Please find below some blog entries that Anahita has selected to share with you.

 

Some Logo Ideas

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Hi All

Here is another attempt to produce some more logo ideas to discuss on 9th Feb!

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

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Drawing Class - 12 Nov 2009

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This time it was hands! Not the easiest to draw as they need a high level of observation and transferring that observation correctly down your paper!

We first started to draw as we did at primary school! We outlined our own hands on the paper! Then we identified the knuckles and how they relate to each finger and to each other in the construction of a hand!

 

Mark said that the fingers if not observed correctly will look like sausages and he was right. It was a challenge for me to draw hands and since I am trying to practice to understand it better.

 

Here are some of my attempts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 And here is hands by Nadine!

 

 

Drawing Class - 5 Nov 2009

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In this session we had to draw freshly cut logs obtained from a silver birch tree. Mark - our tutor, explained that the way we have to draw these logs is to have a painter's approach, i.e concentrate on tone, light and shadow as opposed to lines!



By using a very sharp, soft pencil, such as a 6B, or even a graphic pencil, we had to start building what eventually will be the silver birch log, but we have to do it only by observing the tonality and at times when required, use our potty rubber to take away our shadings to achieve the highlights.



                           Silver Birch by Anahita



                                 Silver Birch by Nadine

Mark also explained about adding a border line eventually where our shadows resides under. I have to remember what this line was called, which is not coming to me now. Some sort of a supporting line.

I personally enjoyed this experience as I am more familiar with painting than drawing.

Mark also asked us to research the way the sculpture makers draw pictures by looking at body and dimension as opposed to painters that look at light and shade.

I looked at some of the work by Henry Moore the British sculpture artist and realised what exactly Mark was trying to say.

Link

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http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/

Some Interesting Drawings!

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www.subway-life.com//

Michael Thomas Suggestions

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I have been thinking about writing a story with Michael Thomas suggestions for a while. Well as Yvonne has reflected in her previous blog, there were many occasions that this could happen.

A well dressed man walking towards a stretch of water
A woman opening a window and looking out
A telephone ringing

I made it a reunion, one that happens after a bitter separation, with major change of circumstances! I had to study about how to dress my man though. It was the first time in my life that I dressed up a man in a story!

A houseboat seemed ideal place, floating on the river Thames on a cold autumn dusk!

I love to see if any of you tried to write anything. I certainly will get this one to our Anthology and I think we should all get an entry for this to our Anthology this year.

Drawing Class - 15 October 2009 - Joints

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In this session we had the model again. This time she wore black clothes all over, and our tutor, Mark , asked her to put a light colour belt around her waist. She also had to mark around her wrists, elbows and knees with light colour sticky tape.




We had to build the skeleton, or the plan of the drawing by marking where the joints were before filling the gaps.

This exercise helped us to improve our observation and plan for the whole drawing before getting into the details as often if the artist does not plan, there is a good chance that somewhere she will find that there is not enough space on the paper to include some body parts such as shoes, or hands!

Quote

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“The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.” –Seth Godin

Drawing Class - 8th October 2009 - The Model

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This time we had a model! The idea was to observe the light and shade and use everything else that we have learnt in the past lessons.

Here is my drawing:



And the same model drawn by Nadine:




As you can see different level of attention to details is what made a difference between these two approaches!

Drawing Class - 1st October 2009 - Negative Space

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This time we learnt to observe the negative space. We used charcoal to give us the ability to draw big and see the impact of heavy shades and dark think lines!

We learnt to look at all that we can look at before we start. We learnt to look at the surrounding of the subject and observe the elements that could provide a clue on the position. The space around the model was as important as the model, in order to be able to cross check and relate the model to its negative space.

We had a go at drawing each other. Here is a couple of my work:

Here is some of the work by other art mates , In some I am the model!

Anahita by Nadine - She said "Sorry that I blurred out your face! It just didn't look right!" ;-)




Mike by Nadine



Anahita by another artist

Looking forward to the next lesson ...

Drawing Class - 24 September 2009 - Observation of moving subjects!

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There were more art lovers at this lesson which shows the quality of teaching performed by our tutor Mark. Quite a few of the art lovers attending are loyal students of Mark and had been doing this for a few years.

We started this lesson by learning about the pencils.

As the drawing pencils are graded by their hardness, we started by experiencing the hardest 6H, which produced a very light line. The hard pencils should not be pressed against the paper and should be used with gentle moves across the paper. Hard pencils are not there to create hard lines.

As we moved to the softest pencil in the pack, i.e 6B, we realised that we can create lines without any effort at all. These lines will smudge easily.

In technical drawing, H pencils are the main tools, but in creating drawing, B pencils are essentially used.

We practiced and experienced all our pencils and got ourselves familiar with them.

Then Mark asked us to choose someone in the group and draw an outline of them by observing the boundaries. We had to start from a point and only draw an outline of our subject with a hard pencil.

Then we learnt that to bring the drawing to life, we need to use a soft pencil and by creating dotted lines, show the shaded and darker areas.

Only after this stage we were allowed to start fill in some details, apart from eyes.

I drew a course mate who was standing in front of her easel and obviously as she was busy drawing her subject, she was moving her hands and her position in relation to the easel frequently while I was trying to observe the details. But I managed to pull it tall together at the end.



When the lesson finished, we got to go and look at each others work. At that point I realised three people in the class were drawing me. So I asked them if I could take pictures of their work. They were happy to share.

I have included these drawings here by Nadine, Jenine and Ana from top to bottom.

Drawing Class - 17 September 2009 - Still life

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As some of you may remember, I expressed my intention to start a drawing course this year. Well, this is not the first time that I venture in art, but truly the first pure drawing with pencil and charcoal!

So I did start this evening classes which runs for two hours every Thursday evening, starting from 7 PM. The first session on 17 September 2009 was about observation of still life and the subject was a corn!

Here is the summary of my notes for this session.

• Use two pencil one hard such as H and one soft such as 3B.
• Sharpen your soft pencil. Careful not to damage the lead! If while sharpening, it gets stock, disengage and start again as it is often the lead that is caught as opposed to the shaving.
• Start by observing the defining points of your subject, here we use a corn, so it is still life.
• Use the soft pencil and draw the defining line with the side of the pencil so that you get soft wide edges that define your shape.
• Fill in the details with the hard pen.
• What brings a drawing to life is the variety of the tones that you create with your pencil. So try to use a variety of hard and soft pencils to achieve more lively results.
• Tip: Never drop your pencils or throw them inside your bag carelessly. Handle them with care. They are your tools. Take good care of them.
• Tip: Observe, observe and observe!
• Tip: Try to use an easel. That stops translating from one dimension to another. It also helps to ease your posture.

I have intention to update this blog as the course progresses.

Japan

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Hello All

I am now back from my holiday to our cold rainy sky again. Japan was wonderful, excellent, strange and shocking. Something that cannot be explained easily. I was struck by the way the Japanese exhaust possibilities and their innovation, technology and creativity. But being perfectionists perhaps one above all!

Well, back home, I would like to write about Japan and have already created a list of topics. So writing is on! As well as everyday subjects of a normal tourist, as the result of renting a three bedroom Japanese style house, I have also experienced with Japanese everyday life, such as shopping, cooking and of course watching TV, which got me addicted to a couple of drama series already, which I am now watching on the internet, this time with subtitles!

I hope you all had a good time at home or away, out and about and perhaps enjoyed some occasional sunshine. It was confusing for me to step out of the house or shops to a 31 degree heat at 7 PM in the evening!

Yvonne, I read your emails regarding the group. Thanks for your hard work in keeping all of us informed of all the events. I will be joining the group for the next meeting at Vesey. I missed you all.

Junying, I saw your travel snapshots at Facebook. Have you been on holiday at the same time as me?

Love to catch up with all of you soon

Anahita

PS: I have taken the above picture from top of the Osaka's  Sogo department Store (16th story building) at Umeda Shopping Centre, with my Canon Powershot G9.

On Reviews and Writing Appeal

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It seems that the idea of reviewing a book - film - writer is one that is appealing to all of us. I remember when we set to write a piece on romance, some of us felt that it was not a genre for us and when we came to a piece for children, similar problem was seen.

But when we want to write about a book, a film, a music, or a writer of our choice, the story changes drastically as we all have our own likings and we can base our piece on what we like as opposed to try what we really struggle with.

Writing is an art and like a painter, we need to feel our subjects and be involved with their emotions to be able to go through even a 1000 word with them. That is why it is difficult to write for children or a romantic story, as we do not identify with the target audience.

Writers have to see what target audience they are talking to. It is hard to say one can be good both for children and romance, unless it is perhaps a teenage fiction, in that case we really have no more clue any more. ;-)

Our group at the moment is a good mixture, but we do have different genre's appealing to us. For me it has always been some sort of surreal one, and that is why work of David Lynch attracts me. But imagine what everybody feels after seeing one of his works, such as Inland Empire or Mulholland Drive, or Lost Highway! I have figured out that he uses the parallel universes and  connects his characters together via a black hole time portal. These could be a door, or a room  a box, or a road!

I have not seen Twin Peaks, as one of my x co-workers promised to lend the DVDs for the series to me, but unfortunately he left the company. But I have seen most of David Lynch movies, including the last one "Inland Empire". He always captured my full attention completely and I must admit, just watching it once never does the trick to get a grasp of what was going on for most of people. I have figured out the method in his madness though. :-)

Music as Yvonne stated is an integral part of our souls, together with sunshine of course. To embed a You Tube video, you need to copy the object code that next to the video in the Embed box. You need to then click on where it says HTML on the menu of the editor to get to the html code of the screen. Paste your object code at the end or beginning as this is the easiest for you guys. I of course hack to the middle as I know html. Good luck and see you all tomorrow.

Writing for Children

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I have started to learn how to write for children. It is challenging to write a story for children, but if there is a child and an adult involved in the story, it makes it so much easier.

Anyway, I will publish part of my story to the site soon.  I have decided  to include some pictures too. So come back to see what you get.

Raining Frogs - Coincidences @ Magnolia - 23 Feb 2009

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"But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite your whole territory with frogs."

In the1999 film "Magnolia" directed by PT Anderson, there are many references to coincidences.

There is a quote in the film that says: " You may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with you."

At the beginning of the film it announces some facts that they make no sense to be coincidental, but they happen.

During the film strange coincidences are shown: For example a guy who tries to commit suicide as the result of his parent's fighting and arguing all the time, jumps off a building, only to be shot half way through by a bullet fired by his own mum in one of the middle floors of the building as she was threatening to kill his dad and accidentally fired the gun. The guy would have been saved otherwise as he would have been trapped by some safety nets before he actually would have hit the ground!

Unexplained phenomenon continuously happens during the film, including a rain of frogs at some point.

Numbers 8 and 2 is used all through the film in different scenes and in may ways. Here is a list of some

• The film opens with details of three historical coincidences and in one of them the plane number is 82.
• There rope on the roof is left to look like 82.
• The boy who commits suicide lives in apartment 682.
• In the Game show with the kids, they won 8 weeks in a row and they need 2 more to break the record.
• Clock shows 8:02 and 8:20 and 10 past eight (i.e. hands on 8 and 2) at different scenes.
• Plate Id of a prisoner has 82 repeated on it.
• The police officer's dating box number is 82.
• A cheque with the date April 28 is shown in the film.

May be PT Anderson (notice PT=2 letters and Anderson = 8 letters) is trying to say signs are everywhere for people who want to see them? I am sure you will not notice all these 8 and 2 the first time you watch the film.

Raining Gumballs! - 22 Feb 2002

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The universe is vast and we are a very small part of it, trying to make sense of everything. But is logic the answer to everything?

Through the history there had been events that human's could not explain.



I watched the film "Bed Time Stories" recently. When Skeeter Bronson (Adam Sandler) tries to tell some bedtime stories to his nephew and niece who are left with him for a few days to look after, he finds whenever the children narrate the story, it happens the following day. Okay how "Raining gumballs can happen?" Well I leave this to you to find out.

Well in today's post I like to quote a coincidence that happened a long time ago. A German mother bought a photographic plate and took a picture of her baby son on 1914 just before the war broke. Her plate was misplaced and lost! She bought another plate two years after that and took a picture of her baby daughter. When that plate was developed, it turned out to be a double exposure and guess what? The picture of her baby son was on the photo too! The lost plate was labelled incorrectly as unused and sold to her again!

I will write more about coincidences in my next post.

What do we need to follow? - 21 Feb 2009

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Shall we follow our hearts for love or the signs? Does anybody believe in coincidences and signs that leads people to make decisions, even regarding very sensitive and important matters like love?

Have you ever done something just because you thought universe was talking to you, giving you all the reasons that something has to happen at a certain way?

If you want to read something that raise that question in you mind, please read my recent short story "The Angel with Black Wings".

Useful Blogging - 16 February 2009

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Blogging is writing that happens more regularly to convey a message or follow a subject of interest.

I have been blogging with Bold Writers for eight months now, to communicate with other Bold Writers as well as providing positive feedback on the writing that was put on site.

With the re-structuring of this site, I have now made it possible to publish some blogs to be viewed by whoever that access the site, irrespective of being a member of the Bold writers.

The aim is to provide writing that is more regular to increase the habit of daily writing. I have read about how to write useful blogs and here is some of the points:

• Write something original that is worthy of reading by being a source of knowledge.
  
• Your blog should be inspirational and help people to achieve their goals and dreams.
  
• Use psychology to get into people's hope and fears and use it to grap your reader's attention and hook them to come back to read more.
  
• Make your readers to feel they can connect with you through your writing experience.
• Be passionate about what you write and give your readers a chance to respond to your thoughts.
  
• Use references to other sites and links that you found interesting and introduce them to your users.
  
• Use your personal experience to make your writing unique.
  
• If you tell a story in your blog that make people to relate to you, you will find regular readers and at that point you can say, you are ready to write a book!
• And don't forget to use pictures, photos, videos, music and whatever that yo may think would be related to your writing.
  

Good luck!

Imagination and Knowledge - 28 Jan 2009

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"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."
Albert Einstein

There was time that I believed in knowledge. I spent my days and nights gaining the unlimited knowledge in the universe.

But knowledge is infinite. There is no limit to it. It is endless and the more you learn the more you realise you don't know anything.

And at some point, I realised that knowledge was useless without imagination.

If you are a walking library, you won't do any good to yourself and the world around you.

The moment that you start to use that knowledge, you realise how you need to be imaginative, how you have to be able to think out of the box in order to apply that knowledge to new situations.

And to be productive, to create new ideas and new knowledge, you need to be imaginative too.

Imagination allows us to look at the world around us with an eye that just gaining knowledge doesn’t. For example, if you know about the universe around you by reading books and attending courses, all you get is theory. The moment you start to look at that shining stars at the distance and dream of flying to reach it, you turn to another person, a person who is able to create new knowledge.

So next time you are busy comprehending, remember that:

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."

Quote - 18 Jan 2009

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"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity"