Azuria on Flickr

While browsing through the DoA gallery today, I had the fortune of stumbling upon Azuria's post of her Soom Fir and her friend's Chibi Unoa. The pictures are colorful, fresh and sensitive, and the focus effect is beautiful!

If you love these photos, please check out her flickr page for more beautiful work like it! She also has a Deviant Art page.

Raouken's Wonderful Corsets

This fine detail work and beautiful craftsmanship is brought to you by Raouken, who goes by the same screen name on Den of Angels. Her commissions thread is very navigable, and she is a personable and fun seamstress from what I can tell. She has excellent feedback and her prices are great for the craftsmanship you're getting. The corsets are 35 euro for a basic SD corset, and 30 euro for a basic MSD corset. There are other little details that may run you a little extra, but the results are well worth the extra 5 euro or so. She also has an Etsy shop in which she posts ready-made items, but nothing is up there at the moment (I'll bet she's busy with commissions).

I plan on commissioning her for my Zero when I get my monies together. I absolutely adore her work!

Chibi-lilie's Deviantart

So, yet another great photographer appears on this blog! Chibi-lilie was discovered while I was thumbing through my DA notifications. :3 I love the soft, colorful style of this photo, and the focus is just right! (If you haven't noticed, I fangirl good bokeh!)

The angle and tone of this edgy picture is spot-on. I'd love to have this on my wall - speaking of which, she has a few prints for sale, so check those out as well (great transition, I know, lol).

All of her dolls are based off of her original characters (or OCs for short). They are much beloved, and she even has a contest going for her watchers to draw her doll characters! If you're interested, you can see her DA for details. It ends on the 15th of March.

Her coloring and composition is usually excellent, but in my opinion the quality of her work tends to vary, with lighting and focus issues being the main reason for my comment. However, you could never tell from these example pictures, which are all from her gallery. I look forward to seeing more work from her, and I can only imagine how amazing she'll be when every photo is consistent!

da-bu-di-bu-da's/Oso Polar's Pictures

So, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I wanted to start out with a gloriously beautiful feature, and so I will... !

da-bu-di-bu-da's DA gallery is filled with beautifully light pictures of herself, her dolls, and her other assorted creations. I first found her as Oso Polar on Flickr, and I can never forget her beautifully styled and photographed Zaoll Luv, pictured above. The style of her photography is what really draws me in with its light and effortless delicacy. Her subjects seem to live in their own peaceful, quirky, handmade world that is never disturbed by worry or trouble.

Please visit her pages and support her with your adoration of her fine art - I know you love it. You can't not.

Agrith's Deviantart

Agrith seems to be an up-and-coming photographer, with touching little themed photos such as these featuring her Bluefairy Olive. Her penchant for dead-on focus choice and her clever use of simple props definitely highlights an acute artistic sense and love for the characters of her dolls.

Apart from her adorable Olive (first I've seen with a non-default faceup that I really love!) she also has a DZ Felian, a MNF Lishe. She's also taken some quite charming pictures of the Zaoll Luv that was lent to her by a friend for a photoshoot. I think that the pictures featuring her Olive are the most compositionally awesome of the bunch, which is why they're the feature here, but the photos of the other dolls are by no means ugly! Be warned, her gallery is NSFW.

Go give her some love. :3 A lot of work goes into her shoots!

Spongebob, Lady Gaga and Captain Ardi

I just wanted to share with you the most awesome representation of Spongebob and Gary... ever. You can find more by CaptainArdi on her Deviantart.

She does really wonderful paintings of various people, like Lady Gaga here, and has her own webcomic as well! Please give her DA a visit, she's really wonderful! O__O

Unisomnia/Suzumebachi's Doll Photography - One pic NSFW, underwear!

I really love Unisomnia's doll photography! Here's her precious Miyu, Misei. She makes me want a Miyu so badly!!!!! She's Suzumebachi on DoA, and I found her through her gallery post 'We're Just Angels with Enemies'. Here are some pictures from the shoot:

I really love the way she plays with simple lighting, focus and setting to create a specific mood in her pictures. That's the stuff of great photography! You can see more of her dolls on her Flickr (where she also posts her great pictures featuring non-doll content). There's also her Deviantart, which is more doll-focused. I think she's underrated (with only 8,000 pageviews in 2 years), so give her some well-deserved love for her photos.

I know, I'm really lovin' on the Shushus. What can I say, they're so pretty!

Korone and Strawberry Resin

I was just cruising on through the DoA gallery when I came across a lovely shoot featuring this doll, Milk. Curious and hoping to see more pretty dolls, I clicked on a number of the user's (Korone's) links.

What I found was that I must be the only person in the world not knowing who she is! I discovered that she was the one that had taken this famous picture on Deviantart! It was one of the pictures that made me, and I'm sure thousands of others, investigate what a bjd was. I started looking through the rest of the gallery, and found a number of bjd pictures as well as colorful, interesting graphic art as shown below.


She also takes faceup commissions here on DoA under the shop name 'Strawberry Resin'. Her faceups are colorful and somehow very sensitive-looking. I really admire her skill, and I hope she takes more frequent pictures of her ball jointed dolls!

But be warned, her gallery is full of yaoi and toplessness. I just wanted to let you know that most of it's not worksafe. ><; I personally do not prefer the yaoi and toplessness in her pictures, but I really admire the skill that's in the pictures, and the excellence with which she produces them. I'll keep watching her primarily for her less sexy works. :3

yuumei on Deviant Art and her Comic

This inspiring image was drawn by yuumei on Deviantart. I found it while browsing through popular pictures, and there's no doubt as to why it's so popular.

The picture itself contains the feelings of a young girl whose parents have divorced; however, underneath even the picture lie the chaotic feelings of real people who have experienced their parents' divorce, and that is what makes this picture such amazing art. I believe that this is what art is made to do - to let people feel what they didn't know they felt, and to let them discover new things about their self.

I have never understood the great pain which accompanies divorce. My parents are still married, but there have been many, many times throughout my life when I'd wished for them to separate. I could sympathize with those whose parents had divorced, but I could never truly understand because I wished for it so vehemently in my heart. I watched one of my best friend's parents divorce, and her pain was agonizing; I knew of another friend's parents divorce, and though I was too young to have seen it, I could see the result and its pain echo throughout her life.

However, this picture, along with the beautifully fluid webcomic that was inspired my a commenter's quote, has made me understand divorce and its effects a bit more fully. Reading everyone's comments and feelings about it, I gained an invaluable glimpse into what divorce is like for some people. I still think that separation is necessary in some cases, but, as yuumei said, I also wish that people wouldn't seem to take it so lightly in cases where they know that it will severely affect others' feelings. The most important message is to understand a commitment before you make one, and to carefully consider others' feelings in your decisions, especially if you're a parent!

I'm a psychology major, and in class I learned a lot about divorce and things that people can do to make divorce less painful for their children.

-Try not to drastically change the child's environment

-Do not argue in front of the children

-Do not use the children as messengers

-Do not badmouth the other spouse when divorcing

-If the child is older, let him/her participate in as many decisions as possible

-If it is safe enough to do so, regularly let the child/children see the other parent.

-Above all, be warm and responsive to the child/children at all times. No matter what the circumstance, warmth and responsiveness of parents may help children cope with chaotic upheaval and even other bad environmental conditions.

LanWu

I found the artist LanWu through Deviant Art, although you can follow the artist on his website here as well. I love his use of smeared, paint-like digital art, and the mood of his works ranges from moody and dark to cheerful and colorful! His works have many themes as well, like the abstract 'Jellyfish' (first pic), and story theme (third pic is Red Riding Hood, and there are Alice in Wonderland pictures as well as the Seven Deadly Sins). The imaginative backgrounds and amazing use of space make his pictures dynamic and full of motion.