Theme of February: Space

Astronaut André Kuipers was launched on the 21st of December 2011 in the Sojuz TMA-3M spaceship. He is the only Dutch astronaut to have flown two space missions and will have spent almost a half year orbiting the Earth. Mid May 2012 he will return. You can follow him on Twitter or on his blog:  

http://blogs.esa.int/andre-kuipers/

I was surprised by the activities he undertakes and the amazing pictures he makes. Let's join him in space. You can make spaceships, astronauts, planets, the moon, stars, aliens.... use your imagination! Your artwork will be shown floating around our planet Earth as in the picture below. 

If you are new on the blog, be welcome and feel free to join! Please file your artwork this way: your name_theme4 (in my case: roos_theme4). Be sure to send it before 21th of February (max. 1 Gb). All artwork will be shown on the 25th of February, both in the collage and seperate on the Flickr photostream of Difference 25. I will try to send André Kuipers a message. Perhaps he can have a look at our Gallery of Outer Space...

The difference of 25: Gallery of Dragons

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

This means: Congratulations and wishing you prosperity!

I hope the year of the dragon brings us all the best.

I am proud to present the Gallery of Dragons. Not only will you see many differences between the individual artworks of the dragons; also in the ages of the artists there is a lot of variation. The youngest is Jule, she is 13 years old. Our senior artist is 77 years old. Thank you all for joining!

Extra inspiration for the dragon theme

Did you know the dragon has the body of a snake, belly of a frog, scales of a carp, head of a camel, horns of a giant stag, the eyes of a hare, ears like a bull, a neck like an iguana, paws like a tiger and claws like an eagle? Thanks Miss Fruitful for sending me this fantastic link with stunning pictures:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5se-v1jWWe0

Scary dragon?

You can still send in your artwork until 21th of January. I hope you will all join the gallery of dragons. In the mean time in China a new stamp is launched with...a dragon on it! The Chinese stamp is especially made for the year of the dragon. Unfortunately it causes a lot of commotion. People in China think the dragon should be an adorable mascot but they say this design is frightful and sends out a wrong message. This dragon seems to have the intention to frighten people.

The designer Chen Shaohua defends his work, saying: "Dragons drive out evil spirits and keep off disasters. We need a tough image to express these qualities." For more info:

http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/news_china/2012-01-06/chinese-dragon-stamp-attracts-criticism.html

I hope we will have a nice mix of fierce, scary, funny, lovable dragons in the gallery!

Theme of January: Dragons

First of all: a Happy New Year to everybody! 

I hope you all have a wonderful, creative, healthy 2012.

Not everywhere in the world the new year starts at the same time of the year. 

January 23th for instance, is the Chinese New Year. 2012 will be the year of the Dragon.

For me it is a special year, as I was born in the year of the Dragon! For this occasion the gallery will be shown on the blog already on the 23th of January. The examples are Chinese cut-paper designs. Of course this is only an example, follow your own creativity, colours, style and expression.

I hope the year of the Dragon will bring you all good luck! It is said that it brings a lot of expression. Let's show this in the gallery of dragons.

I hope to see you all back in the year of the Dragon!