- The Random Planet
- →
- blog
Good day, comrade. This is the blog. It comprises entries from LJ and Pseudocarp, as well as BC Vintage and it's own superspecial exclusive blog content. :O
So, if you want to keep up with all things Hellenistical, as you should, I strongly suggest you subscribe to 
this RSS feed. Have a nice day.
Look for stuff
Categories
- Art Post (40)
- BC Vintage (15)
- LJ (228)
- Pseudocarp (17)
- Website News (10)
Archive
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Aug | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |||
Top 50 Tags
anime Archaeology audience participation awesome Berlin Colony comics commentary crack current events Deutsch email post ew work fail fannish things food games GANDAMUUU geeking out Gurren Lagann Hellen is a pervert Hourly Comics Day I am right and you are wrong I like books they are my friends IM lulz I require a new host body languages life linkage loot lulz memes 'n quizzes 'n things movies music picspam politics ponderings radio randomness rant religion school stuff the batcave travel tv ucl uni weather 日本語 All TagsArt Post Archive
Art posts.
Sorry for not posting for so long, guys! Last week I went to Austria with my parents for my dad's birthday. While we were there I found some greyscale Copic markers for super cheap! ♥___♥ These didn't scan very well, partly because my pretty new scanner doesn't acknowledge "Cool Gray No. 1" as a colour distinct from white, but here's me trying them out in my little sketchbook:
The Austrians have a silly word for cream that sounds like the German word for colonel. Yyep.
Dragonflies are actually little helicopters.
My bag died. T__T I've had it for about 12 years and I haven't been able to find one as awesome as it yet. This is a good excuse to get a new one if I ever find one as good, since it is getting a bit scruffy, but I'm still using it for now.
On the weekend we were there, Nickelodeon was showing seasons 1 and 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender in a big recap marathon kind of thing, I guess, and I managed to catch a few episodes in the evening. By which I mean I watched one and then couldn't stop despite not wanting spoilers. It was kind of on my to-watch list already, but now I need that show in my life.
Tomorrow I might post some photos from the trip. I've been dividing my days since I got back between preparatory reading at the UCL library and practising watercolour painting. (I'll show you the results of that sometime soon, as well.) I've been neglecting the internet a little, but life is good. <3
The Austrians have a silly word for cream that sounds like the German word for colonel. Yyep.
Dragonflies are actually little helicopters.
My bag died. T__T I've had it for about 12 years and I haven't been able to find one as awesome as it yet. This is a good excuse to get a new one if I ever find one as good, since it is getting a bit scruffy, but I'm still using it for now.
On the weekend we were there, Nickelodeon was showing seasons 1 and 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender in a big recap marathon kind of thing, I guess, and I managed to catch a few episodes in the evening. By which I mean I watched one and then couldn't stop despite not wanting spoilers. It was kind of on my to-watch list already, but now I need that show in my life.
Tomorrow I might post some photos from the trip. I've been dividing my days since I got back between preparatory reading at the UCL library and practising watercolour painting. (I'll show you the results of that sometime soon, as well.) I've been neglecting the internet a little, but life is good. <3
Comment, foo! // Comment at LJ
Tags:Austria; travel
Wow, I am on Tim's laptop and he has the screen on an insane resolution that makes all these pictures look tiny.
My Pokemans, let me show you etc.
Haunter and Piloswine are my favourites from my current party in HeartGold. :3
I was listening to this episode of PodCastle when I drew this. That has nothing to do with the drawing, but it's a pretty good episode.
Spaaaaace.
I'm feeling pretty good about my art lately. I've been improving quite a bit, and I also know hat I can get a lot better still.
----
I forgot to bring a book to Tim's house, but luckily he has a manga collection to raid.
I read All My Darling Daughters by Fumi Yoshinaga yesterday, and it made me feel feelings. I liked some of the stories better than others — I spent the entire second chapter going "What. What the fuck. What." but even so, I can sort of see where it's coming from. Sort of. I'm not sure. I really enjoyed the rest of them, anyway, and I'll think I'm going to read it another few times soon.
I also went through the first five volumes of Ikigami by Motoro Mase, pretty much in one go. They're good, but kind of a downer when consumed all at once. It's set in what I think is a near-alternative-future, in which a more totalitarian Japanese government randomly selects one young person a day to die, allegedly to make the rest of the citizens appreciate life and be more productive members of society.
The protagonist is one of the officials charged with delivering death papers to those chosen 24 hours before their scheduled time of death. But, at least at first, he only appears at the beginning and end of each chapter, which tells the story of what one particular person does with their last day. So, while it's showing you the different ways in which people react to their own inevitable death, and being tragic or heart-warming or depressing, it also slowly gives you a feel for the kind of society these people are living in and how it's shaped by the law. The atmosphere — the bureaucracy and constant fear of being overheard by secret police — reminds me a lot of stories set in the DDR. I think the next few volumes are going to be particularly interesting, as the main character's doubts about his job and his society look like they're about to reach a tipping point.
My Pokemans, let me show you etc.
Haunter and Piloswine are my favourites from my current party in HeartGold. :3
I was listening to this episode of PodCastle when I drew this. That has nothing to do with the drawing, but it's a pretty good episode.
Spaaaaace.
I'm feeling pretty good about my art lately. I've been improving quite a bit, and I also know hat I can get a lot better still.
----
I forgot to bring a book to Tim's house, but luckily he has a manga collection to raid.
I read All My Darling Daughters by Fumi Yoshinaga yesterday, and it made me feel feelings. I liked some of the stories better than others — I spent the entire second chapter going "What. What the fuck. What." but even so, I can sort of see where it's coming from. Sort of. I'm not sure. I really enjoyed the rest of them, anyway, and I'll think I'm going to read it another few times soon.
I also went through the first five volumes of Ikigami by Motoro Mase, pretty much in one go. They're good, but kind of a downer when consumed all at once. It's set in what I think is a near-alternative-future, in which a more totalitarian Japanese government randomly selects one young person a day to die, allegedly to make the rest of the citizens appreciate life and be more productive members of society.
The protagonist is one of the officials charged with delivering death papers to those chosen 24 hours before their scheduled time of death. But, at least at first, he only appears at the beginning and end of each chapter, which tells the story of what one particular person does with their last day. So, while it's showing you the different ways in which people react to their own inevitable death, and being tragic or heart-warming or depressing, it also slowly gives you a feel for the kind of society these people are living in and how it's shaped by the law. The atmosphere — the bureaucracy and constant fear of being overheard by secret police — reminds me a lot of stories set in the DDR. I think the next few volumes are going to be particularly interesting, as the main character's doubts about his job and his society look like they're about to reach a tipping point.
Comment, foo! // Comment at LJ
Tags:manga
It was actually a relatively cool 25°C yesterday, but for the past week I've been pouring water down my throat like it was going out of style.
This pigeon thought it was hot shit, pushing all the pother pigeons around. It was very fluffy, though.
I really love the Centre Pompidou and the square in front of it. I didn't go inside because it was €7 or something. I had some money left over when I got home, so in retrospect I kind of wish I'd relaxed a bit about it and gone into more galleries and fancy cafés. Oh well, next time!
These toilet hut things saved my life a couple of times, because in Paris other public toilets close for lunch
On Thursday I went to the Musée Rodin, which is a beautiful villa-and-garden kind of deal full of statues.
Fair enough, little English girl, fair enough.
The Gates of Hell is also an epic piece of statuary, and I would like it for the doors of my house.
From there I walked via the Eiffel Tower (first time I'd seen it up close. Really impressive — as you may or may not know I totally get off on over-dimensional architecture — though standing still to take it all in meant being set upon by a pack of souvenir sellers. I'd like to go up sometime, but I didn't then because it's expensiiiiive, and I figured it'd be more fun together with someone else, anyway.) to the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Particularly enjoyed the 1930s furniture, weird-shit painitngs by Victor Brauner and pretty painitngs by Suzanne Valadon. I also wrote down Raymond Hains, I think because his giant matches (thank you, Google) made me laugh.
The next two days I spent with Tim, so I didn't sit around drawing anything. We went to a comic shop (where I failed to find any comics I'd heard of, but bought some nice looking ones anyway), and the Musée des Arts et Métiers, and the Grande Galerie de l'évolution at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. Why is this one a 'muséum' and not a 'musée'? Arts et Métiers was quite cool — creaky old building full of technological stuff — but I think it might have been better if they arranged it all chronologically instead of dividing it into topics and then arranging the objects within each topic. Or at least pick broader topics; maybe one per floor? The constant jumping back in time was a little jarring.
We also walked around a bit, but it was really hot and Tim wasn't feeling very well all week, so we went home pretty early every day. What we should obviously have done is go home at noon and then go out later and enjoy Paris in the evening, but that never occurred to me. -__-
Lastly, here's a woman with an octopus:
Comment, foo! // Comment at LJ
Tags:France; museums full of pretty things; travel; weather
That is a representation of an actual car I saw last week. Well, that one was... "anatomically" correct.
Anyways, we owned England on Sunday, so everyone can put their flags away and shut up now.
And now I will go play some Katamari. And maybe later I will scan the rest of my sketchbook and write about France. Or maybe I'll just play Katamari all night
Comment, foo! // Comment at LJ
Tags:comics; football
I wear contact lenses half the time these days, actually, but I never remember not to draw my glasses.
Felt like drawing something Katamari-related & remembered it was on Gratuitous Picture Of Yourself Wednesday on Tumblr. I'd like to propose a new definition of "gratuitous" roughly synonymous to "as silly as possible". Think of all the things that could be improved by this definition! Gratuitous violence, gratuitous sex scenes...
In other news, I don't have tonsillitis! I just had some food stuck in my tonsil. Apparently that happens fairly commonly. o____o
20th May 2010 at 11:26 pm
I've been doing some little doodles lately to practice with my watercolours and markers on! And then my scanner did its best to screw with the colours, and then I did my best to un-screw them in Photoshop for a few hours until all of life started seeming loveless and cruel, and in conclusion I'm asking for a new scanner for Christmas.
I definitely need to practice more, but I think I'm improving, anyway.
Oh yeah, and I've started posting some drawings on deviantART again. (I'm being sociable on the internet! :O) It seems the way to get comments on dA is to post pictures of dragons. They like dragons there, I guess.
Tim and I are looking at a flat in London tomorrow. :D I hope it's nice, 'cause it's in an awesome location. Right down the street from the Tate!
I definitely need to practice more, but I think I'm improving, anyway.
Oh yeah, and I've started posting some drawings on deviantART again. (I'm being sociable on the internet! :O) It seems the way to get comments on dA is to post pictures of dragons. They like dragons there, I guess.
Tim and I are looking at a flat in London tomorrow. :D I hope it's nice, 'cause it's in an awesome location. Right down the street from the Tate!
I am actually kind of nervous about the election tomorrow. :/ Don't fuck it up, ok guys?
Anyway.
I borrowed Tim's USB barcode scanner and scanned all of my books into Book Collector this weekend. (Well all of them that aren't in boxes in the attic, anyway.)
Two things I learned doing this:
1. I actually have more books that I ahven't read yet than I thought
2. German publishers have some kind of aversion to putting a barcode on their covers. Instead, they prefer to write out the ISBN in numbers. I'm pretty sure they do this only to be difficult.
The latest book I've started reading was one of the freebies from Eastercon, but it wasn't really pulling me in at all, so I'm re-reading Monstrous Regiment instead. Because there's never a bad time for that. Consequently I haven't really gotten anything done today.
So, here's some art:
When Tim saw the camel of the rainforest lizard (which I should probably give a name soemtime), he apparently thought its eye was actually a nostril. So I drew a thing with a similar shape that actually had a nostril there. The creative process in action.
Some sketches from the Natural History museum:
Elephant ancestors are just cool.
I decided recently I should practice drawing people more, so here's a person.
Her name is Marielle, she's French, has robot legs, and lives in space. Like the cool kids do.
THis owl is not a person, but it is the forest king's spy master, so you should be careful what you tell it, because that dude will fuck you up.
Also, some Pokemon fanart.
Drew this as a thank-you to Tim for giving me his spare copy of Pokemon HeartGold. One day in the far future I might grow out of Pokemon like anormal boring person, but I highly doubt it. I'm thinking of importing a Japanese version of Black/White when they come out over there; the original Pokemon games helped me learn English, so there's no reason I shouldn't harness their power again! After all "It hurt itself in its confusion" is a vital part of any vocabulary.
Anyway.
I borrowed Tim's USB barcode scanner and scanned all of my books into Book Collector this weekend. (Well all of them that aren't in boxes in the attic, anyway.)
Two things I learned doing this:
1. I actually have more books that I ahven't read yet than I thought
2. German publishers have some kind of aversion to putting a barcode on their covers. Instead, they prefer to write out the ISBN in numbers. I'm pretty sure they do this only to be difficult.
The latest book I've started reading was one of the freebies from Eastercon, but it wasn't really pulling me in at all, so I'm re-reading Monstrous Regiment instead. Because there's never a bad time for that. Consequently I haven't really gotten anything done today.
So, here's some art:
When Tim saw the camel of the rainforest lizard (which I should probably give a name soemtime), he apparently thought its eye was actually a nostril. So I drew a thing with a similar shape that actually had a nostril there. The creative process in action.
Some sketches from the Natural History museum:
Elephant ancestors are just cool.
I decided recently I should practice drawing people more, so here's a person.
Her name is Marielle, she's French, has robot legs, and lives in space. Like the cool kids do.
THis owl is not a person, but it is the forest king's spy master, so you should be careful what you tell it, because that dude will fuck you up.
Also, some Pokemon fanart.
Drew this as a thank-you to Tim for giving me his spare copy of Pokemon HeartGold. One day in the far future I might grow out of Pokemon like a
Comment, foo! // Comment at LJ
Tags:I like books they are my friends; Pokemon
Brush pen, brush pen, one day I will conquer you. I think my main problem is that I keep reverting to holding it like a normal pen, which makes it sort of hard to control line width. Getting better, though!
Everyone is talking about the election, and I'm sulking that I can't vote. I want to vote! I'm 22 years old and I've never voted in an election ever. Maybe I should get British citizenship, I'm likely to stay here for a while yet... *sulk*
Anyway, I'll drown my sorrows by playing Final Fantasy 13 for the first time in
2 Comments // Comment at LJ
Tags:life
Well, my brother admonished me on Skype earlier that I don't blog enough, so I guess I'd better post something.
I love finding evidence that ridiculous and impossible to please nerds have always been ridiculous and impossible to please, even before the internet. Like in this article about Doctor Who.
In the 60s.
Anyway, sorry internet, but I think Matt Smith is pretty good-looking. More so when he is in motion than in pictures, but nonetheless. I also don't think it matters much one way or the other to the quality of the show.
He also seems to be a pretty go actor. Which does.
I usually give shows three episodes before I make a judgement on them, but I am pretty convinced this season's going to be awesome already. I mean, I didn't watch half of Tennant's run because I just... got bored, but last Saturday I was glued to the screen. I'll concede that some of that might still be left-over enthusiasm from Eastercon, but still. I think it's gonna be pretty awesome.
I dunno if it's Matt Smith's acting or the writing or both or what, but I thought the Doctor was being more alien and strange than I remember, which is totally great. Alien and strange is the way to go. And I like Amy, too! I love how at the start of the episode the Doctor was all "do what I say or go back to your boring life", but then she saved the day and proved her right to be a main character.
Alright, I was just planning to write a sentence to the effect of 'pretty good so far', so MOVING ON.
My mum framed the tea robot ("auTEAmaton" 8D) drawing I did for her birthday. I think it turned out pretty cool.
A propos, I bought Saturn's Children on Friday and (perhaps predictably — it's about robots and written by Charles Stross) it's rapidly becoming one of my favourite books. At first I was intrigued, then I was entertained, then I was even more intrigued, then I was briefly sceptical, then I was convinced, and then I continued to be entertained, thought-provoked, and increasingly enamoured. And now I only have a handful of pages left. ;____; GOOD BOOKS: ALWAYS TOO SHORT.
And in a final piece of robot (sort of) news, Tim got us tickets to see the re-imagined Evangelion films, and I am totally prepared to be charmed by these fuckers. I will put aside all of my preconceptions (mainly: "this makes no fucking sense, where did the plot go" and "I must either be really dense or missing something, because I just don't get what's so amazing about this"), watch them with a brain now more attuned to the visual language of anime, and if I still don't "get it" I refuse to beat myself up about it. (Again.*) But like I say. Open mind. I will do my best not to let anything bias me towards either outcome. It has a good chance of being the kind of thing I like.
(Also, I don't remember too many of the details, so NO SPOILERS.)
Aaaaand I was planing to round this off with a comic I sketched out last week that also has robots in it, but then I sat in the sunshine reading instead of finishing it. OH WELL. :)
*It's Tim's favourite thing ever, and he showed it to me pretty soon after we started going out. I was insecure, ok? :/
I love finding evidence that ridiculous and impossible to please nerds have always been ridiculous and impossible to please, even before the internet. Like in this article about Doctor Who.
"Once a brilliant but eccentric scientist, he now comes over as a half-witted clown," said one viewer.
In the 60s.
Anyway, sorry internet, but I think Matt Smith is pretty good-looking. More so when he is in motion than in pictures, but nonetheless. I also don't think it matters much one way or the other to the quality of the show.
He also seems to be a pretty go actor. Which does.
I usually give shows three episodes before I make a judgement on them, but I am pretty convinced this season's going to be awesome already. I mean, I didn't watch half of Tennant's run because I just... got bored, but last Saturday I was glued to the screen. I'll concede that some of that might still be left-over enthusiasm from Eastercon, but still. I think it's gonna be pretty awesome.
I dunno if it's Matt Smith's acting or the writing or both or what, but I thought the Doctor was being more alien and strange than I remember, which is totally great. Alien and strange is the way to go. And I like Amy, too! I love how at the start of the episode the Doctor was all "do what I say or go back to your boring life", but then she saved the day and proved her right to be a main character.
Alright, I was just planning to write a sentence to the effect of 'pretty good so far', so MOVING ON.
My mum framed the tea robot ("auTEAmaton" 8D) drawing I did for her birthday. I think it turned out pretty cool.
A propos, I bought Saturn's Children on Friday and (perhaps predictably — it's about robots and written by Charles Stross) it's rapidly becoming one of my favourite books. At first I was intrigued, then I was entertained, then I was even more intrigued, then I was briefly sceptical, then I was convinced, and then I continued to be entertained, thought-provoked, and increasingly enamoured. And now I only have a handful of pages left. ;____; GOOD BOOKS: ALWAYS TOO SHORT.
And in a final piece of robot (sort of) news, Tim got us tickets to see the re-imagined Evangelion films, and I am totally prepared to be charmed by these fuckers. I will put aside all of my preconceptions (mainly: "this makes no fucking sense, where did the plot go" and "I must either be really dense or missing something, because I just don't get what's so amazing about this"), watch them with a brain now more attuned to the visual language of anime, and if I still don't "get it" I refuse to beat myself up about it. (Again.*) But like I say. Open mind. I will do my best not to let anything bias me towards either outcome. It has a good chance of being the kind of thing I like.
(Also, I don't remember too many of the details, so NO SPOILERS.)
Aaaaand I was planing to round this off with a comic I sketched out last week that also has robots in it, but then I sat in the sunshine reading instead of finishing it. OH WELL. :)
*It's Tim's favourite thing ever, and he showed it to me pretty soon after we started going out. I was insecure, ok? :/
Comment, foo! // Comment at LJ
Tags:anime; Doctor Who; Evangelion; I like books they are my friends; robots
I have been drawing almost every day, I promise, but most of it is doodles or sketches I'm going to turn into proper drawings later, so I'm not gonna bother scanning them. Here's the odd presentable things I've managed to produce, though:
First of all, a silly doodle
I doodle on my Japanese notes sometimes to remind me what certain kanji mean, and I quite liked what I drew for "animal", so I expanded it.
I was at ACS for my slightly-bigger-Germans class on Monday*, and someone was watching "Prince of Egypt" in the music room across the hall, and I thought hey! I remember that film being super epic! I should look it up!
So later that day I looked it up on YouTube and found the entire film: woo! Pretty art! Music! Ralph Fiennes's voice! (Also, Ralph Fiennes's voice. ♥_♥)
But then I read some of the comments. which reminded me that shit, some people really believe this stuff. And then I started thinking about all the various crappy things people do to each other in the context of religion, or fighting about religion, and then I couldn't really pretend it was still just a prettily presented myth and nothing was fun anymore. (Except for Ralph Fiennes's voice.)
Though what was kind of funny was the comment asserting that the Pharao's body was cursed to never rot (I'm no Egyptologist, but does that seem like a poorly chosen curse to put on an Egyptian to anyone else), and was found in the Red Sea a while ago.
In conclusiondoes Ralph Fiennes read audio-books or something religion should just stop raining on everyone's parade already.
Speaking of stuff, my excuse for not drawing more finished pieces in the last two weeks is that I got that translation job! 60 pages of a diet/recipe book. (Which has contained a lot more silliness than I expected about herbs that will give you spiritual strength and blood type diets and so on... I don't really know how to feel about that, but apart from one or two vague disses of "academic medicine" it's all pretty harmless.)
I am itching to spend more time on art soon when I've finished that job, anyway, which makes me feel pretty optimistic. :>
Anyway, whatever downers there are, they are totally immaterial because Eastercon starts Friday. Fuck yes.
* Monday, and I still have the song stuck in my head. XD
I doodle on my Japanese notes sometimes to remind me what certain kanji mean, and I quite liked what I drew for "animal", so I expanded it.
I was at ACS for my slightly-bigger-Germans class on Monday*, and someone was watching "Prince of Egypt" in the music room across the hall, and I thought hey! I remember that film being super epic! I should look it up!
So later that day I looked it up on YouTube and found the entire film: woo! Pretty art! Music! Ralph Fiennes's voice! (Also, Ralph Fiennes's voice. ♥_♥)
But then I read some of the comments. which reminded me that shit, some people really believe this stuff. And then I started thinking about all the various crappy things people do to each other in the context of religion, or fighting about religion, and then I couldn't really pretend it was still just a prettily presented myth and nothing was fun anymore. (Except for Ralph Fiennes's voice.)
Though what was kind of funny was the comment asserting that the Pharao's body was cursed to never rot (I'm no Egyptologist, but does that seem like a poorly chosen curse to put on an Egyptian to anyone else), and was found in the Red Sea a while ago.
In conclusion
Speaking of stuff, my excuse for not drawing more finished pieces in the last two weeks is that I got that translation job! 60 pages of a diet/recipe book. (Which has contained a lot more silliness than I expected about herbs that will give you spiritual strength and blood type diets and so on... I don't really know how to feel about that, but apart from one or two vague disses of "academic medicine" it's all pretty harmless.)
I am itching to spend more time on art soon when I've finished that job, anyway, which makes me feel pretty optimistic. :>
Anyway, whatever downers there are, they are totally immaterial because Eastercon starts Friday. Fuck yes.
* Monday, and I still have the song stuck in my head. XD
3 Comments // Comment at LJ
Tags:I'd pay Ralph Fiennes to talk at me; languages; life; movies; religion