Etching set depicting bird-wives from folklore around the world: the Goose Woman of the Haida, the Swan Maiden from Europe, and the Crane Wife from Japan.

If folklore has taught us anything, it’s never fall in love with someone who can transform into an animal. It never, ever, ever ends well.

tezukaspanels:

How to paint music?

Oguna is playing a song for Phoenix. The Phoenix is so enchanted, that in the end she will offer him immortality. But now the only thing that matters are the sounds of Oguna’s flute filling the air.

Actually, this song was even written. The Phoenix series was an inspiration for British band System 7 to create a whole album. The Song for the Phoenix is one of its tracks. I will upload it soon.

From Phoenix: Yamato by Osamu Tezuka

Oh man this is great! I’m always looking for examples of drawing music in comics because it’s something I’ve really struggled with—how to represent music in the comics medium—that I’ve yet to find a satisfactory solution for.

The reason I’m so concerned is that playing music was a big part of my life from the 4th grade to my senior year in high school when I played the clarinet and saxophone in a variety of different school bands. I also experience sound-color synesthesia, so I can literally “see” music as ever changing blobs of color. So I know all about playing music and seeing music—but how do I draw music? Especially in a way the audience can understand; I can throw all the yellow-orange spiky shapes I want in a comic but no one but me will understand I’m representing a trumpet fanfare, I can be literal and write out the sheet music but only those that can read it will understand. There’s got to be a better way.

I like Tezuka’s representation of music here as a set piece, the reader can get lost in the swirling, undulating patterns and flowers* much like the characters have gotten lost in the flute music. It’s a beautiful solution for this kind of splash page. But I don’t think this kind of rendering would work if the music was taking a more active role? I’m having a hard time explaining exactly what I mean, but if let’s say you were doing a comic about a band practicing, where the main action of the story was the musicians learning their parts and repeating things over and over and screwing up and changing genres and time signatures and volume I don’t think “beautiful expressive lines” everywhere would really cut it.

I have no idea what would though, so I’ll keep on looking.

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*can’t have something holy happen in eastern religious texts without flowers raining down as celestial music and perfumes fill the air! 

deadpaint:

Herbert James Draper, The Lament for Icarus (Detail)

When I was a kid I had an illustrated mythology encyclopedia with this painting in it and when I was thumbing through it I would always stop and stare at this lady because she was just the prettiest 

Guess who wasn’t destined to be straight

this is me IRL forever

This week I’m slowly but surely going to give our apartment the complete re-organization it’s sorely needed since we haphazardly moved in.

I decided to take a picture of this shelf I just rearranged because I like it…it’s my shiny girly shit shrine for my jewelry and headbands and whatnot. 

You needed to know tumblr, you totally needed to know.

This little Kappa girl just wants to be a pretty lolita. Is that so wrong? Sure, she’s a horrible monster that loves eating buttholes second only to cucumbers*, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be pretty, damn it!

…

I’m doing a series of little watercolour paintings of water monster kids! I’m excited! Its nice to feel excited about making some art again  (◡‿◡✿)

*Kappa really, really love eating buttholes. Mythology is so wacky!