Acutes vs. Ratched
“Good morning, Miss Rat-shed! How’s things on the outside!”
Hi again!
The image above is my rendition of what has been going on in the ward since McMurphy’s arrival. He has riled up the patients and staff with his loud, outlandish behavior. The patients admire his confidence and the excitement he brings to the ward. Nurse Ratched and her staff keep a watchful eye and try to hinder his influence. As time goes on, McMurphy learns more about the ward’s policies. He makes a bet with the other patients that he can push Nurse Ratched over the edge. The narrator, Chief Bromden, has been on the ward a long time. He knows what ultimately happens to patients that resist Nurse Ratched’s system. Nevertheless, he is hopeful.
Thanks for visiting.
post by PMurphy (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
4 comments March 19, 2010
I will play the lute, and you shall beat the kettle drum.
Posted by: S.britt
Book: The Bremen Town Musicians
(click image to see larger)
When he had walked some distance, he found a hound lying on the road, gasping like one who had run ’til he was tired. “What are you gasping so for, you big fellow?” asked the donkey.
“Ah,” replied the hound, “as I am old, and daily grow weaker and no longer can hunt, my master wanted to kill me. So I took to flight, but now how am I to earn my bread?”
“I tell you what,” said the donkey, “I am going to Bremen, and shall be town musician there. Go with me and engage yourself also as a musician. I will play the lute, and you shall beat the kettle drum.”
Here before you, we see the very first meeting between Donkey and Hound. Such a historic encounter of two mangy musical masterminds can only be compared to such monumental meetings as John and Paul, Mick and Keith, Nasty and Dirk. In the pages to follow, Donkey and Hound recruit the two more shoddy and shabby sidekicks to fill out their crummy quartet; namely Cat and Cock. Do stick around in the coming months to see what sort of melodious mayhem these bucolic balladeers get themselves into… and out of!
11 comments March 17, 2010
No More Z’s!
So like Andrea Kalfas before me I have to hold my hands up and say this month got the better of me! For one reason or another I only got around to sitting down with ‘Ella’ yesterday. Disaster! Anyway I thought that after last months slightly more digital offering I’d get the paint out and tackle this old school!
At this point in the text the letter Z has fallen from the cenotaph and the town leaders have taken this as a sign from on high that Z is no longer a part of the alphabet. All usages of Z are banned and anyone heard to utter the forbidden letter is..well…for it! This image is a totally simple interpretation of that I guess. This is also sort of how I imagine the eponymous Ella to look.
Hopefully next month I’ll have more time to spend with this and can come up with something really meaty to redeem myself!
Add comment March 16, 2010
welcome to the jungle
well, almost! I’m sorry to do this to you folks! Things got away from me this month. Soon Tarzan and his ape family will be leaping and feasting and going wild in this setting, but for now I can only bring you part of the way there. Once the final is ready it’ll go right up, along with a little chapter summary.
So, thanks for your patience! Can’t wait to see Lizzy Stewart’s new piece up tomorrow!
Add comment March 15, 2010
The Galaxy’s a fun place. You’ll need to have this fish in your ear.
Posted by: John Martz
Book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Ford, with a lightning movement, clapped his hand to Arthur’s ear, and he had the sudden sickening sensation of the fish slithering deep into his aural tract. Gasping with horror he scrabbled at his ear for a second or so, but then slowly turned goggle-eyed with wonder. He was experiencing the aural equivalent of looking at a picture of two black silhouetted faces and suddenly seeing it as a picture of a white candlestick. Or of looking at a lot of coloured dots on a piece of paper which suddenly resolve themselves into the figure six and mean that your optician is going to charge you a lot of money for a new pair of glasses.
The Babel fish is a living hearing aid that decodes the brainwaves embedded in all speech patterns. Like Star Trek’s universal translator, the Babel fish is a simple plot device used to avoid the obvious obstacle of an interstellar language barrier.
But like all good science fiction, the story and the characters here exist as vehicles for larger ideas. And with the Babel fish Douglas Adams, a self-described radical atheist, dismisses both Intelligent Design and the circular logic of religious extremism in one fell swoop:
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolve purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’
‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’
‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
I nearly didn’t illustrate this scene. After my first illustration, I was very aware that I hadn’t actually drawn any of the main characters yet. So I thought my next move should be to introduce Arthur Dent, the story’s protagonist, in some straight-forward, literal interpretation. But as I started to reread parts of my dogeared 1979 paperback, this image of the Babel Fish with a brain for a speech bubble materialized.
And it’s these little moments in the book that make Douglas Adams so much fun to read. The characters really do take a back seat to the ideas and philosophies sprinkled throughout. The main character isn’t Arthur Dent. As Douglas Adams would say, he’s just this guy, you know. It’s the book within the book, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, that allows Douglas Adams to bounce from one idea to the next, and inject his world view into a series of events that can give it shape.
For kicks, here are iPhone-sized wallpaper versions of this, and my previous scene featuring Arthur’s home about to be demolished. Click for full size:
10 comments March 12, 2010
The Rats
“There were a dozen of them, and at first she could not quite see what they were up to. Then she saw something moving, between them and behind them. It looked like a thick piece of rope, a long piece, maybe twenty feet. No. It was stiffer than rope. It was electric cable, the heavy, black kind used for outdoor wiring and strung on telephone poles.”
This is the first scene introducing the rats, and presents them in a mysterious way. Also curious is how the cat, Dragon, sleeps so soundly not too far away.
3 comments March 11, 2010
The Hobbit, part two
“Dawn take you all, and be stone to you!”
This scene with the three trolls is one of my all time favorites in literature. I love the trolls arguing about how to cook the thirteen dwarves, and their dimwitted back and forth with the unseen Gandalf. It’s the first real scene where Gandalf reveals some of his power, keeping the murderous trolls occupied until the sun rises and smites the three.
I’ll be posting a rather lengthy post on the process of this piece on my blog come Friday, which should make me look like a real idiot.
Next month I’m looking to do something a lot more simple; these extensive pieces are sometimes pretty nasty to deal with.
4 comments March 10, 2010
Peter And Wendy: The Flight
"Second to the right , and straight on till morning."
As I’m reading through J.M. Barrie’s story of Peter Pan I’m quickly liking Peter less and less. I must admit, it’s a shame that I’m more familiar with Disney’s adaptations of this adventure seeking boy. However, I understand why changes were made…Peter might as well be throwing rocks and giving these kids wedgies as they’re blindly “following the leader” to make believe land.
With that said, my interpretation of Peter is light hearted and currently leading the children on an adventure like a boy scout on the trail to summer camp. He’s got some charm in his knobby knees while soaring under Marc Bolan’s bebop moon. Try not to fall asleep while flying, catch ya in Neverland doods!
Check back tomorrow for the amazing Sam Bosma and his wonderful vision of The Hobbit!
7 comments March 9, 2010
Alice part two: the return of the White Rabbit.
posted by Meg Hunt.
click to enlarge.
Just at this moment her head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact she was now rather more than nine feet high…to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again…After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid-gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other.
In this scene, Alice is in a great hall of doors and just after drinking that fateful ‘Drink-Me’ bottle and shrinking, and then eating the ‘Eat-Me’ cake, she finds herself too big to use her little key to go where she wants to go. Her tears are the start of the Pool of Tears– right now harmless, but in a little bit that’ll change!
Anyhow, I wanted to be sure to introduce the White Rabbit into this second scene, as otherwise you wouldn’t see him til late into the series. He’s a little fussy, a little dapper, but mostly shocked at this giant girl! I guess I would be too.
Next month, we get outdoors and start exploring Wonderland. I’m excited, how about you? Check back tomorrow though for Will Bryant’s next scene from Peter Pan!
5 comments March 8, 2010
An Unexpected Visitor
posted by Kali Ciesemier
On these nights, Sabriel would lock herself into her study (a privilege of the Sixth Form–previously she’d had to sneak into the library), put the kettle on the fire, drink tea and read a book until the characteristic wind rose up, extinguished the fire, put out the electric light and rattled the shutters–all necessary preparations, it seemed, for her father’s phosphorescent sending to appear in the spare armchair.
My first illustration deals with Sabriel while she is still in Ancelstierre– an indeterminately located country that seems to be set in an early 1920’s time period with a vaguely british atmosphere.
I wanted to show Sabriel in her Ancelstierran school surroundings before grim and mysterious happenings force her to venture over the Wall into the Old Kingdom (a vaguely medieval place, where the seasons run slightly differently and magic is afoot). This is the moment when things start to go wrong: her father does not show up, and a terrified knocking on the door startles her and alerts her to a strange occurance.
There’s so much story to this book, I was really hoping to have a spot or two done in addition to this illustration! Alas, time was not on my side! I’m thinking I’d like to do spots in the future though, in the same flat & limited color style as my bookplate. I ended up exploring a slightly more textured and rendered style for the main illustration, so we’ll see where it goes!
I have been/will be posting parts of my preliminary process with these images…feel free to take a look! http://kalidraws.blogspot.com
(and Sabriel, of course, is (c) Garth Nix. I don’t want to step on any toes!)
5 comments February 26, 2010
