images – OZTHOUGHTS

Images to spark ideas………

As always, I have tried to find some weird and wonderful images to inspire your creative juices – whether you happen to be a teacher or a writer. All of them (see above and below) have been chosen because they are totally weird and wonderful, and generally defy any sort of logical reason for happening. In other words, I hope that they will inspire you to extreme creative imaginings. Do let me know if you use them to inspire or as central to a story please!

I love the addition of the one boot

Er………………. A party anyone?

Well, an innocent way of passing the time, I suppose

Dangerous people to know… I can imagine a serious story about hill-billies here

Er……………… Yes…………..

We have all met such people in Walmart……

I love the way that people have indulged their passions and fantasies since time began..

Zdzislaw Beksinski – A gothic artist of distopian tendencies.. To put it mildly!

This alarming and grim image is typical of the work of this artist from Poland who specialised in creating this sort of image. I have to add at this point that I may seem to be attracted to dystopian and grim images, this is not so, I simply put them in this blog as I suspect that such images are more likely to spark some sort of creative surge in people.

Anyhow this is a very typical example of the work of this artist. He grew up in war torn Poland, which obviously had a profound effect on his later life – so as a kid he played with war things, as you can see in this photo of him with a friend playing outside a damaged Block House with live shells…

If you saw him, you wouldn’t think for a minute that he would produce the sort of images he went on to create – as you can perhaps see in this photo of him, taken shortly before he was murdered by a teenager he wouldn’t lend a few hundred Zlotys to.

Anyhow, enough of this waffle, here are some typical images created by him, and he was prolific, so there are no end of other images (all essentially about the same thing though) which you can find easily enough online.

See? Gruesome and horrid… But they can produce some interesting thoughts I reckon…

Jonathan Wolstenholme, an artist with a very curious approach to his work

I have just come across the work of a British contemporary artist -Jonathan Wolstenholme – who is besotted with the idea of books. Not simply a book lover, but a real fanatic about books, so his art is almost exclusively about or around books in one way or another.

As you will see from the following examples of his work, the work he does for himself is exclusively based on the idea of books in a sort of anthropomorphic form, so basically books that are alive and busy with various activities.

So, here is the first example of his work to whet your appetite.

He studied at one of the two art schools I also studied at, Croydon Art College, from 1969 till 1972 and then went on to be a successful illustrator and painter, working for numberless magazines and exhibiting his work in various galleries in London and the USA – in other words, a very successful artist.

His work is not only based around anthropomorphic books, but he also has produced all manner of other types of work, such as this illustration for Alice…….

But his chief pleasure seems to be those human-like books, which he paints in a huge variety of situations – fighting, happy, playing chess and so on, just about any activity that humans get up to, but using books with arms instead of people. Odd really, but so beautifully painted.

So, here are a selection of some more of his work for your pleasure……

So, if his work interests you, there is no end of it online for your pleasure.

More strange and disturbing images to fire your imagination

Once again I have found an intriguing collection of images that I hope will be of use to you guys as sparks to your ideas. In other words, I hope that the images below will give you ideas for stories as opposed to using them in stories.

So, lets get started on them……………

Now this is a restaurant with a difference! A weirdly odd and somewhat Edwardian effect. Many years ago whilst on a winter tour of Scotland with the Little Angel Puppet Theatre we found ourselves at John O’Groats which has a truly odd restaurant as well – and when we arrived there, a totally empty place (it was January after all) we were greeted by this odd building and Hawaiian guitar music blaring out of a public address system… All very odd.

One or other of these two odd images should give you ideas for a story….. Though certainly with a Gothic feel I would imagine.

From the sublime to the ridiculous now.

I would imagine that this silly photo could be the basis for a Sci-Fi story at the very least……. Whilst it is a simple bit of image jiggery-poky and is also mildly funny, it could be the basis of a story about a world in which people’s bodies are manipulated for some reason….. What do you think?

This is simply silly…………… But it is a new look at an old legend perhaps?

Now I have selected three more odd or curious images that give me pause for thought, each one of which seem to me to be ripe with an internal story.

What is happening in them and could one perhaps use all three of them in one story?

Well, perhaps one might use the first two in one story, but I am damned if I can see how one might use the third image in the same story as the first two.

And to finish with, here is a collection of creatures that one would not like to come up against on a dark and stormy night – or even on a sunny day come to think of it! I have no idea what or who they are, I suspect it is some sort of Swiss (or Scandinavian) religious ceremony that has been stolen (as is the case with just about all Christian festivals) from a pre-Christian festival. But whatever it actually is all about, it seems to me to be begging for a story to use it as a central feature of the story. So, lets see what you can do with this one!

If any of these images have been a help for you in any way, please do let me know what you used them for.

More Strange And Weird Images To Fire Your Imagination

Once more I look into the weird world of other people’s imagination, this time via the photographs of Erik Johansson who manipulates his photos to create a totally different and obviously impossible vision, also a collection of simply weird photos of real people – which defy the imagination I confess, but which could be the starting point of some very odd stories, so this is possibly useful for teachers to stir the imagination of their students.

So, here is the first of Erik Johansson’s odd world………………..

He seems to be fascinated by this sort of idea, he has a lot of images that have a landscape pouring over a huge drop, for example this one…..

A different take on essentially the same story are a series of photos he has produced that show water pouring from paintings or similar, as in this one….

He also seems to love creating images that are totally impossible in one way or another, and one of his favourite methods of achieving this is to combine reality with an impossible action, as in this one, which shows both an ice-cream melting, but a cut off arm also melting… Odd…………

And as a last look into his strange world, we have his mania for altering perspective, a bit like Escher in this respect, so here we have a totally impossible room to ponder upon……..

And now, to open a real can of worms, a totally extraordinary view of the real world, real people in very strange situations, some of which I am totally at a loss to explain, such as this one… What on earth is that little person?

Or this one….. Another strange and essentially wrong set of people. What on earth are they doing?

And this one simply defies explanation. These people seem to be totally ignoring that very strange little being, though one of them seems to be feeding it… Hmmmmmmmmmm………..

And as the last image, I am totally bemused by this one. The guy dressed in Arabic clothing seems to be signing a serious contract, but why oh why are there three enormous “things” wearing Arabic woman’s clothing? Damned if I know………..

Anyhow, I hope that one or more of these strange images will spark off an idea in your mind and help you to write the Great Novel that you have been struggling to create for some years already.

Haunting Images Of Dead Theatres

Old and derelict theatres have a mysterious and appealing attraction, a feeling of dreams that have crashed to the floor, but also a feeling that somehow they can be resurrected in an instant.

It is these feelings and also the sheer pathos of old, semi-ruined and abandoned theatres and cinemas that have attracted Matt Lambros for the better part of his life, and he has been taking photos of them ever since he became a professional photographer.

So as he wanders around, earning his living as a photographer, whenever he comes across an abandoned theatre or cinema he can’t resist getting inside it by whatever means possible, and taking a series of photos of what he finds both inside and outside such theatres.

As is often the case with this sort of image, there is really nothing that words can add to them – they are perfectly able to speak for themselves after all, and Matt is a very competent and sensitive photographer, and knows exactly how to let the images tell their tales.

So I shall stop waffling now, and let the images speak to you themselves.

I also need to point out that as is so often the case with the beautiful images one comes across on line, Matt makes his living selling prints of these haunting pictures, so if you find them to your taste, do visit his blog (link below) to see much, much more of his work, and of course, to buy one or more prints so that you can have them on the walls of your home to admire at all moments of the day.

Link:

https://afterthefinalcurtain.net/

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