Dostoyevsky completed "The Brothers Karamazov", his largest work, only two months before dying

Nothing terribly exciting has been going on for me here in Ohio; we’ve had some odd storms of late with our ADD weather, though nothing as terrible as it could be. Apparently the thunder from just the other night was the loudest that my grandmother has ever heard, but I find myself unable to comment since I was entirely oblivious. Yes, I somehow managed to absorb myself so much in the digital painting I was working on to be almost entirely ignorant of the storm raging just outside my window. Mostly I was concerned with the way the power was flickering and how this could effect my progress on the painting, so saying I was totally devoid of knowledge of the storm would not be accurate. I’m still not done with it, even now, though I’m much closer to completion. It’s tricky figuring out how to best add texture and detail to a digital medium; I must admit that I’m still very much a newbie to the digital art world, so I’m glad to have this piece to learn from. I am, however, regretting my choice to have my pope character wearing his ermine mantle, as fur is a pain. I think I would much rather slave over his six other rings that do not appear in the image than to work on another fur mantle like that again.

For my summer reading I’ve been savoring Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s outstanding The Brothers Karamozov. I say savoring mostly because of how I’m slowing getting through it, but not because I find it boring, because that’s quite far from any truth at all. I love it. I’m not sure how often people bust out laughing whilst reading this normally, but I find myself adoring every page and laughing at things that perhaps only my slightly out of date sense of humor can find amusing. I do, however, need to speed myself up and get through it, since I’m being pestered (in a good way!) about needing to read a few others books, so I need to at least get started on those within a reasonable amount of time. We’ll just have to see what draws my attention most these next few weeks; my art, my writing, my gardening, or my reading.

German Word: Today I thought I would introduce Sommersunnenwende, which, for one, is an excellent example of a long, slightly absurd, compounded German word thing. German loves to take several shorter words and cram them together to make a whole new one, and while this often works, it sometimes can result in words of a length that terrify an English speaker. Sommersonnenwende is short compared to some, and is only three words combined to mean “summer solstice”, which happened recently. It combines Sommer (summer, obviously), Sonne (sun), and Wende (turn or reveral, though it have several meanings.)

Photos:


A (small) snippet of the digital painting I’ve been working on. This is mainly my pope character’s Fisherman’s Ring, which has St. Peter on it, as well as a tiny bit of two of his other rings. I won’t go into the long-winded symbolism rant I could easily divert into here.


Our road, rain-swept and feeling all dramatic.


I’m fond of this picture for whatever reason; it’s just the texture on a flat rock in our yard. I’ll probably use it to add an illusion of texture to a digital work some day, but until then I can only be fond of it.


Such a nice evening… ADD weather can be nice on occasion, too.



Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy taking pictures of our pond’s lilies? Because I really do.