Lana Del Rey - Born To Die
I am loving Lana Del Rey at the moment and you should love her too. Her album came out at the end of January so go and snap it up!
Monday, 6 February 2012
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Sunday Catch Up
Well I am currently at my parents house looking after their pets while they are away. They have chickens (bantams), two dogs (springer and staffie), one cat and two gerbils. So far everyone has been very well behaved. My fiancé came down and stayed the night but went back today because he has work today.
So yesrerday we went to Wimpy because he had never been! For those who might not know, Wimpy is a fast-food chain that started in the 30's. It's like a British version of McDonalds but has table service, proper knives and forks, proper plates and pots of tea. Very civilised. They also do quorn burgers now so that was pretty awesome. I love Wimpy restaurants, they're so much nicer than McDonalds or Burger King type places.
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| Image by SaffyH |
We also went down to the seafront arcades to play on the Mario Kart arcade game!
As I've already mentioned this week we had Hourly Comic Day and I did draw comics for it, but I haven't finished inking them so I'll be uploading those later this week hopefully. We went to Canterbury for the day so it should be fairly interesting. Usually I'm home all day so it makes a change!
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| Image from candyblog.net |
I also discovered coconut M&Ms this week! I haven't tried them yet as I am currently gorging on pineapple pieces but I will report once I've eaten them! Although the sexy female M&M weirds me out.
In other news I discovered this lovely lady last night and thought I had better share! Also that was some wicked alliteration! FeministFrequency is pretty cool and Anita makes some really good, clear points about feminism and pop-culture. Her aim is to make feminism accessible and easy to understand because it's often very academic and stuffy. She also does a great job of dispelling all the stupid myths pushed by the media that give feminism and feminists a bad name. Whether you consider yourself a feminist or not, especially if not, check out her videos.
Toy Ads and Learning Gender
Edit: THE SNOW! It snowed during the night and now we have a good 15cm of snow covering everything. The dogs are okay with it, although the staffie keeps giving me "whyyy?" looks from the shed. The cat has disappeared as usual. The chickens are in their little house peering out and clucking at the snow, the cockerel gave me a look of "REALLY?" when I first opened the door then turned around as if saying to his wives "you won't believe what this stupid human expects us to do". I managed to take a couple of rubbish pictures on my phone so I might edit this later.
Edit: THE SNOW! It snowed during the night and now we have a good 15cm of snow covering everything. The dogs are okay with it, although the staffie keeps giving me "whyyy?" looks from the shed. The cat has disappeared as usual. The chickens are in their little house peering out and clucking at the snow, the cockerel gave me a look of "REALLY?" when I first opened the door then turned around as if saying to his wives "you won't believe what this stupid human expects us to do". I managed to take a couple of rubbish pictures on my phone so I might edit this later.
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Something For The Weekend
Something to read:
What would album covers look like without the deceased band members?
How, and why, would you declare yourself socially bankrupt?
The art of learning to love your body, regardless of it's shape or size, and also what it's like being a plus size girl in a skinny world.
Are you a writer? Strange Chemistry have flung open their doors for just two weeks so if you write speculative fiction for young adults and teenagers, head on over! Also, as a writer are you a researcher or an observer, and which works best?
If you fancy yourself as a photographer then here's some tips on food photography or 'how to make anything look delicious'.
Something to make:
Something to eat:
I need to try this, peanut butter and chocolate is like heaven.
I need to do this too.
Friday, 3 February 2012
Feature Friday: Hourly Comics Day
It was Hourly Comics Days on Wednesday! For those who don't know it's basically a day where you draw a comic depicting something you did for each hour of the day. So you might draw you having breakfast at eight o'clock, you walking to the shops at nine o'clock, you getting distracted by a cute dog on the way home at ten o'clock and so on until you go to bed. To find out more visit the website!
So did you take part this year? If you did them let me have the link to your comic so I can be nosy and have a look! This is the one my fiancé drew:
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| Check out JezMM to see it in all it's glory and the other stuff he draws |
See what other people created here! I did draw a comic myself I just haven't finished inking it yet but I'll post it once it's done.
So, if you're interested in drawing comics this is a fun way to give it a try because it's nothing serious and you can just mess around. Plus you don't have to think of a story because it's just about your day, so that's done for you. It doesn't need to be funny or even all that interesting so that takes a lot of pressure off.
Later in the year there is 24 Hour Comic Day where you draw an entire comic within 24 hours. You can't plan it or anything beforehand either! So that's another thing to think about if you want to give comics a go and feel like throwing yourself in at the deep end.
Thursday, 2 February 2012
Thursday Thought: Comics
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| Image by Bybyy |
Yesterday was Hourly Comic Day so I thought we'd look at comics again! You probably know by now that I love comics (and when I say comics here I mean everything from comic strips to graphic novels) so bear with me. If you don't like comics then...let me know why. I'd really like to know.
Seeing as this blog mostly focuses on books and I want to be a published novelist one day *crosses fingers*, I thought that I'd chat a bit about comics and their place in literature, or in other words how comics are cool and you should read them. So here we go!
Firstly, like I said comics to me encompass from those little strips you get in the newspaper to great big tomes on the shelves of bookshops. They're all different but all have the same core, words and pictures working together to tell you a story and get a point across.
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| Image by Danny Haas |
Comics divide opinion and I think that a lot of that comes from people not really understanding comics. They're often still thought of as those thin, papery things that kids read. Comics are about talking dogs, super heroes and cats that love lasagne...right? Those who read comics or are around people who read them usually understand much more that comics can cover all sorts of subjects and are certainly not just for kids. In fact there's an awful lot out there that are shrink-wrapped and kept on high shelves for a reason...no I don't just mean the erotic ones I'm talking about the violent ones too. There's also a lot that kids simply wouldn't understand because they cover more adult subjects that only grown ups can really relate to. How many twelve year olds would want to read about a twenty year old trying to come to terms with adulthood? Or about the day to day ups and downs of a couple's relationship? Or about a violent gang of criminals who smoke and drink and swear and...wait...maybe that's not such a good example.
Obviously there are tons of superhero comics and comics about talking animals and all that, and there are tons of comics for kids too. But that's not all that there is. There is so much more out there.
Can a comic be literary? Of course it can. Actually, I think that more comics have moved me than novels. I also tend to get more excited about comics than novels, for some reason that I'm not entirely sure of.
Just because something has pictures doesn't make it any less important, profound or good than a novel. Picture books are amazing and I adore picture books. It makes me sad that people grow out of them or find it a novelty to read them. I love reading picture books. I often buy them for myself and for my boyfriend because they are awesome. Not in an ironic way but simply because they are. Comics work the same way for me. Just because it has pictures doesn't mean it's silly or childish. In a comic the pictures and the words have to work together to tell the story. It's not like a script or like a piece of art. The two have to work in unison. It's why comics can be such a pain to write and to draw.
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| Eiichiro Oda's desk. Creator of One Piece. |
Not all comics are good. Not all books are good either. So just because you've read a bad comic doesn't mean you should condemn them all to being pointless fluff or overly violent or whatever. There are some amazing comics out there.
Some of my favourites are:
There's lots more but I think that's enough for now, I'm sure I'll make another post one day and tell you some more.
To continue: I don't really understand how comics can be considered geeky. If comics are geeky then surely books are too? Or you know what, maybe neither are? I also don't really understand how that's an insult. It just means that you're really into something, that you enjoy it a lot and you're knowledgeable about it. How is that a bad thing?
“Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.' Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself.” John Green
Comic books are quite simply just another form of storytelling and personally I think that anything that can get people reading is fantastic. But you shouldn't devote yourself to just one thing and turn your nose up at another. Books and comics can live side by side, you can adore them both. You can also love reading and still love watching films and playing video games. You can have it all. With these kinds of things you really can have your metaphorical cake and eat it. You might not like all the books out there or all the comics, I'd be very surprised if you did, but don't give up on them. There are so many comic book and a lot of novels have comic books versions too. Everything from Pride and Prejudice to Twilight, Artemis Fowl to The Bible. Keep trying, that's what libraries are for.
Read. Read lots. Read anything. Read comics.
Also read these links if you want to:
Faith Erin Hick's on: How Drawing Comics is my Job, the Financial End of Things and a follow up post.
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Coveted Cover: The Future of Us
I love this cover, it's so colourful! I also really, really need to read it because it sounds so good and I love 90s nostalgia.
From Goodreads:
It's 1996 and less than half of all American high school students have ever used the Internet. Facebook will not be invented for several more years. Emma just got a computer and an America Online CD-ROM with 100 free hours. When she and her best friend Josh log on to AOL they discover themselves on Facebook... fifteen years in the future. Everybody wonders what life has in store for them.Josh and Emma are about to find out.
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