Tigers and Blotches

A couple nights ago, I dreamt I was walking home and saw a tiger sitting on someone's lawn. Everyone seemed to be ignoring it, so I ignored it too until it attacked me, pawing at my arm I'd raised to shield myself. People around me acted like I was being strange for being bothered and it turned out the tiger didn't kill me, he was just being friendly. I suspect this dream was inspired by the tiger footage in The Jungle from last week.

I have no time to write about a movie to-day, I have to get ready for my final kanji test. Unless I take Japanese III, I guess, which I am tempted to do even though I don't need it for the English degree I'm sort of I guess aiming for. I wish I could just work on my comics and not worry about trying to make a more secure future for myself, but then again, by the time I was finishing Venia's Travels I was feeling like I'd never want to make a comic again. The grass is always greener, I guess. Anyway, I'm enjoying going to school, particularly now that school's easier either because I've changed or because school's changed.

To-morrow I'll work on my comic, which I'm excited about. I was colouring on Saturday and I'm trying to use more airbrush. I sort of wanted this comic to look like Jack Cardiff shot it, and I remembered how Cardiff drew on Rembrandt for inspiration so I've been looking at a lot of Rembrandt paintings. And I'm really digging his glowing chiaroscuro, the soft very darks and soft very lights.

His paintings remind me of my favourite type of day, the patchy storm cloud day where you have blotches of shadow everywhere interspersed with blotches of sunlight. And it's interesting to see how well Cardiff did imitate this style--his footage has this same rich waxy quality.

It's that blotchiness--it has something of German expressionist filmmaking, but the shadows aren't as hard. It's a remarkably subtle effect, particularly considering the difficulty of lighting for Technicolour.

Twitter Sonnet #380

Magma stencils show a pink bikini.
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Method eyelash will brush the martini.
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Pickled axes grind the last year's apple.
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Patriot candy alternates next door.
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Exits vanish from the cannon gas lamp.
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Mesmer ties require an extra loop.