famous writers and their pets

Maurice Sendak with Herman

"I hate people."

Donna Tart and Pongo

“My dog has a number of acquaintances of his own species — as do I — but it is abundantly clear to both of us that there is little company in all the world which we enjoy so much as each other’s.”

Ernest Hemingway and one of his many cats

“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings,

but a cat does not.”

Mark Twain and his kitty
“Some people scorn a cat and think it not an essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.”

{Source}

Plan A

I've been reading this for quite a while now. Since i've been interested with food and beverage tasting (but not yet successfully good with cooking heheh) one of my plans soon is to invest in a good bar/resto-gallery business. It's something that i would like to do aside from doing art. I don't know where, i don't know what location i might end up, but i'm determined to make it happen. I've been somewhat traveling in nearby areas, listing some cuisines and drinks that caught my interest in the past few months.

A good place where people can go enjoy food and drinks, listen to good music and view awesome art --- I already have some ideas, the concept, the design in my head, and i'm going to lay it out one of these days to get a clearer picture. I think i just need to collaborate with someone who knows food and beverage well because i admit that's not my expertise. Somebody who is passionate about food as i am passionate about arts and can synchronize with my love for music, who can also develop the idea with me. Even if i don't know much about F&B biz, surely, i can help grow things in terms of operations and marketing. I want to have a copy of this book for some inspiration.

It's also a perfect timing that i am currently working in a gallery. I'm learning more on how a gallery operates in terms of management and finance. In my heart, i can clearly visualize the gallery that i would like to handle -- very much an "art for art's sake" one. Something that will fuse much to music as well.

All of the things close to my heart : art + music + good food&drink. Then i can just settle down peacefully and live a happy life. Sounds like a good plan.

Cat's Paws and Catapults

After months, finally finished this read.

* * *

"That each technology is a coherent entity, remarkably distinct from the other, can be either advantage or disadvantage. Perhaps the best encapsulation, if a trifle trite, is that nature shows what's possible." - Steven Vogel

book art

A 3D book sculpture created from a 1892 Boys Own Annual by Bristol-based artist Alexander Korzer-Robinson. He cuts up antiquarian books to create layered works of art.

View more at The Telegraph.

Images from the article source.

in the last few chapters; art and composition

The artist hangs his brains upon the wall and there they remain without explanation or defense. The crowd as it passes, enjoys or jeers, as the ideas of this mute language are comprehended or confounded. Art requires no apology and asks none; all she requests is that those who would affect her must know the principles upon which she works. An age of altruism should be able to insure to the artist sufficient culture in his audience so that his language be understood and that his speech be not reckoned as an uncertain sound. The public should form with him an industrial partnership, not in the limited sense of giving and taking, but of something founded on comprehensibility.

--- from H.R. Poore's Pictorial Composition And The Critical Judgment of Pictures

(Louvre photo from tumblr source)

on art and composition

Started my day by reading this relevant piece:


Art began with the first touch of man to shape things toward his ideal, be that ideal an agreeable composition, or the loftiest conception of genius. Art is head-and-hand work and a creation deserves the name of art according to the quality and quantity of this expended on it. Simply sit down squarely before a thing and imitate it as an ox would if an ox could draw, with no thought or intention save imitation and the result will cry from every line, ‘I am not art but machine work,’ though its technique be perfection.

Toil over arrangement and meditate over view-point and light, and though the result be the rudest, it will bear tell you art begins when man with thought, forming a standard of beauty, commences to shape the raw material toward it. In other words when he exhibits choice and preference, when, in short, he composes. :)


--- from H.R. Poore's Pictorial Composition And The Critical Judgment of Pictures, quoting for my friend Perrine Renoir whose impressive doodles inspire me.

The Sandman

I finally finished Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Series. From Preludes and Nocturnes to

The Wake, I couldn't put a volume down until i get to the last page.

The Endless siblings: Destiny, Delirium, Despair, Desire, Destruction, Dream and Death

Dream and his library of stories.

Brokenhearted Dream.

I have to stop reading just to stare at this for minutes. The gates of hell is so detailed. 

Dream spending time with his younger sister Delirium is always the odd

but funny and adorable scene. 

How would you feel about life if death was your older sister?

Farewell Maurice

"I'm totally crazy, I know that. I don't say that to be a smart ass, but I know that that's the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that's fine. I don't do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can't not do it." ~ Maurice Sendak (June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012)

Farewell Maurice. Here's to a wild rumpus.

Hideaway

Rumpus Reprise

books, cute purse, and nando navarro

I always believed that books should be read and not kept in a shelf for years. Dusty books are lonely books. So i gave two of my favorites to a friend. There's this impalpable thread that connects people who share books with each other. That's why i love libraries. A huge room filled with books is a meeting place of a thousand lives. And a person who reads meet these thousands. :)

I really like this pretty Palawan coin purse Mikibear gave me.

It's very timely to the fare hike, heheh. Mahirap mag-store ng tig-bente-cinco sa wallet. 

 Guys, meet Nando Navarro.

I'm practicing film photography again. Good thing, Kuya Toto left Nando for safekeeping so i don't need to buy a new film SLR. Nando is still in good shape, i tested few shots on Mori yesterday. Another inspiring thing to do to keep the creativity flowing while painting. I'm planning to buy a lomo cam for christmas but i want to restart with the manual film process first. This is going to be fun. I already got two photoshoot bookings: Googs' graduation day and Alain's birthday pasiklab. :)

Turner

I finally finished J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) The World of Light and Color. This is one of those books with chapters that i love to digest thoroughly. I've learned so much and i'll be keeping this as constant reference for future projects.

I like Turner's Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway (1844, oil on canvas, London, The National Gallery). Probably because I was struck by how vivid the impression of rapid motion in the observational movement going on from top to bottom of the painting. The speed of how the observer perceives the flow of colour and the motion itself are a reality experience. His ability to interpret the structures either not at all or only in part is really interesting. This does not mean that the painting is incomplete, merely that it leaves the interpretation of the elements almost completely to the observer. It was not the shape of things nor the painting's composition but the character of motion that gives the impulses and directional force that makes the audience form his own view of this world.

Upon finishing the book, I realized that I made so much notes per chapter. :) 

Self-portrait, 1799

Oil on canvas, London, The Tate Gallery

"Colour does not merely depict colour. Colour is colour. Wherever colour can appear in pictorial form in accordance with its own laws of manifestation, there it reveals its nature as reality." ~ Turner, Michael Bockemühl

carpe diem

Long live the glory of the betamax days! This film will forever seize a special spot in my life.

:)

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is full of passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.”

—  Dead Poet’s Society (1989)

{clip of one of my fave scenes; and a nostalgic soundtrack)

Carpe Diem. Sieze the day. Make your lives extraordinary. 

{images from google and tumblr}

Question 8: What book have you read the longest?

The diurnal of death of the world is a slow death. Earth and sky begin to merge into each other. The earth rises and seems to spread like a mist. The first stars tremble as if shimmering in green water. Hours must pass before their glimmer hardens into the frozen glitter of diamonds. I shall have a long wait before i witness  in the profound darkness of true night, the soundless frolic of shooting stars.
~ Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This is the longest i've read ~ started last year and finished only this month. I couldn't let it end. I want to go on reading it forever. I took my own slow flight and kept routing and landing back to the pages i love the most. I'll probably read it again one of these days
and the years to come. 

{photo source}

looking forward

To finish this book (which is giving me nicer ideas to improve my work execution). 

And this.

*fingers crossed, Lancashire

that eye is like to this eye

That eye is like to this eye

{watercolour and graphite}

*I'm leisurely reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. I was inspired to do something for this riddle:

An eye in a blue face, saw an eye in a green face.

"That eye is like to this eye" Said the first eye,

"But in low place, not in high place."

I know it's about sun and daisies but i like how lines from a book leads one thing to another.

Sort of mind synthesizer, a compound that grows in your head.

series of books

I finished George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords (made me cry), A Feast of Crows (made me so devastated, i missed Robb Stark so much), and A Dance of Dragons. I'm looking forward to The Winds of Winter (warning: chapter spoiler, click link at your own risk) which i heard will come out after two years pa. GRRM, you're such a life-ruiner hahah. Anyway, A Clash of Kings will be shown at HBO this coming April. I love the series. The feeling gives me the same chill from reading J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of The Rings Trilogy. Speaking of Tolkien, i want to read The Hobbit. 

I'm currently reading Brisingr by Christopher Paolini. I finished Eragon and Eldest two years ago but forgot some details vital in undestanding some plots in Brisingr so i flipped back those two last holiday break. I'm really intrigued on how Eragon and Saphira will end the Galbatorix rule (right now, i'm in the chapter where the prospect of defeating the Empire's mad king and Murtagh-Thorn is impossible, let's see how Paolini will surprise me). So after Brisingr, i'm off to Inheritance. 

In between reading my fave Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and the series mentioned above, i'm also leisurely reading Cats' Paws and Catapults.

So far, i enjoy it despite the serious science.

*I dive into a book depends on the mood so i read a couple or three and still keep up with the other.

I know it's confusing but i like the challenge. It helps me cure memory loss

and do some brain exercise.

Peculiar

I was am sick so i'm stuck in my nest for four days now. I tried to do things, went out to visit places and work on with my school documents, tried to forget about getting sick, and moved on with my week -

but i just got sicker, hahah, so i took a serious non-cheated rest.

While in the middle of not faking my hybernation, i read this book...

Creepy cover isn't? Wait til i show you few photographs from the book.

And these two are my most favorites.

Curious? Go here. 

Ps. These are authentic vintage found photos taken eons of years ago. 

*All images belong to the book

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

and the personal archives of photo collectors from Mr. Rigg's list.

Foxes on the prowl

Foxes on the prowl
{watercolour on paper}

My Grandma used to tell us stories about creatures that prowl on Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead widely known as All Souls Day). The one that stayed with me as i grew up is the tale of the grey foxes that prowl the mountains and the skies to find children who do not eat vegetables and soup. They take the children with them on the eve of the 1st of November and they were never seen again. And yes, as the story unfolds, i learned to eat ampalaya (bitter fruit) and other sour-tasting veggies. 

"Sleep is not, Death is not; Who seems to die live.

House you were born in, friends of your spring-time,

Old man and young maid, day's toil and its guerdon,

They are all vanishing, fleeing to fables,

Cannot be moored."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sabine is waiting

Sabine is waiting
{watercolour and graphite}

For my friends who i don't see often, but who are with me in thought and spirit. We will always be connected by these dots under the same skies. How cool is that, huh? :) 

*Artwork inspired by Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine.

I fell sick this week (hereyehgo overfatigue hahah) so i'm happy that the weather is better. I missed the sun. 

Saturday afternoon at South

Twenty-something Women on the Hill

Twenty-something Women on the Hill

{watercolour and graphite}

"That what constitutes the dignity of a craft is that it creates a fellowship,
that it binds men together and fashions for them a common language."
~ Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Mickey and Minnie, Uma and Uno, books and more books

Birthday cupcake given by the Gelpi Family, together with a sketchpad. Yay, new blank pages!

I honestly don't have any idea why they picked a matching Mickey Mouse cupcake and Minnie Mouse gift wrapper, hahah. I can't remember owning and walking around in anything Mickey and Minnie. Though, it's really cute. It made the surprise a surprise.  :P 

Saw Uma and Uno weeks ago. Uno is her DSLR, tadaah.. 

Visiting my sister's on-the-job training, I came across the selection of books on display by their office.

Really interesting stuff.

How I wished I can own them all. But my apartment cannot hold any more books. My portashelves are already on the verge of bursting and I don't know where else to put my other art materials. Someday, I'll create a room just for all of it in my dream house.