"Tout le monde est une nonne"

"Where am I? I'm in my element...I'm in a little haunted house down the road."

Can't get enough J.D. Salinger.

Speaking of which, I was at last inspired to pick up the pencils again when I finished reading the short story De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period about an art instructor. If I had known it would be so easy to get me to start drawing again, I would have read this sooner.

Anyway, it's pretty rough, I kind of rushed a lot of it because I was just so excited about actually getting something done. I really half-assed the hair but I have very little patience for hair. Perhaps at some later time I will go back and fix it. I also realised that while drawing late at night, by the rather dim lamp light in the computer room, I accidentally shaded part of her left shoulder with a 6B pencil instead of the 7B so it's more silvery than the rest. Blegh.

My inspiration lately seems to be from alternative models. I guess I'm in the mood for shiny things, make-up and full lips which are glorious to draw and slowly becoming my favourite part of the face to draw.

I also had to share this lovely piece from the wonderous Mark Ryden's newest collection The Snow Yak Show. He never ceases to amaze me and I find it very hard to dislike anything he does.

I also recently discovered this fantastic shoot by fashion photographer Steven Meisel, modeled by Coco Rocha. This first shot in particular I love. She looks dead. The make-up and styling is just fantastic and I just love the darkness and creepyness of it. I believe it was for an issue of Italian Vogue.

It's interesting how there's that random girl in the far left of this first picture who I'm pretty sure just got in the picture by mistake and yet wasn't cropped out...

I very much want to recreate this look above. You know sometimes when you're just completely taken with a picture?

This last one here reminds me of the Swedish group The Knife. Whenever I looke at it, the song Heartbeats comes swirling into my head. I love it.

Well I guess that's pretty much it. I felt sort of weird going right to work after watching Synecdoche, New York yesterday with schwest. There was just so much to ponder after that, especially after such a depressing ending, and then to go and serve annoying, needy people and talk about chickens....I don't know, it just seemed inappropriate...