The Spirit of Ibuki

But I will admit, it's very hard for me to eat meat of any kind after taxidermizing (sic) creatures. Today I worked on a mouse, and right after I was finished, Rocco took me to McDonald's. I'm afraid to say that my Chicken Selects were less than appetizing.

Classes are over for break, and I'm off to drive with the family to Poughkeepsie, Pittsburgh, and DC. Have a lovely Thanksgiving, dear readers, and here's hoping you don't have to do as much traveling over the next 5 days as I do! :)

Come see my butoh performance! And some other people doing music and stuff!
Montserrat College of Art, room 202, December 4th, 7:30pm!
Free admission!
Also free food!

If you don't know what butoh is, look it up on youtube. It's amazing. Greg, you'd especially like it...I don't know if you know about it already.

Well I was shacked up down in Mobile with a girl from New York City.
She woke me up one night to tell me that we weren't alone:
She said she saw the ghost of a woman staring at me.
I told her not to worry, but in the morning when I woke up, she was gone.

So I headed down to Florida, where I tangled with some sailors,
And as I lay bloody on the wharf, I cursed the ship they sailed on.
Wouldn't you know, twenty-four hours later that ship sank into the ocean,
Disappearing like an unwanted memory beneath the waves...

I was woken up just before dawn by an old man crying in the rain.
He was drunk and he was lonely, and as he passed by, he sang a hymn.
And as I lay there listening, I almost joined him in that song,
But instead, I just held my peace and waited 'til that old man moved along.

Later on that day, about a quarter-mile out of town,
I found his body hanging in a grove of pines, swaying in the wind.
And as he swung, that rope sang another hymn to Jesus...
This time, though I don't know why, I felt inclined to sing along.

There are projects for the dead, and there are projects for the living...
Though I must confess, sometimes I get confused by that distinction.
I just throw myself into the arms of that which would betray me,
I guess to see how far Providence will stoop down just to save me.

And it's all because still waters run 'round deep in me.
I've got this crazy way...crazy way I'm swimming in still waters...

...

It's a very haunting ballad. Creepy wind sounds and everything. I've had it playing in my head for a few months now.

It's a nice and relaxing song to listen to right now. It's crunch time before Thanksgiving break, so all of my teachers are piling on the work. I spent 14 hours this weekend working on an illustration.

Ooh! Speaking of which, maybe I'll post it. Hmm...


Step 1: pencil sketch


Step 2: start adding values


Step 3: continue adding values all the way around the body


Step 4: finish values on girl and djinni


Step 5: pencil in background (very simple in this illustration; no perspective or anything)


Step 6: add flat base tone to background


Step 7: pick out darkest darks in background


Step 8: render all of the books


Step 9: a few final touches, and it's finished!

Perhaps sometime I'll get around to scanning it in so you can see all of the painstakingly-placed details!

...

I hope you are all having a lovely day!

Look at this.

Disney is FINALLY making an African-American princess. RACIAL EQUALITY HUZZAH!

And it's set in New Orleans during the 1920s. JAZZ MUSIC HUZZAH!

And it's based on "The Frog Prince." AMPHIBIAN FAIRY TALES HUZZAH!

And the bad guy is a Voodoo practitioner. VOODOO HU--wait, wait! That's not cool.

I love that Disney is making this film, but I wish people could stop portraying voodoo as an "evil" religion. Yes, it was used as a scare tactic by the slaves. Yes, it was exaggerated to get the slave-owners nervous (and creeped out of their minds).  But that was a long time ago. People keep on propelling the notion that voodoo has all of these inextricable connections to evil and the Devil. But it's not. It's a religion based on music, for crying out loud. And its music heavily influenced the sound of New Orleans jazz and swing. If Disney tries to make voodoo a purely evil tradition, they will have forever lost a good deal of my respect.

It would be about as blasphemous as them making a movie calling a devout Christian an evil person. Nobody would stand for that. Granted, they got away with it a little bit in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." But still...

Watch yo' back, Disney! Lest us eeeeevil neo-hoodoo lovers put chicken feet under your collective bed. :P

(I know most of my readers are Christian/Catholic; please don't be offended by my defense of Voodoo. It's a nice little religion.)