Added 1 new A* page:Although the layout is almost identical to yesterday's page, I'm a little happier with this one stylistically--even if the drafting of the face is a bit off, as I notice now to my annoyance. Oh well gosh. Maybe one of these days I'll get it all right. And the style still isn't quite where I want to be, but it's closer. Thank you all for your patience as I sort out this whole painting business.
(EDIT: Hm there's still something awfully off about these last few pages. I suppose I just didn't get the composition and lighting right at all. And this is sort of a problem since I can't really easily sketch out lighting in pencil ahead of time. Hum. HMMM. Maybe I'd better go back to thumbnailing them in GIMP first, so I can try some black and white arrangements out quickly.)
I was talking yesterday about a free audiobook I didn't like, so I thought I should at least mention one I did, which is The War of the Worlds by H. G. ("Herbert George") Wells. Benefiting from about 28 years of additional scientific progress (it was published in 1898) over Verne's lunar effort, the science is much more contemporary, and Wells doesn't make the mistake Verne did of trying to use his work to "prove" theories that weren't known to a certainty at the time, which further dated Verne's work.
This audiobook recording is also a particularly good reading: the reader really captures the horror and suspense felt by the characters caught in the midst of an alien invasion. The book as a whole is, in fact, largely a study of human reactions under extreme upheaval, with a good deal of subtle parody directed at our own foolishness, civilized or savage. It's a tremendous book, with beautiful language, and I heartily recommend checking it out of you haven't read it before--or even if you have (it had been a long time for me), I'd say listening to this reader's interpretation is still time well spent.
And hey let's get a picture in here. The WotW Wikipedia entry has a nifty photo of a modern sculpture of a Martian invasion tripod, placed in Woking, Surrey, England--a small town outside London, where much of the initial invasion and story takes place:
image by Warofdreams (source)
The Martians are coming! The Martians are coming! Watch out for their heat rays! =o
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