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December 19, 2014

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For this sketch, my own taste leans to the runny ink one, but without the added yellow and green. And yes, you should totally draw that bottle of sumi ink with the dip pen. Cheers!

Had a singular moment with this drawing and it was all to do with the scribbles at the ends of the pens, top right. Touching on the fact that realism can be arrived at by unrealistic means. The scribbles are offhand in a straightforwardly representational drawing. Yet the scribbles work.

Perhaps I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't reached a sub-climax in my present novel: daughter and mother are staring at an impressionistic portrait of the daughter. Close up the skin tones are composed from unlikely combinations of colours, while the structure of the head is built up from interlocking pentagons. Three metres away the portrait becomes something else. The mother describes what she sees, avoiding jargon, abstractions and waffle. I had fun; hope you had fun with those artful scribbles.

Soon, if it hasn't already happened, music will have absorbed you. 'Tis the season. I assume sometime or another you'll have done the Christmas Oratorio. Competing with those glorious drums during the introductory chorus. I was struck this time by the way JS implies both the birth and the resurrection: expectation and triumph

Jauchzet, frohlocket! auf, preiset die Tage,
Shout for joy, exult, rise up, glorify the day,
Rühmet, was heute der Höchste getan!
praise what today the highest has done!
Lasset das Zagen, verbannet die Klage,
Abandon hesitation, banish lamentation,
Stimmet voll Jauchzen und Fröhlichkeit an!
begin to sing with rejoicing and exaltation!

Have a good one.

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Who was Cassandra?


  • In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well, you know what happened.

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