As an illustrator and cartoonist foreshortening is one of my bigger weaknesses. Therefore I avoid it as much as possible. While this is doable in Rhapsodies on some of my other projects not so much. Therefore I found this tutorial very useful.
Today’s sketch is my last sketch from the Seattle Art Museum’s Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough exhibit. This one features Emma Hart, Lady Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson and the muse of George Romney in his painting “The Spinstress”
It looks like crow nesting season has been going on for at least a month now though I’m happy to say I didn’t notice it. Much as I am very fond of crows and all of their corvid cousins, I have also had the misfortune of having a favorite route that crosses into the comfort zone proximity of their nests. And in many of those instances I’ve been glad to have been wearing a hat. (For when they swoop down and try to peck, not any other form of attack! Clear that filth from your mind!)
Anyway I was coming back from Starbucks having done one of my “commutes” to my office when I heard a bunch of crows going berserk. At first I thought they were mobbing something until I saw a mostly grown fledgeling looking up plaintively. The always say you shouldn’t help young birds when you see them like this due to abandonment issues and such. But this time it was so tempting. Besides… from the noise overhead it was clearly not abandoned.
I played with this last year only to give up after doing two of them.
Anyway here is the third installment of my collection of favorite quotes. With any luck this time I’ll do a better job of making it a habit.
Today I’ll go with one of my current favorite science fiction authors, Iain M Banks. My taste in science fiction tends to lean towards space operas (or at least my definition of the term which involves stories taking place in interstellar civilizations) In this Banks delivers in spades. While his Culture series in not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea I can’t get enough of his prose and wit. When I heard he had less than a year to live due to inoperable cancer I was greatly saddened for yet another loss to literature.
Anyway as a first of hopefully many tributes to the man here is a description of the relative honesty of the artificial minds that run the Culture from Look to Windward,
“Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.”
Today’s Rhapsody is the Russian Rhapsody by Enri Lolashvili performed by Yuri Bashmet.
