Rat Creature's Journal

( spoilers for SPN 5x05 Fallen Idols )

( spoilers for SPN 5x03 )

( spoilers for Merlin 2x01 )

I went to see the new Star Trek movie last night: ( mostly squee )

So is there any fannish infrastructure for the rebooted Star Trek universe yet? Communities, newsletters, that kind of thing?

( random quick comments, spoilers for SCC 2x14 )

( spoilers for Dexter 3x08; I haven't watched the preview or spoilers for next week though )

( spoilers for SGA 5x15 Remnants )

( spoilers for SPN 4x09 )

( spoilers for SGA 5x02 )

I've just finished reading Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I picked it up because I was looking for something to read in the library, and I recognized the title because a couple of people on my f-list had mentioned the series. Also I have a soft spot for emo teenagers (I mean, I liked Roswell, and Everwood for example). Though I think this is the level of OTT teenage angst where even I get annoyed with the protagonists.

I'm actually not decided on what my final verdict on this book is. On the bright side, considering how little actually happens over the 500 pages, it is a fast and pleasant read. Not great with the language or anything, but it kept me reading well enough. Even though, like I said, almost nothing really happens. Granted, the print wasn't small and there was good amount of white space so you could probably have fit it on fewer pages but still. Barely any action and the heroine/POV character Bella tends to faint through it, so we miss it. Instead we get teen angst (more or less variations on "wah, he's so much more beautiful and graceful than ugly, clumsy me! how could he possibly like me? *sob*") and crying.

And as you might have gathered from my previous paragraph I wasn't that thrilled with the narrator Bella, and Edward -- the gorgeous vampire who likes Bella because she smells tasty, and more or less seems to angst over not eating her, while she angst over him being out of her league -- frequently annoyed me as well.

And yet I'm considering whether to read the sequel, so I can't honestly say that I disliked it. >.<

It's baffling.

( reaction with spoilers for ReGenesis 4x13, obviously )

( spoilers for Bones 3x15 )

Aaaah, I was so squicked by this ep, ( spoilers for SPN 3x15 )

( spoilers for SPN 3x13 Ghostfacers )

( cut because of spoilers for a fairly recent storyline )

A couple of weeks ago I borrowed Drawing and Painting Fantasy Beasts by Kevin Walker from my library (or rather the German edition of this), and I found it quite useful and interesting overall. Basically it's just a bunch fantasy creatures drawn as examples, but each creature comes with about four pages of step by step process description of the techniques used, and the different sketches and stages that went into the final work.

Initially I got it because I had never painted with acrylics, but generally found hobby painting books about acrylics my library had rather useless and boring. I mean, it's not that painting with some new medium was like repairing a motorcycle or any of the other things for which you really need either instruction or a book rather than just muddling along, and there's only so much variation to the theme of "you put color pigment on a surface" anyway, but this book has a neat introduction section that just lists different techniques with a little picture of how it looks, which makes it easier to try things than unguided trial and error and I'm lazy like that. Also I wanted to do dragons anyway, and this has examples of fantasy art done with acrylic paint (other techniques too) with step-by-step pictures, so that seemed like a good match.

The first part of the introduction is just the usual list of drawing and painting materials, and rather pointless. Frankly I wonder why nearly every such book feels the need to recap materials in a generic manner at the start. I mean, if you pick up a specialized drawing book you are most likely aware that there's a difference between watercolors, gouache, acrylics and oil paint, and that pastel chalk is different from oil pastels and so on. It's not that I haven't picked up some useful general info from skimming these chapters, because every now and then one will mention something I hadn't know of before, but overall I find them superfluous. Still, the list introducing the materials used is only four pages in this book, so it doesn't dwell, and then the introduction gets more specific with the neatly ordered examples of actually using the materials.

The main part is sections with fantasy beasts sorted by regions in which they supposedly live, and realized in a variety of techniques, both traditional and digital, though most involve acrylics or acrylics mixed with other media. I suspect that if you are already really experienced this book won't tell you much new, but since I've only started using acrylic paint it was useful to have illustrated examples like this for achieving different effects and textures, and getting ideas on what to do, though I have only tried a couple so far.

I've scanned a couple of pages to give you an idea of the way the process descriptions and illustrations look like, though obviously if you don't speak German the text of these scans that explain what was done in each step won't do much for you.
( a few example pages behind the cut )

( spoilers for 4x18 Kindred, part one )

( spoilers for SPN 3x11 )

So I got The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards out of the library, because of my vague intention to draw more this year, and look for exercise ideas. Well, actually I got the German translation which doesn't have anything about brain sides in the title (and I wouldn't have borrowed it if it had, frankly).

Anyway, my overall impression can be summed up as: "Wow, that's a lot of pseudo-scientific 'wawawa wawa' (you know, like the adults go in the Peanuts?) for a couple of simple drawing exercises." Seriously, I skipped most of the endless and idiotic "brain modes" talk (or whatever it's called in the original) about supposedly "tricking" your brain into something to browse for the actual drawing stuff, and it still grated on me.

Some of the exercises sounded okay for drawing practice, but you could have probably cut about 200 pages of mumbo-jumbo from the total 300 pages without loosing any significant drawing content.

( spoilers for SPN 3x05 Bedtime Stories )