Day Two
I realize this will get pretty boring, but I haven’t got the spoons to do a decent post AND a decent drawing. Maybe not even one of those things. Not to worry – I have the attention span of a fruit fly! I’ll never make 31 days.
And no, I do not intend to draw 31 wild pigs.
Talk amongst yourselves…
October 3, 2017 — 8:58 pm
Comments: 14
Well, maybe
Welp, it’s Inktober again. Yes, it’s one of those silly internet things, along the lines of NaNoWriMo, but less like gargling salt water and broken glass.
The idea is that you do an ink drawing every day for the month of October and post it. It’s a way of practicing discipline and honing skills, enforced by peer pressure, so I expect to make it a week at most. Usually, I realize it’s Inktober about five days in, when I stumble over a drawing on social media, but I saw it coming this year.
Day one was yesterday, and that’s my Day One drawing up there. Hrm. I haven’t thought this through. I guess I’ll put them on my Twitter as I do them and post them here whenever. Y’all can take bets when I bottle out. It’ll be like an extra Dead Pool, with schadenfreude as the prize.
Oh, if you want to see some fun art, good and bad, search the #inktober tag on Twitter. It’s, like, hundreds a minute at the beginning. Substantially less toward the end.
p.s. Talk about anything you want in the comments.
October 2, 2017 — 8:46 pm
Comments: 14
Are they blind?
We went to the movies tonight. Specifically, we went to see one of those exhibitions-on-screen, where they visit an exhibition in London and give you all sorts of history and detail. They get right up close on the paintings, which is neat.
The thing in the header is Titian’s Venus with a Mirror. I was struck by something in it. He and his studio between them painted at least fifteen versions of this picture, but this is the one he kept in his studio until his death. Several commentaries I found online said perhaps it’s because, in the reflection, she looks like she’s looking out at the viewer.
To which I can only say ARE YOU BLIND? It’s a whole different face. The eye in the mirror is terrified. What could be taken as her hair in reflection could also be described as the saggy jowls of middle age. This is something like, ruined old lady peers in horror across the decades. Well, that’s what this ruined old lady thinks, anyhow.
I’ll not post the full version. I don’t actually like the picture much.
Okay, that’s enough artsy fartsy stuff for one week. Hef has died at last, and the commenter formerly known as Skeptic takes the dick (second dick in recent memory)!
That means…tomorrow.
Here.
6:00 WBT.
DEAD POOL ROUND 102. (Or whatever the hell it really is. I’ll have to ask Rich Rostrom).
September 28, 2017 — 10:07 pm
Comments: 7
The glowing sheep of old Sussex
I got nothin’ tonight. I’ve been doing housework(!) all evening, so please enjoy this picture Uncle B took earlier this Summer. (Yes, of course you can have it large and in color).
Now is probably the time to give the old mustelid a shout-out. I’ve taken almost none of the photos I’ve posted during this year’s fete season, he has. Uncle B is an enthusiastic photographer with a much better eye than mine.
This pisses me off. I went to art school, you know.
On the other hand, I’m also incredibly lazy and opportunistic, so having his visual record of our adventures has been most helpful.
September 25, 2017 — 8:52 pm
Comments: 7
A farewell to Sissinghurst
We went to Sissinghurst today – one of our favorite National Trust properties. We go three or four times every Summer, though this might be the last time for a while. We’ve decided not to renew our National Trust membership when it’s up in Spring.
See, the NT has gone gay. Like very, very gay. Like intrusively, irritatingly gay.
Like asking their tens of thousands of loyal blue-haired volunteers to fill out a questionnaire on their own sexuality. Or insisting that staff wear gay pride buttons during the six weeks of their Prejudice and Pride Campaign, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the partial legalization of buggery. They had to climb down over that one, but meanwhile:
As part of an event to publicise the project, the charity has commissioned a film narrated by Stephen Fry revealing that Felbrigg’s former owner, Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, was gay. But his godsons, who left the hall to the Trust on his death in 1969, have objected to him being ‘outed’ to market the hall. The bachelor, who was a magistrate and former High Sheriff of Norfolk, never publicly revealed his sexuality.
Oh, they outted some dead rich guy against his family’s wishes. Nice.
Sadly, we’re a little too far away from Kingston Lacy in Dorset to go see the fifty-one ropes hanging to commemorate the fifty one men who were hanged for sodomy, mostly between 1810 and 1835. They’ve got a recording reading their names over and over and everything!
But not to worry! We got to see Speak Its Name! – an exhibit of pictures from the National Portrait Gallery featuring a bunch of famous old dykes and poofters. A little more justification for this one, as Harold and Vita (Sissinghurst’s most famous owners) were committed and enthusiastic homosexuals (though strangely devoted to each other throughout their marriage).
As you might imagine, LGBTQRST is not the only progressive issue the current lot at the Trust are pursuing aggressively. It’s getting on for £100 a year for the two of us, we’ve been members for 7 years and, frankly, we’ve seen our local properties dozens of times. It’s time.
Oh, we had a lovely day today! The weather was perfect and the holiday crowds have died down. Nice memories. Have a good weekend, fags!
September 22, 2017 — 8:54 pm
Comments: 17
Who thinks up this shit?
Happy Menopause Awareness Month! No, really. This is exactly the kind of thing that very few of us need to be aware of, and those that do need to, are. Future generations are going to be amazed at how up in each other’s business we were.
Forget that. I have a question. I took a nap this afternoon (as I often do) and I had a series of the most amazingly vivid dreams (as I often do when I nap in the afternoon).
I deconstructed them and realized I don’t actually do things in my dreams. I try to do things, but I am thwarted. Like trying to drive someplace and getting lost, or trying to find an office in an office building and finding the elevators closed and the stairs blocked off. I was trying to play music with my father, but I couldn’t find the instruments, then I did and the strings were missing.
I can’t remember if my dreams were always like this. I think so, honestly. I’ve often thought of keeping a dream diary, but I wake up in the most vile mood. By the time I’m able to face a pencil and paper, the dreams are gone.
Are yours like this? Can you remember?
September 21, 2017 — 9:07 pm
Comments: 17
He’s nekkid!
I told you guys I managed to sell both pieces I put in the art show, before the doors even opened. I underpriced them, I’ve been told. As a result of which, I am now a *full member* (and I was able to pay for that frightfully self-indulgent map case and paint box).
Even better, as a direct result, I’ve been asked to join an invitation-only life drawing class. I’m having a blast.
I need this kind of eye training. Because the drawings I did in my last gig were mostly very technical, nearly everything I did was traced in some way — either the old fashioned way, or Photoshopically. Tracing is bad for fine art. Not because it’s cheating — honestly, there is no such thing in art; it ain’t football or canasta — but because it results in boring pictures.
When you draw from life, you’re forced to process what you’re looking at. You have to figure out what’s happening and then you have to figure out how to explain it to someone else. This makes for a much more persuasive and interesting picture. It’s hard as hell, though.
It also, of course, makes for more errors. There’s a classic in this drawing – his hands are way too big, especially his right hand. The human brain exaggerates anything it finds interesting but it’s a rookie mistake not to catch it and fix it. In my defense, they were all thirty minute poses today; shorter than I’m comfy with.
At least they haven’t done any 5 and 15-minutes poses yet. Brrrrr…I hate those.
September 20, 2017 — 9:33 pm
Comments: 12
Yes, that’s a Chinese diagram of a heating pump
Meh. I flipped on the water heater in anticipation of a long, hot bath tonight and…the central heating pump died.
Yes, you heard that right: we don’t heat water all the time. Once every couple of days will do it. We’re reflexively cheap, the both of us.
I’m’a go sulk. And drink. But mostly sulk.
No, wait…mostly drink.
Also smell, because I need a bath.
September 19, 2017 — 9:24 pm
Comments: 12
Phew!
I didn’t think I’d be with you tonight. I turned on my computer this morning and…nothing. Not even a beep.
Which implied a video card problem. When I got home this evening, I took the lid off and wiggled all the cards and. Yeah. It booted normally. But I don’t like this.
Not least because something similar happened at work last week and we ended up buying a whole ‘nother machine. Fortunately, the techie we got in was able to rescue everything off the hard drive, but it was touch and go for a while. Seems our automatic backup program hasn’t actually run itself for three years and I never checked.
Have I mentioned that I am legally listed as the Information Officer? Yeah, it’s a thing.
Anyway, I suck at backups. Must do better. Good evening!
p.s. illustration not mine. Not to be construed as a book endorsement. Found it on a Google search and liked it.
September 18, 2017 — 9:30 pm
Comments: 6
Boo!
Here’s a bit o’ fun that came across my FB today: an interactive map of spooky London stuff. Hauntings, disasters, unsolved murders. It’s worth clicking around – some of the short items have links to longer articles. Very interesting, if you like that sort of thing.
Where we used to live, near Crystal Palace, is off the map. That is, the map isn’t there, but there are still markers in the general area. Looks like we’re all clear. Nobody’s dug up the bodies in the back garden yet.
They’ve gotten the data from a variety of sources, many of them worth checking in their own right. Like the Paranormal Database and Mysterious Britain (which appears to be down for maintenance at the moment).
I love a good ghost story. Not sure why; I’m not a believer. I’m as psychic as a potato. I guess maybe in the back of my mind, if one inexplicable thing is possible, they all are.
September 14, 2017 — 9:00 pm
Comments: 9