What I enjoy most about Tobias Kwan (who I discovered through FYeahIllustrativeArt) is how he can really work with a very limited palette and still convey intense emotion and movement, especially with the firey red and the greys.

(Hopefully trying to get into the habit of posting at least once a week. If I don’t, I give you permission to yell at me.)

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So I’m as indifferent about photography as the next person. I really only like three kinds of photography: Ball Jointed Doll photography, informal-style portrait photography and dreamy landscapes. My perfect photo would be of a informal-style misty bjd (like so.) :|

Because of my recent obsession with traveling and my prior obsession with summer and dreaming, it comes to no surprise that I’ve started to collect smokey dreamy photos on my tumblr. I thought I might display them here in a more collected fashion.

The following photos embody the dreamy, misty, summery photos you would take being under the influence of the sun and too much sleep. They might be blurry and colorful.

Mouse over for the photographer and click the photo to go to the original site.

In roughly 680 days, I will be leaving to go on a trip around the world. That’s the plan anyway. I will be taking the Semester at Sea during spring semester of my junior year of university. I cannot explain to you how excited I am. Even though, as I mentioned, I still have two years to go. Or maybe it’s just a year and a half.

With still many years to go until I depart on my journey, I have still begun my preparations. Namely, gathering inspirational videos/photos/literature that will give me an idea of how I want to document my travels.

After many an hour on Vimeo, here is a collection of fascinating and exciting travel videos. Not all of them are necessarily stereotypical, but I find all of them inspiring.

48h in Tokyo, ’09 HD from Claire&Max on Vimeo.

Japanese Summer from Taylor Bredfield on Vimeo.

Once Again. from Elliott Sellers on Vimeo.

Honolii from cliff kapono on Vimeo.

HABANA VIEJA from Van Royko on Vimeo.

Marrakech.Travel from julien widmer on Vimeo.

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

If I encounter more, I will add them on.

Hit the fancy link below for a little list of places to download free, awesome music.

1) Kitsune Noir’s Mixcasts and Mixtapes

So Kitsune Noir, now known as The Fox is Blac is a pretty neat blog that dabbles in just about everything art. The writer Bobby Solomon has a sense of what’s going on in all sorts of pies (I can never get the hang of those little sayings). I find out about a lot of really interesting things from his blog and two things I really love are his mixcasts and mixtapes. He always has a nice balance between obscure and well-known and he has introduced me to some fantastic bands (Beirut and the Radio Dept, for example). And they’re free to download. The mixcasts are shorter, more frequent collections of music with Bobby’s commentary and the mixtapes are longer, more elaborate and less frequent collections.

2) Bandcamp

BandCamp is this nifty idea where bands can put up their music and have it available for download (or just streaming) in various formats. One thing I really like about it is the option for bands to select ‘name your own price’. So when you download it, you have the option of paying basically whatever you want from a set limit. It’s almost like a donation. So if you like the band a lot, you could pay, say, $5 for a song and if you only kind of liked the band or were a cheapass, you could pay the base price of, say, ¢50. It’s up to the consumer.

Some Bands I’ve found through BandCamp:

• Beat Connection
• The Superhumanoids
• Sunol

3) lstn by Urban Outfitters

The LSTNs are mixes put together by Urban Outfitters that you can download directly from iTunes. I definitely recommend this because they always have a nice collection of some pretty obscure stuff and it’s pretty fantastic quality.

4) Nylon + iTunes

So I do not have a link for this one, because they’re only available for download for limited times. However, Nylon (the fashion magazine) has a small label going on and they partner with those under their labels and other bands to make a big collection of stuff once a year. If you happen to be around the blog when they’ve got the link up, it’s generally peppy, energetic music.

5)  Viva Radio

Viva Radio is hosted by American Apparel, so another hipster-y clothing company-fueled radio, but it’s fun! It’s a nice mix of retro music and some newer indie stuff. I have generally been using it as background music and it might be good for a chill party or something. :) Also nice if you’re just browsing the internet or chilling in your room.