The Junk Drawer

My Top Ten Favorite Prints by fleur_de_lis

Affordable art...affordable good art, is usually beyond our grasp. One way to have the 'real' thing is to find a print by an artist that you love. Even these can be beyond your budget, but every once in a while...(Fleur, wistfully thinking). Here is a sampling of some of my very favortite prints starting with The Great Wave which is at the top of my list, but the rest are in no particular order. The Great Wave at Kanagawa--Hokusai woodcut Drawing Hands--M. C. Escher lithograph Banknotes--Eugene Delacroix lithograph (Hey, who wouldn't want to have their face on the national currency!) Melancholia--Albrecht Durer engraving John Wayne--Andy Warhol silkscreen Bald Eagle--John James Audubon lithograph Moulin Rouge--Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec lithograph Self Portrait--Kathe Kollwitz lithograph 'A Spill Out' on the Snow--Currier and Ives lithograph An Eagle Flying Over the Hundred-Thousand Plain--Hiroshige woodcut Aren't they wonderful? Do you have any favorites?

Top Ten Architectural Wonders by fleur_de_lis

Wow! This was really a hard list for me to narrow down. Beautiful structures, like beautiful art, have their own stories, time periods, and cultures that make them unique. These are my favorites...I look at them with admiration for the drive and purpose of their creators. My favorite is the Taj Mahal, but the rest are in no particular order: Taj Mahal--Agra, India Chrysler Building--New York City, New York Sydney Opera House--Sydney, Australia Fallingwater--Bear Run, Pennsylvania Notre Dame Cathedral--Paris, France Machu Picchu--Andes Mountains, Peru Pyramids--Giza, Egypt St. Basil's Cathedral--Moscow, Russia The Colosseum--Rome, Italy Angkor Wat--Angkor, Cambodia That's it! I didn't even get to include the Eiffel Tower, the Parthenon, the Transamerica Building, Neuschwanstein, Hagia Sophia, La Sagrada Familia...and the list goes on! Do you have a favorite structure? Does architecture awe and inspire you? I may do a post or two in the future on some of these, my favorites,...

My Top Ten Favorite Sculptures by fleur_de_lis

Here is a wide assortment of sculptures from different time periods that just happen to be my very favorite ones. Some of them I have come to love for their uniqueness and the stories behind them, some of them appeal to my sense of beauty, and some of them I chose because I admire the sculptor's tremendous talent. Again, enjoy, or scratch your head and wonder 'Why in the heck did she pick that one?' The Pieta--Michelangelo Buonarroti Beauty, spirituality, talent--it fills your heart. This is my all time favorite sculpture, but the rest are in no particular order. Surrounded Islands--Christo and Jeanne-Claude Crazy, but so cool! Carhenge--Jim Reinders This one is located in my home state of Nebraska. Iris Leaves and Rowan Berries--Andy Goldsworthy It seems so simple, doesn't it? Countryside--Stan Herd Another favorite! I would love to see one from the air. Chinese Pottery Army Words can't describe these and the tremendous amount of manpower, effort, and time it took...

My Top Ten Favorite Paintings by fleur_de_lis

It was brutal, but I chopped, axed, hewed, whittled, and cut down my list of favorite paintings to 10. You have seen a few of them on my blog, and you will see some additions to those that may be topics for future posts. Enjoy, or scratch your head and say 'Why in the heck did she pick that one?' and please let me know if you have a favorite artist or painting that is not in my top 10! I would like to do a top 10 reader's choice post eventually! Here they are, in no particular order (except for Starry Night which is my favorite). Starry Night--Vincent Van Gogh Rouen Cathedral--Claude Monet Nightwatch--Rembrandt van Rijn Guernica--Pablo Picasso The Persistence of Memory--Salvador Dali Raft of the Medusa--Theodore Gericault Whose Meat--Charley Russell Green Stripe, Madame Matisse--Henri Matisse Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte--Georges Seurat The Sistine Chapel--Michelangelo Buonarroti There you have it. After thinking it over, I can't say I have a single...