Books
I got this book, Botanical Illustration Course with the Eden Project by Rosie Martin and Meriel Thurstan, last week.
I’ve been drawing flowers this month and my results haven’t been too great so I’m hoping this will give me some inspiration.
Music: ‘Polegnala e Todora (Love Song)’, Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares
My new course is proving very time-demanding hence the lack of blogging. So far I’m enjoying the studying. Unit 1 looked at varieties of ‘Englishes’ (’English’ English, Scots English, Franglais, etc) and at the global influence of English both as a mother tongue and as a second and foreign language.
Unit 2, which is the one I’m currently working on, looks at the origins of the language, from its fifth century beginnings with the Anglo Saxon invasion of Britain, through to the Norman Conquest and the subsequent emergence of Middle English. And I’m loving the history side again just like in my last course. Read on...
Music: ‘The Tales That Really Matter’, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Complete Recordings
“The snow falls, and yes, the hand stretched into the
flakes’ path is a hand asking back a season now lost.”
Nadeem Aslam, Maps for Lost Lovers
This week:
This photo by persistingstars made me inexplicably happy.
I saw a fantastic production of The Taming of the Shrew
I watched a lovely documentary about Arctic Wolves. I had been following the film makers’ diary on the BBC website last year so it was great to finally see the playful Lucy in action.
Above: an Arctic wolf, image © Mark Smith
Am reading The Historian, a novel about some scholars researching the legend of Dracula and discovering it’s more than mere legend. It has helped provoked all sorts of odd dreams that I’ve been having almost on a nightly basis involving schorlarly research, vampires, the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and of course wolves.
Watched some art journalling vids by the lovely and informative Kira
I had to miss the first tutorial for my new course due to the snow, heavy frost and gales we had over the weekend. Bit bummed out about that. But I’ve made a good start on the course work and am spending today compiling definitions for the glossary words I need to learn for this Unit.
The glossary is a big part of the course. When October rolls around and I have to do my exam the first question (worth 20% of the marks) will present me with a choice of six terms, four of which I must be able to define, hence if I know my glossary words off by heart it should guarantee a good start in my exam. There’s only (!) about 250 terms that I need to familiarise myself with over the course of the next nine months. So no worries there then!
Music: ‘Cross Bones Style’, Cat Power
I was going to give IF a miss this week as I’ve been up to my eyes in work and studies all week. But tonight curled up in front of the fire I found myself doodling this little buffalo:
The purple buffalo roam the great plains where Atreyu’s tribe, the Greenskins, live. During his quest to save the Childlike Empress he is haunted by dreams about a purple buffalo he must kill in order to become a hunter…
“Each of the following nights he dreamed something of the sort. He got closer and closer to the same buffalo - he recognised him by a white spot on his forehead - but for some reason he was never able to shoot the deadly arrow.” Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
I drew it pencil first and wish now I’d left it and not bothered with the colour wash. For future reference I really should scan my line drawings before adding colour. I think he would have turned out quite nice as a simple line drawing. Ah well, we live and learn;)
Further to my previous post I thought I would post this, one of my favourite ever quotes about the joy of reading from a book that is all about the power of story and the imagination:
Bastion looked at the book.
‘I wonder,’ he said to himself, ‘what’s in a book while it’s closed. Oh, I know it’s full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there’s a whole story with people I don’t know yet and all kinds of adventures, deeds and battles. And sometimes there are storms at sea, or it takes you to strange cities and countries. All those things are somehow shut in a book. Of course you have to read it to find out. But it’s already there, that’s the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be.’
Suddenly an almost festive mood came over him.
He settled himself down, picked up the book, opened it to the first page, and began to read…Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
“I can’t reach. You know, I had no idea books had such different personalities.” Helena (Mirrormask)
I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions and my upcoming OU course is enough of a challenge to be getting on with, thank you very much, but there is something else that I really, really need to get to grips with. And that’s the ever growing pile of unread novels crowding my bookshelves.
There are a number of reasons (feel free to label them excuses) as to why I’ve amassed so many. Firstly and most importantly, reading has always been a stress release mechanism for me. When I’ve been worried or upset about something, escaping into a good book has been my main coping strategy. So I suppose in a way the fact that I don’t read as much as I used to could be seen as a positive indicator that I’m a happier person than I used be. Or so I hope.
Sorry for the disappearing act, gentle readers, but I’ve been ill all week, struggling with a very nasty throat infection that has left me out of sorts and very tired.
I have kept up with the drawing, though with difficulty. I’ve found it very hard to concentrate on anything and have lost count of drawings started only to be quickly abandoned. I’m going to cheat a little and back date this week’s drawings when I get around to uploading them.
The weather was lovely here all week, mild and hazy with the rain only coming on at the weekend.
Music: ‘Breathe me’, Sia
A little pile of books:)
Had fun drawing this!
Music: ‘The Wings (Closing)’, Gustavo Santaolalla, Brokeback Mountain OST
As promised, Elizabeth, my CueCat Scanner. This is the little doodah I use to scan books into my LibraryThing catalog. You plug it into the USB port of your computer, point its little red mouth at the barcode of the book you want to scan and voila, a new book added to your catalog. Simple as that!
Music: ‘Stolen Car’, Beth Orton
Excellent essay by Neil about how he came to write a fairytale for adults here.
And much more good things to be found at his blog.
"Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling." G.K. Chesterson
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