comfortable with “hot young things wearing clothes”, and did them very VERY well, but his facility with idealization came at the cost of personalization, which was fine for fashion illustration, but shows in his domestic scenes: 

Beautiful, but… cold. (Also, that hand on the left- who holds a baby with their hand like that??? Good lord, J.C.) Compare a Rockwell illustration (for a baby food brand, I believe) of a mother and baby: this is clearly a real and individual young mother and baby, interacting exactly how parents and babies really interact.

Even when they did basically the same content, and putting aside posing or composition or anything other than objective visual analysis, it’s still obvious who is who:

Red: NR’s smoother rendering vs JCL’s super cool hatching

Green: NR’s naturalistic cloth folds vs JCL’s sculptural stylization

Blue: NR’s natural lighting vs JCL’s world where everything is shiny

Now go forth, confident in the knowledge that you’ll never confuse a Rockwell or a Leyendecker ever again, and can refute any claim that their styles are ‘virtually identical’. 

Boy, QC’s Steve has really hit a rough patch.

Hope he just spends three more panels eathing Koala-O’s.

I have to pile on (I hope) for him in Laura. Before he was “Vincent Price playing a Vincent Price role in a horror movie”, he was great in that noir.

No, but seriously, do you know how amazing Vincent Price is?

Not just as an actor, although he was a blast to watch in everything he did.  He’s one of those actors who’s just clearly having a whale of a time, no matter how bad the film is.  He’s just genuinely happy to be there (it makes his villains a particular delight, and he played a LOT of them).

But did you know that he was also on the PFLAG board after his daughter came out to him?  And that he was one of the earliest celebrities to speak out against the silence surrounding the AIDS epidemic?

Did you know that when his daughter came out to him, he admitted to her that it had been difficult for him during his first two marriages, because his wives had not been pleased to find out that their husband was just as interested in men as they were?

That’s right, kids, Vincent Price was BISEXUAL AS FUCK, and it was one of those open Hollywood secrets.  And his wife Coral Browne?  The one he grew old with and wrote cookbooks with and was basically ridiculously sweet with?

Also bisexual as fuck.  They were the queer power couple of Hollywood in the 70s.  His daughter, Victoria, grew up around Rock Hudson and members of the LGBT community.  When she came out, Vincent Price became a board member of PFLAG and was just about the most accepting and awesome dad.

Did you know that Vincent Price played Oscar Wilde in a one-man play, and when it was denounced by anti-gay activist Anita Bryant, he dismissed her right back, saying that Oscar Wilde had already come up with a term for her: a Woman of No Importance?  Because Vincent Price was deliciously witty and an awesome person.

Let me conclude with a quote from his daughter (from this article, where I got a lot of this information):

‘“In a funny way, and I think I’m going to cry, he understood me at 22 better than I understood myself then,” Price concluded. “Of course, he was in his 70s and lived a hell of a lot longer than I had, and he understood that at the end of the day it’s about who and what and how we love. And I have not been a person who has been very successful at conventional relationships, but loving well and loving deeply has been the most important thing to me.”’

Happy birthday, Vincent Price.  You were a gem of an actor, and an even greater human being.

I think it's quite a good show. Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, a Cole Porter score, a more-than-serviceable plot and script with all the resources of MGM. The Nicholas Brothers, and Walter Slezak, add greatly. More laughs in it than one may expect from the movie poster.

Oh and The Pirate from 1948.

Nope, but it’s must for me.

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