The eyes have it
This weekend, nose was to the grindstone (Who came up with that expression? If your nose is to the grindstone, does it mean you’re working hard on sharpening the knife? That you’re concentrating? You’re so focused on it that you bring your eyes [and nose] that close to a spinning wheel of granite? That doesn’t say focus, kids—it says nearsightedness...The English language never ceases to confuse me...).
I spent the weekend painting my girl figure for my business cards. Okay...it’s me. Kind of a prettier, stylized version of me. Who else am I gonna use? I’m always available to myself for modeling! So when I say I spent the weekend painting, I mean I literally spent the weekend painting. Didn’t come up for air once. Only went outside (into Dante’s Inferno) to bring out the trash and wash my summer sheets & my towels. Burned through all of my TiVo-ed programs and all three movies I had from NetFlix as I painted. And I covered a lot of area. Now, since I did it in oils, I have to wait for them to dry to do the next layer of shadowing & highlights. The current layer is very thin, so it should only take a couple of days. Then...we drybrush. In the wet paint, I did the base skin color, the next lightest layer with white, and the next darkest layer with brown, mixing them all together while still wet into a soft, gradual movement of tones. Then once dry, I’ll make a crisper delineation onto the dried paint with straight white and straight brown for the whitest highlights and darkest shadows, drybrushing only the thinnest of applications...I did the same technique with my last two paintings, (which, for your viewing pleasure, you can see here and here), and I very much like how it came out. It’ll look byoo-ti-ful when I’m done. Of course, it’s all going on a business card, so it’s going to be so tiny, it’ll be hard to see any of the brushstrokes I’m working to maintain. But it’ll lead you to the website, which will have larger versions of Me as Painting, and brushstrokes will be apparent there. Oh yes, they will!
So since I watched me some cinema, I will speak about said cinema. Here was my triple feature: “The Bad Seed”, “Affliction”, and “Frailty”. That’s a feel-good selection of films, right there! It was Bad-Ass Childhood Sunday! Come to think of it, it was Murder Sunday, too! I really liked “The Bad Seed” and “Affliction”, but “Frailty” was my favorite of the bunch. It was directed by Bill Paxton (of “Twister” fame), and he also played one of the main characters. The opening sequence was just beautiful—a montage of newspaper clippings and sort of sepia-toned photographs, melting into each other. And the camera angles and fades in the rest of the film were gorgeous as well. Considering how dark the subject matter was, the contrast was lovely. You’re moving slowly, along this lyrical path, and then you remember that a family is committing murder in this small town. But the mood of the film almost makes you forget that fact...certain aspects of the story make you question it, too. The script was very well-written and tight; not one scene was used unnecessarily. The actors were quietly understated, yet incredibly believable (the young boys, in particular). Facial expressions were key. If you can handle the story (it’s not a gore-fest—you don’t see anything happen directly), I highly recommend seeing it.
I spent the weekend painting my girl figure for my business cards. Okay...it’s me. Kind of a prettier, stylized version of me. Who else am I gonna use? I’m always available to myself for modeling! So when I say I spent the weekend painting, I mean I literally spent the weekend painting. Didn’t come up for air once. Only went outside (into Dante’s Inferno) to bring out the trash and wash my summer sheets & my towels. Burned through all of my TiVo-ed programs and all three movies I had from NetFlix as I painted. And I covered a lot of area. Now, since I did it in oils, I have to wait for them to dry to do the next layer of shadowing & highlights. The current layer is very thin, so it should only take a couple of days. Then...we drybrush. In the wet paint, I did the base skin color, the next lightest layer with white, and the next darkest layer with brown, mixing them all together while still wet into a soft, gradual movement of tones. Then once dry, I’ll make a crisper delineation onto the dried paint with straight white and straight brown for the whitest highlights and darkest shadows, drybrushing only the thinnest of applications...I did the same technique with my last two paintings, (which, for your viewing pleasure, you can see here and here), and I very much like how it came out. It’ll look byoo-ti-ful when I’m done. Of course, it’s all going on a business card, so it’s going to be so tiny, it’ll be hard to see any of the brushstrokes I’m working to maintain. But it’ll lead you to the website, which will have larger versions of Me as Painting, and brushstrokes will be apparent there. Oh yes, they will!
So since I watched me some cinema, I will speak about said cinema. Here was my triple feature: “The Bad Seed”, “Affliction”, and “Frailty”. That’s a feel-good selection of films, right there! It was Bad-Ass Childhood Sunday! Come to think of it, it was Murder Sunday, too! I really liked “The Bad Seed” and “Affliction”, but “Frailty” was my favorite of the bunch. It was directed by Bill Paxton (of “Twister” fame), and he also played one of the main characters. The opening sequence was just beautiful—a montage of newspaper clippings and sort of sepia-toned photographs, melting into each other. And the camera angles and fades in the rest of the film were gorgeous as well. Considering how dark the subject matter was, the contrast was lovely. You’re moving slowly, along this lyrical path, and then you remember that a family is committing murder in this small town. But the mood of the film almost makes you forget that fact...certain aspects of the story make you question it, too. The script was very well-written and tight; not one scene was used unnecessarily. The actors were quietly understated, yet incredibly believable (the young boys, in particular). Facial expressions were key. If you can handle the story (it’s not a gore-fest—you don’t see anything happen directly), I highly recommend seeing it.
Comments
Keep your nose to the grindstone
Meaning
Apply yourself conscientiously to your work.
Origin
Before the mechanisation of the metalwork trade the standard method for knife grinders when sharpening blades was to lie flat on their fronts with their faces near the grindstone in order to hold the blades against the stone.
The first known citation is Frith, Mirror to know Thyself, 1532 "This Text holdeth their noses so hard to the grindstone, that it clean disfigureth their faces."
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/217200.html
Well, if they were laying down on their fronts to sharpen the knives, then that must have been before the spinning one was invented. Like the skewer method we use today, except it was a stone. Okay, then...I get the analogy, if that's the way they did it.
Thank you, o Princess, for clarifying!