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Today's doodle
Perceptive viewers may note that this doodle began with essentially the same kind of structure as the last doodle, but it ended up rather differently, and to my mind, rather better.
Perceptive viewers may note that this doodle began with essentially the same kind of structure as the last doodle, but it ended up rather differently, and to my mind, rather better.
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More doodles
I forgot to post yesterday, so here's what I drew Monday night. I think it's an egg of some kind, possibly a dragon's egg, because what else could it be? ;-)
I drew this last night. It's the first of these doodles that I'm not really happy with. I've been experimenting with using colours that aren't more-or-less monochromatic, and I think I chose the wrong colour for the background of this piece. Maybe I should have gone with yellow/gold instead of red.
Oh well.
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Doodle #15
I'm not at all sure where this came from. It started out looking vaguely Celtic, then sort of morphed into something vaguely psychedelic, and then continued to morph into something that might be loosely organic in nature.
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Doodle #14
Something else completely different. I think there may have been a hint of Rivendell or some such place in my mind.
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Doodle #13
I'm not sure where this one came from, but it might be something like a shmoo, or a very large albino Emperor penguin.
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Doodle # 11
I've always enjoyed drawing dragons, even before I started living with one. If you're interested in seeing my very best ever drawing of a dragon, it's online here, and is of course an absolutely 100 percent accurate depiction of my partner au naturel, as it were.
Here's another dragon. I got carried away and made the flame a little too large to fit in the scanner.
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What is it good for?
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
1893-1918
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Rumours
OK, this is only one of at least 50 rumours going around about actors who might be in the running to place the Eleventh Doctor, but the first mention in this totally speculative article actually caused me to loudly squee with untrammelled delight at the mere notion of its occurrence.
Chiwetel Ejiofor.
I've been mad about this actor ever since I saw him in Dirty Pretty Things. He was intense in Serenity, totally awesome in Kinky Boots, riveting in Children of Men... need I go on? (I'm still waiting to see some of his latest releases because they're not out on DVD yet.)
Chiwetel Ejiofor as the Doctor. It's a match made in heaven, if he wants the gig.
Yes, Bill Nighy would be fun, and Robert Carlyle would be hot and James Nesbitt would be dark and quirky and Sean Pertwee would be a sentimental favourite, Richard E. Grant or Hugh Grant could be endearing, and both Paterson Joseph and Colin Salmon have the chops for the job, and yes it would be cool to see a the Doctor as a woman, but...
Chiwetel Ejiofor. It's got to be the best casting rumour yet.
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Writer's Block: Ten for the Tenth
So today LiveJournal suggests that we identify our 10 favourite albums.
To which I can only say, Ha!
It's not possible. I've struggled to cut it down to 30, but to do even that, I've had to resort to compilation releases by some of my favourite musicians. And I've reached the point where I can't cut anything out without immediately putting it back in and trying to find something else to cut. And I'm sure that the minute I post it, I'll start thinking "but how could I have left out X?"
Joan Armatrading, Show Some Emotion
Joan Baez, From Every Stage
The Band, The Last Waltz
Bruce Cockburn, Humans
Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms
Dire Straits, Dire Straits
The Doors, Weird Scenes inside the Gold Mine
Anton Dvorak - New World Symphony (No. 9)
Bob Dylan - Desire
Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Works, Vol 1
The Eurythmics, Greatest Hits
Richard and Mimi Farina, The Best of Richard and Mimi Farina
Janis Joplin, Joplin in Concert
Janis Joplin, Pearl
Juluka, Scatterlings
Led Zeppelin II
Led Zeppelin IV
Bob Marley, Exodus
Loreena McKennitt, The Visit
Joni Mitchell, Don Juan’s Restless Daughter
Micheal Oldfield, Ommadawn
The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack
The Rolling Stones, Hot Rocks 1964-1971
The Rolling Stones, Goat’s Head Soup
Rough Trade, For Those Who Think Young
Rush, Chronicles
Janne Sibelius – Concerto in D Minor; Karelia; Symphony No 2; Finlandia (all in one album)
Alain Stivell, Renaissance of the Celtic Harp
Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Symphony Pathetique (No. 6)
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Doodle #10
This one requires, I think, some explanation. I was watching a tribute to Leonard Cohen on TV last night, and for some reason, when the song "Suzanne" was performed, I had this sudden flash on the line "she is wearing rags and feathers." I usually see Suzanne in terms of Madonna/Magdalen/Stella Maris imagery, but suddenly I could see her dressed in motley as the Holy Fool, and well, once I saw her, she had to be drawn.
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Doodle #9
Not to be confused with love potion #9.
Seriously, I don't know where this one came from, it's another of those "I just picked up these pencils, and see where they took me" drawings.
However, the observant reader will have noticed by now that I have a marked preference for drawings that occupy a small section of the colour wheel - it doesn't matter what section, but I like to use colours that are next to each other, rather than pick from all around the wheel. Maybe I should explore using complementary colours for a while. Eek. Red and Green, living together... mass hysteria.
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Doodle #8
My hand was sore last night from the stress of drawing the previous doodle (#7), which was rather time-consuming, so I did something very simple this time around.
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Divide and Conquer
Nothing makes the folks at the top happier than to see two groups on the bottom fighting each other rather than working together to challenge the whole notion of there being a top and a bottom. It's a technique that has been used for millennia as a means of social control. Foster mistrust, hate, competition for the scarce resource of attention from the people at the top, any kind of discord, any way of keeping natural allies apart, and it's a lot easier to stay in power, to maintain the status quo.
This means that the primarily white, primarily straight elite in the US right now - who almost lost Proposition 8 in California - are rubbing their hands in glee as supporters of equal marriage rights - who almost won Proposition 8 - start lining up to blame black voters for the loss. Because throwing blame around is going to make coalition work between the two groups so much more difficult, and that serves no one but the people who want to "give away" as little of their power as possible to either group.
It benefits the people in power - who have been using people on the religious right as shock troops - to stir up homophobia among racial minorities. It benefits those same people to encourage queer people to direct their frustration and righteous anger against racial minorities. It's divide and conquer, divide and rule - for the people in control.
And if you play that game as a member of a marginalised group, it means you lose.
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Doodle #7
This one started out as an aimless exploration of the green palette in my new box of coloured pencils, but then I kind of got into the idea of it being all about leaves. I even have a name for this - "A Fall of Leaves."
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Doodle #6 - a bonus doodle
I was still feeling frisky, doodle-wise, when I finished my rockpile, so I thought I'd just do some free-form abstract doodling, and explore my new blue-purple palette options at the same time.
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Doodle #5
The first several doodles in this series were all done using very, very old coloured pencils that I've had hanging around for somewhere between 20 and 30 years. Needless to say, both the wood and the actual coloured pencil stuff inside was very dry and brittle. I'd been having problems with sharpening them, some of the pencils had split and were being held together with tape... they were a mess.
So yesterday
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glaurung went out and bought me a basic set of brand new artist's pencils, and a set of pastel pencils, which is a medium I haven't worked with since art class in high school. Cool stuff! And I have a booklet of all the colours that weren't in the basic set, so as soon as I decide which ones I want, I can get even more cool coloured pencils with a much broader palette.So my drawings from here on will be either done with the nifty new artist's pencils (with space-age ergonomic grip, no less) or, once I get the feel of them, the pastel pencils. (unless I decide to do some not too labour intensive pen and ink work for this little experiment, that is)
I was so excited I did two drawings last night.
First, I drew some rocks. A pile of rocks, in fact. I like drawing rocks. I've drawn probably hundreds of rocks over the years, although I've only kept a couple of my rocks. I'm not sure why I like drawing rocks so much, but for some reason, I think they're fun to draw. So here's my latest bunch of rocks.
