i n v o c a t i o n s

After some careful looking, I think I've improved a little at drawing noses! YES!



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I've been out and about lately, which means (well, usually means) more graffiti photos. There's some 20+ new ones that I've added, and they can be found here. My favourite out of the recent lot:



YAY FOR ROBOTS!

Aside from that, I finally got off my butt and drew some stuff! They're just random bits from the last month or so.


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It's been a while. I can't believe it's 6 months into this year and a lot has changed. For one, I've only just starting seeing clients (as a psychologist in training) and the thought of it is downright scary. I also have been involved with research assistant work, bribing little kids with stickers to do language tests for me. Secondly, last Sunday (June 15) my boyfriend proposed and we're now engaged. So things have been frenetic over here!

The short winter break is here, so this means a bit more time for reading! (And perhaps posting some sketches and maybe writing.) My pick of books for the Herding Cats challenge has been dictated by what I could find in my local library or scrounged from friends, and here's what I ended up with:

1) Un Dun Lun, China Mieville. (Excited about this one; I loved Mieville's Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council!)
2) Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer.
3) American Born Chinese, Gene Yang.
4) Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clark.
5) The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera.*
6) Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh.
7) Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami.

*In the middle of reading this one!

Anyway, some reviews.

( Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. )


( American Born Chinese, by Gene Yang (graphic novel) )


( Shortcomings, by Adrian Tomine (graphic novel) )

Uni (postgrad!) is now taking over my life. I do have sketches, I swears, but haven't scanned them in yet. In the meantime:

I love reading, so I just had to get onto this challenge that Renay started! I thought I'd post it here, rather than my largely friends-only personal LJ.

So! The rules:
-- Make a list of ten books you love.
-- Share the list with Renay (and whoever else is participating).
-- Read three books from other people's lists by November 30th. And write reviews!

The more books the better, so do join and recommend some good books. ^^

Ten books that I love

1) Les Miserables, Victor Hugo.

2) The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy.

3) Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier.

4) Battle Royale [novel], Takami Koushun, translated by Oniki Yuji.

5) The "Gormenghast" Trilogy: Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone, Mervyn Peake.
I'm probably cheating a bit by listing three! The first two books are my true recommendations; they flow onto one another and I've only read the first two in their entirety. I've listed Titus Alone for the sake of completeness, but since it is so tangential to the rest of the trilogy, I believe the first two can stand alone.

6) Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen.

7) The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks. [Non-fiction]

8) Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes.

9) Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury.

10) Cloudstreet, Tim Winton.

When I have more time, I hope to edit this post to include a short bit about each book.

The three (or more) books that I'm going to read: TBA.

I'm going hiking in two days and I'm 90% packed and bored. I figured it was an okay time to waste time on LJ.

1) Eight new graffiti photos up. The orange one with the turtle on it is my favourite of this recent lot!

2) Some things I found in my officespace at uni:



(The postcard was really about raising awareness for schizophrenia)




Proof that Freud is a muppet.


3) Some charcoal sketches, including Selphie of FFVIII (G).


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Firstly, four new photos added to the graffiti set! I'd really like to go down to Fremantle because there's lots of interesting graffiti there. ^^

Secondly, a friend pointed me to this most excellent gallery of Dirty Car Art photos. This is much like another love of mine, reverse graffiti- two excellent examples are UK-based Paul Curtis and Brazilian artist Alexandre Orion. And while I'm mentioning alternate forms of graffiti, a very interesting one is Melbourne artist BUFFdiss' masking tape graffiti. One day I think I shall make the move into creating graffiti.

In other news, someone burned me some Korean drama (and Avatar: The Last Airbender) and so I watched My Name is Kim Sam-Soon. I found fault with it everywhere but I keep telling myself, "for heaven's sakes, it's (melo)drama, what can you expect!" Anyway, the usual deal- watched with sketchpad and marker in hand.




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My sister expressed some interest in seeing Princess Tutu and I was really happy about that! We watched the whole series during the past few days. I wrote some squee about the series after I first watched it. There's so much to love about this multifaceted series and characters (and to this end there are some shining examples of Tutu-fic floating around on the internets)— and that is exactly what intimidates me about writing for it. Things have been done, you know? An idea arrives, I open a blank Word document, then realise I don't know how to put words to it and besides, it's been done more beautifully before. "Do you want to save the changes to 'Document 1'?" N!

This time an okay starting sentence drifted to mind. I only ever seem to write short bursts of things so I thought it might be interesting to distill the scenes further to 100-word drabbles. Here's three; I wrote two more Rue-centric drabbles but I want to let them sit.


( If... )

I love daylight savings! It's 5:33pm and still bright outside, still lovely as it was when I was at Cottesloe beach earlier today. More hours of sunlight for me to enjoy!

So, some pencil/charcoal sketches. Next time I'm bringing a freakin' pencil sharpener.

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Pride and Prejudice- the BBC miniseries, not the sucky movie version starring Keira Knightley- is easily the best book-film adaptation. Ever! I bought the DVD duo last month to celebrate handing in a thesis and watched all 6 hours of it in one hit. Um, so I was watching it again last night (Mr Darcy, mmm!), and since I'm all itchy-fingers, watched with sketch pad in hand. XD

ETA: Two charcoal pages.

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I love graffiti, by which I mean marking a public space with the intent of conveying or challenging ideas, or just for the sheer decorative pleasure of it. But give me something witty, artistic, whimsical, interesting (aesthetically or conceptually) or just plain odd-- none of this tagging business or "call XXXXXXXXX for a good time".

I go around taking pictures of graffiti, too! I got off my butt and uploaded a whole bunch of graffiti photos I've taken (or ones that friends have found for me)- some from London, the rest of them from Perth- so if you're interested, do take a look around. ^^

More sketches, this time trying to outline whole figures before adding detail, as per Kim's suggestion. I took the easy path by drawing my brother, who was in front of the Playstation. He's quite an animated player but he invariably settles back into familiar positions. Then I sat in front of a mirror and tried to draw myself.

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Summer is more or less here and I am on holiday, so today I went to the beach! The mission was to sleep in the sun, have a dip in the still water and read my book (re-reading The Farthest Shore, by Ursula Le Guin). Also, to sketch if I felt like it, in a small bid to get into figure drawing a bit more. ^^ So here's a few unexciting pen sketches from the little A5 book. ^^

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I was reading the EXPLOSION of discussion on bottle_of_shine's scientific poll about Squall.

So this is just something silly prompted by this comment here.


Figure 1. Squall and Rinoa With Emoticon Usage

This is a birthday present for mithrigil (it's currently 23 minutes past her birthday here, but I'm sure it's still her birthday over there!), who wondered if Sandman could ever be integrated into something I did.

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Title: the king of jump rope and the athlete queen
Fandom: FFIX (OMG A NON-FFVIII FIC. This must be the first fic I've written for IX. So as always, comments are welcome.)
Characters/Pairing: Vivi and Eiko
Rating: G
Warnings: None


Notes: For bottle_of_shine's Trick or Treat ficbit meme, prompted by moonphased. This, too, came out of nowhere! Thanks must go to my sister for beta-reading the draft of this story.

( Eiko pays Vivi a visit. )

Title: His Ghosts
Fandom: FFVIII
Characters/Pairing: Squall/Rinoa
Rating: PG
Warnings: It's a Halloween prompt, 'nuff said.


Notes: For bottle_of_shine's Trick or Treat ficbit meme, prompted by alyssame. This one came out of nowhere!

( He dreams, past the witching hour of the night. )

Title: Alone
Fandom: FFVIII
Characters/Pairing: Rinoa, Squall, Ellone.
Rating: PG
Warnings: None, really.


Notes: For bottle_of_shine's Trick or Treat ficbit meme, prompted by cyrnelle.

( The end is the beginning is the end )

Title: saltwater
Fandom: FFVIII
Characters/Pairing: Seifer, Edea
Rating: PG
Warnings: Allusions. Always allusions.

Notes: For bottle_of_shine's Kissing Battle, requested by siva630.

( Is he eight or eighteen? Man or boy? )

Title: when the war is over
Fandom: FFVIII
Characters/Pairing: Cid/Edea
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: "Ain't nobody going to steal this heart away." -- Cold Chisel

Notes: For bottle_of_shine's wonderful Kissing Battle, requested by drakonlily.

( when the war is over... )

Amy liked the painting! [dances] Most wonderful is that she recognised the place immediately ("We ate lunch there, I remember") and even the time ("That was on the hike where you injured your knee!"). I was amazed!

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