On Whininess (Whiny-ness?)

This is not the giant post that's coming, it's just a stray thought that I thought would be worth publishing.

I was reading a little earlier the blog of a Nice Young Lady Natalie Reed, and specifically her post ''Shut Up, That's Why'' - A Follow Up. Most of it's not relevant to the bit I was going to talk about so copied and pasted below are the relevant portions:

Some actual talking about art

I have always intended to use this blog as a platform for artworks, and as a way or recording my progress as I strive to increase my art prowess. Thus I set myself a task - that I will write about art at least once a week and do a bit on a piece of my own also at least once a week.

This week, I'm going to do Landseer, because I picked an artist at random.

Just a brief look at his Wikipedia page will give you the bare bones of his biography and a couple of his more famous paintings. A little more Google-fu and you can see his less famous ones. I like these better. Olga's Gallery has a selection of more of them, my favourites of these being The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner, which just about brought tears to my eyes, such is the pathos of the subject, and Jocko With A Hedgehog, which cheered me up again. The man was a really good observer of animals, and they way they move and sit. Discussion below the link.

The Representatives of God and Cartoons

On the way to the train station that I go to to get to work, there is a church nearby. It's a baptist church (which seems invariably to mean that it's a depressing-looking broken-down cowshed) and it's tucked away down a side street. Every now and then there is a little old lady who stands on the confluence of the main street that leads to the station and that side street, and she seems to have taken it into her head to convert passers-by with dreary pamphlets about religion.

Today was one of those days.

Normally when this happens, I ignore her. I don't want what she's selling. But today, she stopped me, and not being in much of a rush, I let her. She seemed flustered, poor thing, that someone actually ceased to perambulate. She tried to save my soul.

She presented me with a badly-thought-out, badly-rehearsed, utterly predictable speech about how modern life was drawing me to Satan, and that that was a bad thing because I would surely burn in hell as a result unless I admitted Christ into my heart on the spot.

I'm not used to being proselytised at, nor preached to: it's rare in Glasgow for someone to harangue you in the street. I didn't have a snappy answer, or anything snarky or clever to say. I listened to her.

Some Links for your amusement.

One for the brain: We Are SkeptiXX, a newly started sceptical blog, inspired by the great tradition of proving that scepticals and rationalists aren't only bearded middle-aged men. Considering the peers of this valuable addition to the Blogoblogz, I personally am expecting great things.


One for the eyes: An artist in mechanical items and found objects makes things that are...so very fascination.

Turkey, Camels, and Unfailing Politeness

I saw Michael Palin go to Turkey on TV today. Turkey is interested in joining the EU, and that seems like a cool thing to me; for one, Turkey has long been a buffer between the eastern portions of the EU and the Middle East, and the idea that the Middle East might be just a little culturally closer bears some thinking about. For another, it's always nice to find out about the country that might soon be a neighbour. Finally, Turkey is a tobacco producing region, producing, unsurprisingly, Turkish Tobacco. I like a pipe, and I love a cigar. The possibility that a tobacco producing region nearby, and within our easy-international-trading area, seemed like an interesting one. It's far fetched to imagine that tobacco products will grow cheaper, or more varied, or easier to find, but it was an amusing fantasy.

But that wasn't the coolest thing on that program. There were things that I saw that amazed me a great deal. For example, I wouldn't have thought that it would snow in Turkey, which lies between the EU and the Middle East. I would have thought that it would be, almost entirely, a warm place - if not outright hot. But there was Michael Palin, standing proud and cheerful in the snow amid some truly bizarre volcanic geological formations called 'fairy chimneys' in a place called Cappadocia- and yes, you can go and stay in one. They're made by wind and precipitation weathering of soft rock (is soft volcanic rock a common or uncommon thing? I would love for a geogeek to tell me).

Another thing that Michael Palin went to see was an event called the 25th Annual All-Turkey Camel-Wrestling Championship (I may have taken some licence there, but that is about what I saw on a banner).

A hot, coppery sun glares down on a bowl of dusty sand, as a heavy, balding man swaggers into the demarcated arena. His skin is oiled and slick, and he spits the dust from his mouth as he sizes up his opponent. Fuelled by chilli sauce and kebabs, and absolutely hammered, the man takes off his hat and places it ceremonially on the ground to his side. He is the champion. In this arena, he is God. He will not lose. He must not lose. Not to some obstreporous quadruped.

After all... he's got a reputation to maintain.
That didn't really happen. Instead, Micheal Palin sat in a crowd that watched starved, randy camels wrestle each other whilst the locals consumed raki and kebabs. It was rather sad, and smacked a little more than faintly of traditional animal cruelty crudely disguised as a cultural rite. Michael was unflaggingly and immaculately polite, as ever.

If it had been the former version of events, I would be the first to give Turkey the fist-bump that welcomes them into the EU.

First Post in Blogger

Hello readers!

I'm Harry, a twenty-something from Scotland. Mostly, and nowadays, I'm an artist. I've been drawing a lot through my life, and studied art a little, but the traditional art institutions really haven't been for me, so I'm self taught. Accordingly, my techniques are half-formed and idiosyncratic, and my overall knowledge is patchy. I wanted to learn more, and learn better, but I knew that it would be easier, and more fun, to stick to if I wrote about it. Blogging my experiments and progress seemed like the natural thing to do. 

So that's the mission plan: learn about art and painting, post what I find out. 

I'm also going to weigh in on things I think about and things I see around the world, because, hey, I don't wanna be restrictive in my mission statement.