I aten't dead
Yeah, I know. I've been quite scarce on LJ these days. I was there, sometimes, but I found myself unable to leave comments that didn't turn out unnecessarily whinny or aggressive, so I erased quite as quickly as I wrote! It was nice to lurk around and read fics, though. But I'll admit that I felt stressed enough that I didn't wish to read angsty or sad stories. And erm. I didn't click much on art links, because it made me feel guilty that I couldn't finish anything! But hey, this makes me quite a few good stories and drawings to go back to and enjoy later :) I really hope I will be more around now, as the material reasons why I couldn't spend a lot of time online are more or less over.
So this post is going to me the mega post of doom where I tell all the things that no one cares about and post about one month of random things!
A good reason why I couldn't be so much online is that I had a deadline for the Quidditch calendar, and that I had so few time and so much stress that I couldn't finish, but finally, I made it, only twenty-four hours late!
I can't show you the finished pic, as ashkitty requires that we don't upload our work before the calendars are ordered, but under the cut is the very preliminary sketch I made.
In the final drawing, I substantially modified the perspective and background, kept the position and pose of the two foreground characters but changed the orientation of the third one. And it was a great occasion to use more rasta colours and make something that looked like the arid landscapes that I love most!
The complete, finished pic will be the month of August in the 2005-2006 Quidditch calendar. I can't wait to see the other months! If you want to order one, all informations are in ashkitty's LJ. For the moment, they're still making the layout and assembling everything, but she says it's going to be ready soon.
I'm glad that I made it nearly in time, because I never had been obliged to draw in such a stressful context, and I realised this month that I fing that sketching is a way to relax when work is being difficult... But that finishing drawings, with choices to make in real media, such as deciding for a colour and having no way back, or finding enough concentration not to mess up details, or believing that a drawing will end good when it's in the awkward stage is HARD!
I wanted to make another drawing for John Howe's site, and I had an idea for the month theme, but I couldn't go past the sketch...
This one was for John Howe's challenge for may, "sailing away"
And this one is really only a doodle, and I still hope it may become a pic for the June challenge, which is about hands. But I'm probably going to have better ideas if I'm all right, or no time to draw if I'm not.
Third! Long ago, in a galaxy far away, nebulaean tagged me for the book meme.
1. Total number of books owned? I should count in shelves and piles near the couch and bed, rather. That makes, huh? Countless unsteady piles? And two-and-a half shelved walls? Oh god. And there are so many that I left at my parents'!
2. The last book you bought? Bad French fantasy that I still can't finish reading. It's called La Moira, written like the essay of a well meaning twelve years old. The guy seems to think that he has to add 'she thought that' each time he writes in someone's point of view, he doesn't control the timeline and maturing of his characters, and though the publishers, as always, compare the plot to LOtR, it is rather like a bad D&D RPG. Argh. It's not translated in English or other language than French, and you don't lose anything!
3. The last book you read? Petits suicides entre amis, the French translation of a book by a Finnish author, Arto Paasilinna. The French title means something like 'little suicides between friends', and this is a book I loved to read. It's a bit absurd, gently ironical toward Finnish people and Finland but very tender, subtle but very funny, and surprisingly, given that the main plot revolves around suicide, has a very optimistic happy ending.
4. Five books that mean a lot to you? I'll interpret this not so much as the books I prefer (it changes all the time!). Rather as books that made me change or made me discover new things.
The Lord of the Rings will be first, because it's probably the book(s) that I reread the more often. For a long time, I carried around a single book paperback British edition that I bought in Wales when I was fifteen. I used to read it every one or two years, until the day when it split in two (near Helm's Deep!) and I had to buy a three books edition. This is the books that made me discover fantasy, and also that made me write in a rather funny English for some time. During English courses I used to settle in a corner reading either LotR or Raymond Chandler's novels, arguing that it was in English when the teachers said something...
What do I love in LotR? Probably the more than fully fleshed world. There are forest I could get lost in, and mountains that feel real and I always have the impression that there are other mountains and forests and deserts and cities and villages behind the ones that are described. Also, the Hobbits make the story human! And I like Aragorn very much. Hey, I love my fictionnal men with dark hair and grey eyes!
The second would be one of Jule Verne's books, probably vingt mille lieues sous les mers or l'île mystérieuse (don't know the English titles). I read these books when I was seven or eight, and they are the first I remember reading. At this age, I used to pick up anything from my parents' shelves, and read it very quickly, and I didn't understand a thing. But I remember Verne's books very well, and I also remember reading them under the bedsheets while my parents thought I was sleeping.
Third? The Harry Potter series, of course. I had to put them in! I actually like how Rowling writes, because her very simple style goes well with a children story for grownup people. And though I know some people disagree, I actually think that she's being rather subtle with the characterisation, because she plays with the stereotypes of the very black and white fantasy/fairy tale universes. Ah, Snape, with his moral ambiguity and his doing well for wrong reasons or doing bad for good reasons, what a great character he is! Also, there's something I enjoy very much in the series and miss in fanfiction, it's the creativity and the everyday feeling of the magical universe.
Fourth? I should pick a Discworld book, but I don't know which one! I admire Terry Pratchett for his ability to recycle existing fantasy and literary universes while remaining original, absolutely funny and while writing fully fleshed characters. As my favourite characters are the three witches, and especially Esme Weatherwax (you can't know how close she is to my mother, except for the being a virgin detail...), I'll say maybe Witches Abroad? Or Carpe Jugulum? But I love Lord and Ladies (because elves are finally put where they should be!), or the first whose English title I can't remember just now.
And Fifth? Emile Zola's Germinal. I had to read it in class when I was fourteen, and I began it thinking that I wouldn't like it, because wordy, description heavy nineteenth century authors weren't what I loved at the time. And I loved it. I tells the story of a long, difficult strike in a coal mine. It's harsh, real, there's some hope, and then ends like most strikes do: with nearly nothing won, for that time. There's suspense, there are heroes and people that can only break, and fully fleshed characters. And it felt also like a fight worth having, and an important part of my history as a French woman.
5.As for the tagging five other people to do it, heh. Are there people who weren't tagged? If so, I'll be enchanted to read more of this meme, because I love to know what books you read! So consider yourself tagged if you wish :)
And last, AAAAARGH! I need to rant about RL, sorry.
I just erased a long thing under a lj-cut,
I'm not even able to help people get positions when they deserve it, though I did everything I could. And what I can do to help (such as being a sort of unofficial PhD advisor) is exhausting, time consuming, and not enough. And what I like in my job is taking care of the first years students, which is more and more impossible and makes my colleagues counsel me to "stop doing it and think of my career", and fuck my career. And Franck is in danger of losing his job because the place he works may go bankrupt, so I can't leave to try to do something else (art?).
But from now on, I'll keep my week end free of work, will draw and go flying more, and enjoy LJ! yeah :D
So this post is going to me the mega post of doom where I tell all the things that no one cares about and post about one month of random things!
A good reason why I couldn't be so much online is that I had a deadline for the Quidditch calendar, and that I had so few time and so much stress that I couldn't finish, but finally, I made it, only twenty-four hours late!
I can't show you the finished pic, as ashkitty requires that we don't upload our work before the calendars are ordered, but under the cut is the very preliminary sketch I made.
In the final drawing, I substantially modified the perspective and background, kept the position and pose of the two foreground characters but changed the orientation of the third one. And it was a great occasion to use more rasta colours and make something that looked like the arid landscapes that I love most!
The complete, finished pic will be the month of August in the 2005-2006 Quidditch calendar. I can't wait to see the other months! If you want to order one, all informations are in ashkitty's LJ. For the moment, they're still making the layout and assembling everything, but she says it's going to be ready soon.
I'm glad that I made it nearly in time, because I never had been obliged to draw in such a stressful context, and I realised this month that I fing that sketching is a way to relax when work is being difficult... But that finishing drawings, with choices to make in real media, such as deciding for a colour and having no way back, or finding enough concentration not to mess up details, or believing that a drawing will end good when it's in the awkward stage is HARD!
I wanted to make another drawing for John Howe's site, and I had an idea for the month theme, but I couldn't go past the sketch...
This one was for John Howe's challenge for may, "sailing away"
And this one is really only a doodle, and I still hope it may become a pic for the June challenge, which is about hands. But I'm probably going to have better ideas if I'm all right, or no time to draw if I'm not.
Third! Long ago, in a galaxy far away, nebulaean tagged me for the book meme.
1. Total number of books owned? I should count in shelves and piles near the couch and bed, rather. That makes, huh? Countless unsteady piles? And two-and-a half shelved walls? Oh god. And there are so many that I left at my parents'!
2. The last book you bought? Bad French fantasy that I still can't finish reading. It's called La Moira, written like the essay of a well meaning twelve years old. The guy seems to think that he has to add 'she thought that' each time he writes in someone's point of view, he doesn't control the timeline and maturing of his characters, and though the publishers, as always, compare the plot to LOtR, it is rather like a bad D&D RPG. Argh. It's not translated in English or other language than French, and you don't lose anything!
3. The last book you read? Petits suicides entre amis, the French translation of a book by a Finnish author, Arto Paasilinna. The French title means something like 'little suicides between friends', and this is a book I loved to read. It's a bit absurd, gently ironical toward Finnish people and Finland but very tender, subtle but very funny, and surprisingly, given that the main plot revolves around suicide, has a very optimistic happy ending.
4. Five books that mean a lot to you? I'll interpret this not so much as the books I prefer (it changes all the time!). Rather as books that made me change or made me discover new things.
The Lord of the Rings will be first, because it's probably the book(s) that I reread the more often. For a long time, I carried around a single book paperback British edition that I bought in Wales when I was fifteen. I used to read it every one or two years, until the day when it split in two (near Helm's Deep!) and I had to buy a three books edition. This is the books that made me discover fantasy, and also that made me write in a rather funny English for some time. During English courses I used to settle in a corner reading either LotR or Raymond Chandler's novels, arguing that it was in English when the teachers said something...
What do I love in LotR? Probably the more than fully fleshed world. There are forest I could get lost in, and mountains that feel real and I always have the impression that there are other mountains and forests and deserts and cities and villages behind the ones that are described. Also, the Hobbits make the story human! And I like Aragorn very much. Hey, I love my fictionnal men with dark hair and grey eyes!
The second would be one of Jule Verne's books, probably vingt mille lieues sous les mers or l'île mystérieuse (don't know the English titles). I read these books when I was seven or eight, and they are the first I remember reading. At this age, I used to pick up anything from my parents' shelves, and read it very quickly, and I didn't understand a thing. But I remember Verne's books very well, and I also remember reading them under the bedsheets while my parents thought I was sleeping.
Third? The Harry Potter series, of course. I had to put them in! I actually like how Rowling writes, because her very simple style goes well with a children story for grownup people. And though I know some people disagree, I actually think that she's being rather subtle with the characterisation, because she plays with the stereotypes of the very black and white fantasy/fairy tale universes. Ah, Snape, with his moral ambiguity and his doing well for wrong reasons or doing bad for good reasons, what a great character he is! Also, there's something I enjoy very much in the series and miss in fanfiction, it's the creativity and the everyday feeling of the magical universe.
Fourth? I should pick a Discworld book, but I don't know which one! I admire Terry Pratchett for his ability to recycle existing fantasy and literary universes while remaining original, absolutely funny and while writing fully fleshed characters. As my favourite characters are the three witches, and especially Esme Weatherwax (you can't know how close she is to my mother, except for the being a virgin detail...), I'll say maybe Witches Abroad? Or Carpe Jugulum? But I love Lord and Ladies (because elves are finally put where they should be!), or the first whose English title I can't remember just now.
And Fifth? Emile Zola's Germinal. I had to read it in class when I was fourteen, and I began it thinking that I wouldn't like it, because wordy, description heavy nineteenth century authors weren't what I loved at the time. And I loved it. I tells the story of a long, difficult strike in a coal mine. It's harsh, real, there's some hope, and then ends like most strikes do: with nearly nothing won, for that time. There's suspense, there are heroes and people that can only break, and fully fleshed characters. And it felt also like a fight worth having, and an important part of my history as a French woman.
5.As for the tagging five other people to do it, heh. Are there people who weren't tagged? If so, I'll be enchanted to read more of this meme, because I love to know what books you read! So consider yourself tagged if you wish :)
And last, AAAAARGH! I need to rant about RL, sorry.
I just erased a long thing under a lj-cut,
I'm not even able to help people get positions when they deserve it, though I did everything I could. And what I can do to help (such as being a sort of unofficial PhD advisor) is exhausting, time consuming, and not enough. And what I like in my job is taking care of the first years students, which is more and more impossible and makes my colleagues counsel me to "stop doing it and think of my career", and fuck my career. And Franck is in danger of losing his job because the place he works may go bankrupt, so I can't leave to try to do something else (art?).
But from now on, I'll keep my week end free of work, will draw and go flying more, and enjoy LJ! yeah :D