Turtle Soup: Four Comics
Oct. 5th, 2011 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
turtlesoup
For once, my desire to blog is drastically outstripping my time to do it in. I have any number of things I'd like to put up here (some musings on conventions and conferences, including thoughts on academics vs. non-academic creative folk and also the panel on collaboration I attended at MICE ... and plenty of homework), but gah, I'm buried. So I'll start off by condensing four Turtle Soup strips (two for school, two extracurricular) into one post. I don't know if I should be saying "sorry" or "you're welcome."
I'm pretty thrilled with how this came out, I won't lie. It has a bit of background, though: last week, my class visited a poet's house out in the Vermont countryside (with an excellent view of Mt. Ascutney), where we spent several hours drawing and wandering around the fields/trees; we were then asked to theme our weekly diary assignment after the trip.
There was an interesting tension, for me: on the one hand, the poet gave a talk at the beginning that was romantic and metaphorical about nature in ways that did not click with me at all, that made me want to start talking about the so-called Pathetic Fallacy and the difference between appreciate nature and projecting ourselves on it. (Which is odd, because I'm not against metaphor, romanticism per say, or seeing through the lense of ourselves - like we can help it. There was just something about his way of putting it that wasn't my thing.) On the other ... he discussed the importance of idleness and moments of calm, of doing essentially nothing, to the creative process, and while I was very conscious of the fact that having that time by the mountain was a privilege, that art can and perhaps must happen even when no quiet moments of contemplation to be had ... I had had a deeply stressful week, and sitting in the sun, under the trees, tossing around philosophy with my classmates (not pictured here; that would have been a whole other comic) made me feel so much better, calmer and more centered and able to work.
That's part of why I brought Frost into it, I suppose. I love the way his work can be full of beautiful imagery and honest emotion, while at the same time being ... in a sense realistic, and critical. The poem I reference in the comic is The Need of Being Versed in Country Things, an old favorite of mine from my days as an undergrad in English.
Anyway, enough explanatory blather! Have a few more comics.
Another assigned comic theme; we visted the the Vermont Institute of Natural Science to sketch the birds there, and were asked to focus our diaries on one particular bird, who we could turn into a character later. This story is actually about a trip I took to VINS with my family last year, because I thought it was a little more interesting than just talking about myself staring at birds?
This actually takes place in early July, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (specifically, the Chihuly blown glass exhibit that was up all summer). The fine lady next to me is my former boss. The incident referred to at the end ... involved a coworker who was really distracted and just saw my black vest/tie combo and the cart (of heavy office supplies) I was pushing.
My classmates convinced me that it would be best to draw details on the people in the background, instead of just indicating a crowd more simply with faceless blobs. I'm a little on the fence still, but I think it came out okay?
I should draw myself wearing ties more. I do wear them an awful lot.
This is really just in homage to my beloved former roommate, who made the second half of my life in the Boston area so much better just by existing. I love all my school people, but I miss her to death (when she's not visiting).
And now, I need to go research Aesop's fables, and browse some early 20th Century newspaper strips. And maybe get some sleep?
I'm pretty thrilled with how this came out, I won't lie. It has a bit of background, though: last week, my class visited a poet's house out in the Vermont countryside (with an excellent view of Mt. Ascutney), where we spent several hours drawing and wandering around the fields/trees; we were then asked to theme our weekly diary assignment after the trip.
There was an interesting tension, for me: on the one hand, the poet gave a talk at the beginning that was romantic and metaphorical about nature in ways that did not click with me at all, that made me want to start talking about the so-called Pathetic Fallacy and the difference between appreciate nature and projecting ourselves on it. (Which is odd, because I'm not against metaphor, romanticism per say, or seeing through the lense of ourselves - like we can help it. There was just something about his way of putting it that wasn't my thing.) On the other ... he discussed the importance of idleness and moments of calm, of doing essentially nothing, to the creative process, and while I was very conscious of the fact that having that time by the mountain was a privilege, that art can and perhaps must happen even when no quiet moments of contemplation to be had ... I had had a deeply stressful week, and sitting in the sun, under the trees, tossing around philosophy with my classmates (not pictured here; that would have been a whole other comic) made me feel so much better, calmer and more centered and able to work.
That's part of why I brought Frost into it, I suppose. I love the way his work can be full of beautiful imagery and honest emotion, while at the same time being ... in a sense realistic, and critical. The poem I reference in the comic is The Need of Being Versed in Country Things, an old favorite of mine from my days as an undergrad in English.
Anyway, enough explanatory blather! Have a few more comics.
Another assigned comic theme; we visted the the Vermont Institute of Natural Science to sketch the birds there, and were asked to focus our diaries on one particular bird, who we could turn into a character later. This story is actually about a trip I took to VINS with my family last year, because I thought it was a little more interesting than just talking about myself staring at birds?
This actually takes place in early July, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (specifically, the Chihuly blown glass exhibit that was up all summer). The fine lady next to me is my former boss. The incident referred to at the end ... involved a coworker who was really distracted and just saw my black vest/tie combo and the cart (of heavy office supplies) I was pushing.
My classmates convinced me that it would be best to draw details on the people in the background, instead of just indicating a crowd more simply with faceless blobs. I'm a little on the fence still, but I think it came out okay?
I should draw myself wearing ties more. I do wear them an awful lot.
This is really just in homage to my beloved former roommate, who made the second half of my life in the Boston area so much better just by existing. I love all my school people, but I miss her to death (when she's not visiting).
And now, I need to go research Aesop's fables, and browse some early 20th Century newspaper strips. And maybe get some sleep?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-06 09:02 pm (UTC)i was never mistaken for a museum employee, just a store employee about 3 or 4 times. all between the ages of 14 & 20.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-21 01:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-06 10:56 pm (UTC)Just the progression of your facial expressions and the slight awkwardness of the repetition and how the hair-ruffling just keeps going on made me smile. <333
<333
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-21 01:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-21 06:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-24 06:43 pm (UTC)