The illustrations I’m doing for BW are black and white, and I felt like using colour. But I like the weird impersonal upright posture of “correct working position”, so, I did this for my own amusement. It’s going on etsy, later, so click back if you like it..

Fineliner pen (0.1), Winsor & Newton coloured inks

Here’s a re-post of the first section. It’s audio only, but I know how to upload to youtube and so I will use that knowledge! Just keep it open in a tab at the back while you do something else, if you feel you may be bored by a lack of visuals.

And here is the newly uploaded, recorded today SECOND PART. Three whole pages this time, o yes I SPOIL you! Our Hero Paullinus has reached the point of no escape, though the really monstrous happening are yet to surface.

I really would like constructive criticism on my reading. I will even help you; upon listening in order to edit I have noticed that I need to:

1. speak less portentously
2. make more differentiation between voices, or voices and narration
3. need to slow the heck down sometimes

for example! What else? Please tell me! I will say, “thank you”.

Hallo.

It may be spring, officially (or it may not? I’m not actually sure), but that does not mean it’s warm and balmy. No, I still need a double-layered underskirt and wool shorts to keep me comfortably warm. And a fine-knit woolen sweater.

I was going to hang around in the garden and draw flowers and bits of wood and such, because illustrating backgrounds (or; anything that isn’t people) is something that I don’t much do. Because I don’t like to, and subsequently when I need to it doesn’t come out very well, which again - makes me like it less. NO NO SHAMEFUL LAZINESS. Draw from life, draw from life!

But! Like I said. Too cold for only one skirt means too cold for bare fingers, so alas I must stay indoors.

I use my house arrest to watch the latest Linkara review and do other kinds of study. Today, I swallow my mad pride and study Tove Jansson’s Moomin* expressions. They are so painfully good. I say “mad pride” because, in my arrogance, I hate to admit that people have skills and knowledge I do not! It is ridiculous!

And so, la! Theme work!

‘Ow do you like my new scarf-pin? “New”; I found it in one of my local-ish antiques centers. How truly antique is it? Who can say! I don’t much mind; it does the job I need it for, and looks like an anemone. It doesn’t have the middle-nub, but I figure everyone’s entitled to modesty. Anemones are my favourite. Plus, it makes me feel a little safer and more practical. You never know when you may need to pin something to something!

Wore it to make my fire, too.

*I know, I know - I had the Little My nightmares too. But that was the cartoon, not the gorgeous gorgeous books or comic strips, and in the books? Her character is wonderful. My very favourite. Referring to her as an “action girl”, which TVTropes does, is a massive injustice. And she doesn’t have THAT VOICE.

Coming later today or tomorrow: Makeover Movie Madness SPOILERS edition 2: Desperately Seeking Susan

Unrelated: How good would a Vanessa Paradis / Kana duet/battle album be??

International Women’s Day! I hope you all had a good one. I wore purple, and green, but no white. I don’t really own white, because it requires you to be so careful when wearing it.

Have you ever read anything about Suffragette Jewelry? It’s very interesting. In political movements, particularly in the push for rights that are denied due to what is perceived as basic inequalities in the people who have and do not have them, image is terribly important. It’s used as a weapon by both sides, of course, but the underdogs are generally cleverer about it, I think. They have to be - if you can intrigue, visually, you have your foot in the door of a person’s opinions.

I’ve got my mind on the Suffragettes at the moment because I’ve been doing some illustration for Sherin and Orchid’s Political Awareness gig’s fliers. The aim is to get people who aren’t that fussed about voting interested and maybe a little bothered - but first things first: my part’s about getting them (you?) to the event in question.

When I asked for a basic brief, they said they wanted a goat motif involved somehow. Gotta have a gimmick, as the movie said! And honestly, the loose guidelines mixed with the one specific (weird) bit of imagery is right up my artistic alley. When I think “votes!”, I think “for women!”, so this was the natural port of call at the head of my list (if you want to see more, and the images in a later stage of ‘finishedness’, keep your ear to this ground):

I figure, that a goat-headed person is unusual enough to catch the eye of an uninterested party.

I allow that it might be taken as an insult to female voters - that would suck. I took pains to depict a benevolent (but not weak!) goatface, and to keep her posture capable. I’d hope that the pagan / faux-satanic air of subversion would keep the image from appearing straight-up offensive.

But to be honest, people who don’t care about voting probably don’t care about showing respect for women who were prepared to die and endanger for the right. When was the last time you heard someone truly, honestly “sing in grateful chorus, Well done, sister suffragettes?”

If you are me, never. So I am singing it now, via blog via youtube via film via book. Well done, sister Suffragettes! Your movement wasn’t perfect, but whose is? You paved a great road for us, and we shall continue to alleviate the tolls.

If you think you might be interested in giving any sort of help to a London multi-band gig that wants to inspire the yoof of today to care about their ability to vote, send Sherin and Orchid a note. Every little helps! Your daughters’ daughters will adore you.

They grew, of course!

>

That’s the garlic. Isn’t it fine? It’s not done yet, as you can see, but when it is.. there will be a lot. And I shall use it ALL!

Irises and crosuses (crocii still sounds better) too, though they’re in or nearing their prime already:

I think this type of iris is so weird looking. Like alien mouths.

I don’t know the names of the individual types of crocus. But I know that they are ridiculously easy to grow; put them in the ground, forget about them, be pleasantly surprised by small flower-cups!

This was an interesting texture - a rose hip that’s shriveled on the plant.

I hope I never stop being amazed at the colours that can be found in wood. This is burburis, which is apparently a very defensive plant. It’s danger-yellow when grazed, I’m told it’s poisonous-bitter, and it’s extremely thorny. Extremely. Ouch.

I spent twelve til four building and tending a bonfire of all the scrubby old dead crud left over at the end of a garden’s winter. It was a job of heaving and smoked eyes, trampling and poking and blowing and propping and coaxing and HEAVING HARDER. Ivy and other scrub tangles as easily as hair if left to its own devices! But I had a big shiny fork to help me, which was nice.

I’ve got no flippin’ clue why or when this went so crap. It was fine and sharp when I finished editing it.. fantastic.

It was a little bit like I had slain a forest spirit-beast; the branches on top of the bonfire were antlers and the weeds were its flankshag. Not the kind of death that makes you a villain, though. The kind that forges respect between the two involved, and makes you responsible for that area of woodland for example.

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna be posting these every day!

Plus: I’ve been twittering my discontent with Ian Holt and Dacre Stoker’s “official” sequel to Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula; Dracula: The Un-Dead. I drew this in the night, after reading a particularly enraging, faith-breaking passage. Please excuse my vendetta.. Dracula is just too darn GOOD.

Warning: Possible rape triggers

But! That is small-thinking left over from highschool, and I do like drawing with colour. And, like I said, Grannie. So here are two of my hand and one of my foot, in order of drawn - concrit appreciated!

This one makes me think of Archangel in those 90s art-only issues of X-Men they put out sometimes.

…Odd angle..

The crocii (crocuses?) are pretty today:

This is so cute!

Bonus: An Impression - The Miracle of Birth!

Been cleaning the house all day.. finally relaxing with Wayne’s World 2. One of the best films, this is. Y-M-C-A!

P.S. JOIN THE GREETINGS REVOLUTION

Oh I forgot! The best thing about these massive medieval pockets! They make it so easy to reach snax!

Him: It seems like the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament are training an airstrike unit for their next protest… But inkeeping with their liberal leanings, they aren’t against letting under-18s apply for the job!

Him: “You see the figure on the chimeny?”
“Yeah…”
“She’s demonstrating the correct launching-off point for our airstrike. Now–”
“Isn’t that a nuclear chimney?”
“…What was that about the chimeny?”
“Chimney. Isn’t a nuclear power station?”
“Well… There’s ‘nuclear’, and NUCLEAR nuclear. This plant is just nuclear.”
“Isn’t there a fundamental ideological flaw in launching an anti-nuclear airstrike from a–”
“SO THE NEXT SLIDE IS………”

Me:

Him: “WAIT WAIT! That chimney’s–”
“Chimeny.”
“–DEFINITELY nucular, ‘cos I used the shower at that facility this morning… What? My dad works there. So I used the shower, and now I have to wear this coat ALL the time or my blood falls out and I have to drink other peope’s!!”
“…Huh. Alright, MAYBE we should choose a different chimeny. Does anyone know of any?”
“You don’t need a take-off point if you outfit the wings with a VTOL system.”
“…Genius! But how can we fuel such a thing without sacrificing our anti-nuclear morals?!”
“Nucular….”

Me:

Him: Ok, mental block. But they’re in disguise to find a new source of power or… SOMETHING.
Me: What I was imagining was, they were pretending to have been RUINED AND MUTANTISED by nucular power, so that they had an excuse for using it for their advantage. Did you notice chubby frankie muniz?

Hope it gave you a pleasant enough pause!

Billie Jean Davy is seventeen and lives with her mother and her brother in a trailer park in Texas. When a massive jerk steals her brother’s bike she asks the police to bring it back, and is told that Hubie (the jerk) was “probably just trying to get your attention” because she’s “a pretty girl”. When she arrives home, the bike is trashed - and her brother is too, after trying to get it back.

Billie Jean takes Hubie a bill for the scooter’s repair, and his father tells her to come on upstairs for the money (he doesn’t keep that much in the till) after disparaging his son. She goes, and he gives her fifty dollars and expresses his intent to rape her. When she flees, Binx (her brother) accidentally shoots the bastard with the “unloaded” gun that’s kept in the till.. and Billie Jean and co are on the run.

The policeman Billie Jean originally went to is the one assigned the shooting case and realises, as soon as he sees her picture, that it’s his fool fault that it went so far. The story continues with Billie Jean (and Binx, and their two friends) on the run as outlaws, refusing to give themselves up until they’re paid the six hundred and eight dollars that they’re owed for the scooter’s repair. Hubie’s father refuses to pay, because he is an enormous jackass, so the whole thing goes on for ages, with Billie Jean becoming more and more clearly aligned with the ideas of justice and taking a stand. She also naturally blossoms as a leader and a carer and I love this movie please excuse how dry I am making it sound.

Anyway, at one of the peaks of her journey Billie Jean is introduced (by a kid she clearly finds mondo foxy (above)) to the story of Joan of Arc. She watches the black and white film to the end, and when it’s done she expresses her decision to make a video - answer the media’s accusations. She stops running, and starts to fight. When the video equipment is set up, Billie Jean emerges from the bathroom having gone from this:

To this:

Let’s lay aside for a moment that fact that BJ2 here reminds me fiercely of Amber from the Tribe, who is the only fourteen year old I might call “a personal hero”. The music for this scene is an instrumental section of the Benatar theme, and it’s perfect. Stirring, badass, a little on-edge; Billie Jean’s clearly a bit shy about her new hair, but the kind of shy that means I look amazing, I feel so good, so good it makes me vulnerable. The cutting of hair is so symbolic even apart from the Jeanne d’Arc ref (and it’s one of my favourite tropes, actually, as I quite strongly indicated in this post at BSB). It can mean so many different things.

The extreme removal of (head) hair has a pretty strong tradition of meaning “brutal”. The type of brutality varies with context, of course, but very very rarely is it a gentle thing of joy and wonder.

For a western man, shearing/brutality usually mean “this is an act of power”. Skinheads have a semiotic reputation of violence (violence that they hypothetically commit). Draft-based fiction usually has a ‘we all get our heads shaved’ scene; male soldiers in real life have buzz cuts. That Taxi Driver/Heat Guy shaving is an act directly prior to an assassination.

For western women, on the whole the connotations are quite different - there are many stories of post WW2 women who were thought to have ‘dallied’ with enemy soldiers or betrayed their country in other ways being forcibly shaved and paraded through the streets or beaten. Girls sent to nunneries had their hair cut, numerous stories for or about girls feature the removal of somebody’s hair to their great dismay: the section of A Pack of Lies set in India, Berenice Bobs Her Hair, Little Women, and a book I read in the infants that I can’t recall the name of (it also featured a pair of green P.E. shorts stuffed up a drainpipe, if that helps?), off the top of my head.

One pro-power female example is the flappers’ bobs; “I can be independent if I want to, you can’t make me your Rapunzel”. Just as relevant. Oh, and George from the Famous Five.

Sudden removal of long locks essentially means one of two things, in western storytelling: “I have the power” or “I have not any power”. On Billie Jean, it means both and that is why I adore it so. She’s an outlaw through another’s fault and direct maliciousness and she really has NO power over the situation - she’s a girl, she’s underage, she’s poor; he’s a man, he’s an adult, he’s a businessman. But she’s not going to just sit back and let it happen. FAIR IS FAIR, after all, and that’s the sort of factual statement that is power unchallengable. Just ask Sirius Black, the only sane man in Azkaban.

There’s more to Billie Jean’s makeover than the hair, of course, but you can watch the movie and dissect or absorb that for yourself. It’s worth it, Guide’s honour. There’s no DVD as yet (veoh has it..) but I got myself a VHS copy from Amazon Marketplace. Not expensive. You HAVE to see how the Joan parallels play out, too.

The reason I rate this Makeover Movie so highly is the depth of emotion and resonance with the rest of the film the physical “make-over” has (waaaatch iiiiit). The Legend of Billie Jean is the kind of movie that causes me an amount of physical pain to imagine how hard I would have clung to it had I seen it as an a teenager. A ferocious and noble inner life matched with a faultless, no matter how eighties, outer style? My wagon is hitched, for life.

The Pat Benatar song with scenes from the film is below - and watching it now I notice how extremely Billie Jean’s body language changes with her haircut. From the determined but swamped good girl, to the fierce as all heck, much much looser Warrior for Right! The scene at the very end is her watching Joan of Arc.