Recently I stumbled upon processions during the Easter week that are happening in Middle and South America as well as in Southern Europe. What struck me about this is that at some point there must be a real "Funeral March-Shootout" happening, judging by the many funeral marches that are being posted and linked to in many places when surfing the web on the topic of "Semana Santa". Now, if you know me well enough than you might know that I have a great love for funeral marches - of any kind.

Needless to say, I am very intrigued when listening to some examples on the link below. It sounds like some oversized marching bands, clearly playing with far more heart than skill, but nevertheless creating quite a captivating atmosphere and pure intent. One has to be thankful towards the quirkiness of catholicism that brought forth such a colorful concoction of circus parade and cerebral solemnity. I am smitten.

Here is a link where I have found some samples:

http://jesusenguatemala.com/2009/12/20/marchas-funebres/

17 years and no sign of being tired. I just want to take the opportunity to express gratitude to a faithful companion that accompanied me through many moves and followed me across continents. My sound system, namely a set of speakers by Canton. For those 17 years they have been providing daily inspiration. Never tired, never exhausted even when I was.

Still, after so long I felt it was time to give them some rest and place a new system in my studio comprised of a conglomerate of Emotiva, Onkyo and Cadence. While my trusted previous system gave me beautiful and incredibly well-balanced sound (especially for its compact size) it is not always strong enough when fed with recordings that demand extreme sonic dynamics and ultra low basses as it has become so popular in today's movie scores as well as the "victims" of the "compression wars" of recent years in which engineers in recording studios are trying to squeeze the last bit of headroom out of a recording in favor of extra loudness.

Anyway, since music is always source of highest inspiration to me I now welcome a new level of sound quality - but not without a big "Thank You" to Canton, the manufacturer of my previous system which has inspired me for so long through all the bad and good times of my life. It has never let me down in these years, not a single time. Thank you!

A new piece of art: Gameplan II. When I first created Gameplan I for our book Digital Art Wonderland (which, btw. features a full tutorial on how to create it) it called for a follow-up piece. Now there it is:

If you are interested in obtaining a print, we are offering a wide array of options, from greeting cards to posters and canvas prints via RedBubble.

After many requests for custom web design we are happy to announce an affordable way to dress up you web site or blog in one of my original creations. Currently designed for Joomla. Wordpress versions will follow very soon! I'll keep you posted here...

They can be ordered and downloaded from our shop here.

Click here for a live demo of this template!

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Click here for a live demo of this template!

The new Guardian Calendar 2012 is out! Another year illustrated with magical graveyard photography. I think I have mentioned before that this has been one of my favorite projects. If you would like to see larger versiions of all of the images just head over to the button in the main navigation on the left that says "Gallery". In there you can find not only all of the new images, but all of the images from the previous two years as well.
You can order this calendar right here. If you order from us, you get your signed by Angi and me.
 

This year we had a choice between 4 different contenders for the cover. Which one would you have chosen?

Fitting right into the time around April 1st, here I am sharing a few tidbits of one of my current projects. Illustrations for an Oracle Deck that will be published by Hay House centered around the archetypical symbol of the fool. There will be 52 of them so that already has been and still will keep me a bit busy for a while. A nice thing is that I got to pull out my pencil and paper for that which has been neglected for quite some time as the computer has completely overtaken the creative process.

Images © Silas Toball - No reproduction without written permission.