Anil Saxena

From retouching and digital artist Anil Saxena's Behance profile: "Anil Saxena … well, let's say he's different. He started out doing conventional darkroom photo composition and retouching before moving these skills over to creator and then photoshop. Having moved to Mumbai to work as an illustrator he became interested in retouching as a way to utilize his eye for creating striking imagery. Drawing from his technical background in graphic design, CGI and his trained creative eye, Anil enjoys developing stunning imagery. He believes color grading is paramount. For him real work begins, when we lesser mortals might think that the image is just perfect! In his own words 'If the image is a success but my work goes unnoticed, I'm doing my job well.'"

Anil takes images and photos and blends them together to create fantastical and delightful compositions conveying humorous or touching messages. For the image titled Music exists all around us, the artist took the following photos and combined them into a vivid and interesting image.

Close-ups and a step-by-step clip of the process can be seen here!

He has many other interesting projects on his Behance portfolio, but here are another two or three more of my personal favorites. As always, you can click on the images to see them in a larger format!

MANIPULATION

I Love Nature so much

Feeding Grass (from the Micro World series)

Pinterest

Today... I spent a lot of time looking at interior decoration and food recipes. (I'm still drooling over this amazing blog I found today. Oh, my.)

Basically, the point of this post is to say that today I ended up not doing proper "work", but getting lots of inspiration to fuel this unusual itch to create strange food combinations. I'm not sure where it came from, but it's sure been fun so far! The other day I tossed surimi (fake crab) and leek in a pan along with butter, salt, thyme, and curry powder... I think that's all I put in, and it tasted delicious. Because I was cutting up the surimi as I cooked, some of the pieces were crunchier than others, and the variety of textures was absolutely wonderful. Yum.

And the cucumber-peach salad from yesterday.

Before tossing!

Also, just now I went down to the kitchen, sliced up half an apple and slathered it in peanut butter, a tiny drizzle of Hershey's syrup, and some hot chocolate mix flakes. Maybe that's more suitable for breakfast than a late-night snack (I've heard apple is even better than caffeine for keeping you awake at night, and if that's true, then... oops?), but I suddenly just really wanted to make it. And eat it!

I really need to work on my food photography skills.

...But anyway. The actual point of this post was to give you the link to my pinterest page, where you can find the things I like and that inspire me! Check it out here: https://www.pinterest.com/apersonalcharm/

Rant over. Sophie out!

Poem Illustrations

A little glimpse at what I'm currently working on...

"What's that?" chirped Ben, a baby bird,
And, pointing with a tiny wing,
He lifted wide his beak to sing,
"What's that?  What's that?  of everything,
To learn another brand new word.

Poem excerpt courtesy of Anastasia C. Moser, illustration by Sophie-Therese Lupas.

Chinese New Year

I live in Tübingen, a rather international German city despite its relatively small size, and there are a number of Chinese families living in our area. With my mother’s help, these families got together and organized a New Year celebration on the 21^st of February that we were all invited to attend!

At midday on Saturday we made our way over to the gathering place to find it overrun with adorable, cheery-faced Chinese kids – I don’t think a single one of them was over the age of eight! So sweet.
The parents were either hanging up decorations (like this, for example) or preparing dough and fillings for dumplings, which would then be prepared by everyone together – guests included!

Just before we started making dumplings, I realized I hadn’t thought to bring a camera and instead drew this with the only pen I could find. There were a lot more tables and a lot more people than pictured here!

Then people started gathering around the tables with mounds of dough and minced meat or carrot fillings; chopping, rolling and wrapping, and I joined some of my siblings at a table with some Chinese ladies. It was my first time wrapping dumplings, and a lady I already knew from one of Mom’s English groups, Dan (yes, that’s her real name), showed me the trick to wrapping Chinese dumplings. I tried to draw the process, but was unsure how to properly show the trick to folding over the dough. You can check out a blog post with many excellent photos here!

One of the Chinese ladies liked it so much that she took a photo. It’s so poorly drawn, though!

There were so many dumplings to be wrapped that finished and cooked (boiled) dumplings were being brought out even as we wrapped more – but oh, were they good! The meat filling had celery in it, which I typically don’t like but enjoyed in the dumpling, and the carrot filling was equally delicious. To dip we had what I believe was a soy sauce and vinegar dip, with garlic added for a bit of extra zing. There were side dishes of radish salad and cold rice noodles.

In Korea, they say that wrapping beautiful dumplings for the New Year means that you’ll have beautiful daughters; I don’t know if it applies to Chinese dumplings wrapped shortly after the New Year, but Anastasia and my dumplings were very beautiful indeed! Interestingly, Chinese dumplings supposedly symbolize wealth because their shape is similar to that of a Chinese sycee – a gold or silver ingot currency used in China until the 20^th century.

After lunch we were in for a little show – some members of a nearby Wu Shu academy came by to do an authentic dragon dance and various fight sequences with bare hands (and lots of kicks) or a variety of bladed weapons (with very flexible metal blades). The teacher that accompanied the (clearly not Chinese) students was Master Zhuo Haojun, who is a highly qualified Wu Shu trainer. Having not only won the Wu Shu World Championships (back in 1994), he has worked as a professional stuntman in Kung Fu movies (doubling even for such well-known names as Jet Li) and is the trainer of the German national team. We didn’t know all that in advance, but as soon as we first saw him move it was clear that he was extremely competent, and we would have loved to see more! I think his sister, who is equally well-qualified and founded the academy in Tübingen, was also there, but she mainly remained in the background, letting her brother take the spotlight. 

That’s the two of them there!

I think Dominic and I are both tempted to join a course at their academy – I particularly liked the loud slaps and stamps, especially when they’d do a high kick, slapping their foot loudly as it sped over their head, then bring it down with a loud stamp. It made for a very powerful rhythm.

That was my experience at the Chinese New Year celebration! 2015 is the year of the goat – or the sheep, or ram, depending on region or preference. The Chinese word yáng refers to both goats and sheep, and apparently the zodiacal yáng is more likely to be thought of as a goat in the south and a sheep in the north in China. 

The Year of the Sheep is believed to be a year of promise and prosperity, and the Sheep reflects the Earth and Yin: A passive or female principle, covert and shaded, soft and yielding. This year is considered a good one for family and creativity. Sounds perfect to me!

Lyrical Jazz Workshop by Deliah Seefluth

Today I took part in a Lyrical Jazz workshop by a friend I've known since 5th grade: Deliah Seefluth. She's studying at the Iwanson International School of Contemporary Dance in Munich, and has already shared a stage with internationally successful dancers such as Lucia Drábková and learned from amazing teachers, among them Joe Alegado. 

You can see the flyer for the workshop here, and for those who don't understand German, the text reads:  "This workshop is about combining the strength and power of Jazz Dance with soft, lyrical, but also spirited movements from Modern Dance. We'll beginn with a warm-up to prepare the body for later sequences of movement. After that we'll move increasingly until we're working across the diagonal and the whole room, and lastly we'll learn a small choreography. Music and text for the chosen song will be interpreted through our dance and illustrated throughout the room.
Deliah Seefluth studies at the Iwanson International School of Contemporary Dance in Munich. She has previously taught at the Tübinger Hochschulsport as well as other dance schools in Tübingen and Munich. In the past few years she's performed multiple times at international dance festivals - as a soloist and member of the dance ensemble Akasha."

That's her on the right!

On the 7th of January, 2015, I attended the performance "Poetry in Motion" by the Akasha dance ensemble, with guest dancers Lucia Drábková, Mami Kawabata, and Anthony Kirk. Deliah danced several times that evening, as a part of the ensemble and once as a soloist, and I greatly enjoyed her performance that day - her own choreography and technique were great, her movements expressive, and her emotions strongly conveyed. I'm not ashamed to say that I cried during a performance to the song Stairway to Heaven (choreography by Joe Alegado). The song is one that evokes an emotional response as it is, but it was beautifully - and heart-wrenchingly - accompanied by an excellent choreography during which the dancers' every movement underlined the melancholy sadness and theme of loss they portrayed. It was beautifully done. 

Thus, it was not only friendship that encouraged me to take part in today's workshop. 
In truth, it was a two-day workshop, but I was unable to take part yesterday due to a Chinese New Year celebration Mom had organized along with the 20 or so Chinese families in the area (More on that later!), so I only did the two hours today. I had previously had a brief taste of Lyrical Jazz back in Madrid when I did an intensive, 5-hour workshop of 5 different dance styles with 5 different teachers (one of the best dance experiences of my life), but the two hours with Deliah were a very different, and wonderful experience. 

I started off the day with some difficulties; I rushed to the bus stop and still missed the bus, being forced to walk briskly the entire way downtown (and downhill, as this is hilly Tübingen), just barely making it to the hall on time. I would like to say that walking as fast as I could for over a 3/4 hour warmed me up, but it was a cold sweat, and entirely uncomfortable. Thankfully, I warmed up quickly in the hall, and a few stretches put me to rights!

I had feared that I might not be physically up to doing the workshop, as I haven't danced properly in... well, months, to be honest - and the last time I went to do a workshop, I sprained my ankle. (Right at the very beginning of a several-day long tap dance workshop I had flown to Amsterdam for. Not a happy moment, for all that I ended up having a lot of fun despite being unable to dance a single step.)
As it turned out, I hadn't needed to worry! Deliah eased us into bigger movements, graduating from small exercises and choreographies to high kicks, rolls and jumps, and I found that my stamina wasn't an issue, either. After two hours my muscles were telling me that I'd just done an excellent workout and that it was time to stop, but my breathing wasn't very heavy, I had barely sweat at all, and my brain was willing to learn more! 

Except then I had to walk around town for another half hour or so, and I arrived home feeling achy all over. It was worth it!

Deliah seemed both confused and highly entertained when I told her just how much my back would hurt the next day (and already did), and I explained that not only did I never have a very flexible back (I'm talking about bending backwards, not forwards), the only dance style I've properly learned, namely Irish Dance, doesn't do ANYTHING with the back. It's always ramrod-straight! So doing backward reaches, turns while attempting to continue facing the front while bent over awkwardly (okay, she looked gorgeous doing it, but I'm convinced I looked pained), and other movements were way out of my comfort zone - literally. 

As with the high kicks to the side, though (another thing that isn't done in Irish Dance), that got better over the duration of the workshop, and I was very happy with myself by the end of the two hours. I did very much enjoy myself, felt both challenged and liberated, and definitely wouldn't mind doing it again! So, thank you, Deliah, for the wonderful experience. Let me know when you have another workshop - I'll be there!

Adme

The past week or so has been busy, and there's a lot to write about, so look forward to several new posts today and tomorrow! (Today I did a Lyrical Jazz (dance) workshop for the first time, and it was awesome! I ache all over! More on that later.)

Recently I featured a website called Animi Causa, which carries a large variety of fun designs (particularly for kitchen or office use). Today I wanted to share a website that features such neat designs regularly: adme.ru.

The only problem with this website is that it's all in Russian. But hey, images speak louder than words! Like in this post, where the featured objects are all self-explanatory. (They even included the Nessie Ladle I featured in my previous post!)

Particularly neat is that they feature things from all over the world, such as this incredibly adorable toast cutter from Japan:

Seriously, how cute is that?

So yes - though I don't understand almost anything on the website, it's definitely a fun one to check out!

Threadless

Yesterday I signed up to a website called Threadless. There, artists can submit designs and, if they're approved by the website's staff, get 20% of the proceeds from the sale of items (mainly t-shirts) with their prints on them. I submitted several designs and am waiting to see if any of them get approved; should they be, each print will have 10 days during which people can vote on the print, and depending on the number of votes the design will be sold - or not. Should be interesting!

To give you an idea of the kind of prints Threadless sells, here are a few of my favorites:

Cleaning Up Town

The Milky Way

Dino Hug

Sushi

I Want My Blue Sky

It's Dangerous To Go Alone

There's a pretty wide variety of awesome designs, ranging from melancholy art to juvenile humor, with a lot of video game and tv show references thrown in (such as the "It's Dangerous To Go Alone" print, which pictures Link from the Legend of Zelda games). Have a look around the website, and I'll let you know if any of my designs get approved!

Edit: Unfortunately, all of my submissions were declined. I'll work harder!

Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems

AKA "My time in the Perceiving Systems department". It's a bit hard to define the job I did for over a year, but basically, I created virtual clothing to dress 3D scans of real people, working with fabric properties, animation sequences, and more. I also worked with several scanner systems, most notably the newest room-sized scanning systems by 3dMD, and collaborated with several researchers on their projects involving the digital study of the human body.

The Perceiving Systems department works in the field of Computer Vision, trying to "enable computers to understand the visual world of surfaces, materials, light and movement". Check out the About page here!

I mainly worked together with the researchers interested in the virtual representation of humans, helping to develop a more advanced version of a previous project titled DRAPE: Dressing Any Person. My main task was to create a large variety of clothing in a variety of sizes suitable to dress nearly any human adult. (Discounting physical disabilities or very extreme height differences; clothing to fit such sizes is easier changed by other digital means than a rigid grading of a pattern.)

This is a screenshot of OptiTex, the program I used to create the digital patterns. Pictured is a dress shirt, dressed on a male model (not a scan, but a digitally generated mesh).

So I'd have a 3D model of a person, dress it, run animations (often recorded in our Vicon system), save meshes, etc. I created a large variety of patterns, but will stick to basic patterns for this blog post to illustrate the job, rather than my creative abilities. (I may post more creative designs another time!)

In OptiTex I could change fabric parameters (affecting the draping and body of the garment), run custom animation sequences, and all sorts of other nifty things. Tons of fun! (Lots of work, too, but hey, who says work can't be play?) I'd love to upload a video sequence here, but unfortunately they're all too big. I can, however, share a video of a capture we did in the Vicon system - I'm pictured doing some stretches dressed in a velcro-fabric suit to which we stuck the Vicon markers. The system only captures the movement of the little silver markers, ignoring everything else, and the resulting "figure" can be applied to any 3D model, letting any model recreate my movements.

Fun! That capture session was such a great experience. My favorite photo of it is still this one below - I look so relaxed and happy~

But back to the original topic. So I'd have, for example, a 3D scan of myself, which I could dress in an outfit and run an animation with the clothing following my movements mostly realistically. The results would be passed on to my colleagues for their projects, and often I would find myself saving generated meshes of the same pattern on dozens of different bodies for comparison purposes. Someday we may see a new and improved version of DRAPE due to my work on this project! Probably not for another year, though - I mainly did the preliminary work of establishing a catalogue of garments for use, and now it needs to come together with a new type of body model, manner of representing cloth in the digital space, and many other considerations besides. When it does happen, however, I'll be able to say that I was a coauthor on a scientific publication - how cool is that?

And there we go - just about the most concise summary of my former job I can come up with. As a fashion designer by trade, this job enabled me to work in a more abstract way than the purely physical training I received, and it was a challenging, variable, and fun job. I learned a lot not only about Computer-Aided Design and scanning systems, but arguably more important things such as working in a team, getting tasks done properly and on time, and staying organized. I couldn't have had a better experience at my first place of employment!

If anything's unclear or there are details you'd like to know, drop me a comment - I'd love to hear from you!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I have plans for today, so I doubt I'll be posting later! So, without any ado, have some little images I made. Happy Valentine's Day!

The Ears and Years of Van Gogh - Part I

Source

It started at the dinner table. 

We were discussing Mozart and his compulsive gambling that ended up bankrupting him. My father said something along the lines of it often being unclear precisely what kind of obsessions such people used to have, and I laughed and said, “Unlike Van Gogh and his obsession with cutting off ears!” Immediately after I apologized unrepentantly for the terrible joke, but somehow we ended running with the concept of Van Gogh collecting ears. “Left ears!” my sister specified pointedly, and with a grin we agreed. 

Christopher was confused, so Dad explained gravely, “He was a time traveler and went to the future to cut off Van Gogh’s ear.” 

We all turned and blinked. Then someone laughed. “Why would Van Gogh have to travel to the future to cut off his own ear?”

“No, Mozart,” Dad disagreed, and I grinned in amused bemusement. 

“Why Mozart?”

“Weren’t you discussing his obsession with cutting off ears?”

A pause. Then laughter. “No, not Mozart! We moved on from him and were talking about Van Gogh cutting off his (and other people’s) ear!” However, as is our wont, the discussion deteriorated into humorous silliness concerning Van Gogh time traveling, and Dominic  expressed curiosity over what would happen if Van Gogh travelled to the past and cut off his past self’s ear – would the future version suddenly find himself missing that ear, or would nothing happen?

“Ah, but time travel is simply to alternate dimensions,” Dad waved it off, and Anastasia parried with a cocky grin, “So there are Van Goghs with more or fewer ears? Some with only one ear and some with three?”

“Three??” Mom exclaimed, and Anastasia explained that if Van Gogh went back (or forward) in time and cut off his alternative self’s ear, then one Van Gogh would have only one ear and the other would have three: two on his head, and one in his hand! In fact, she thought it such a brilliant concept that she declared laughingly that she’d write her bachelor thesis on the topic, titling it “The Ears and Years of Van Gogh”. (Most of us ignored that she would find it very hard to get a bachelor in Korean and Japanese Studies with such a topic.)

I laughed as well and said I’d quite like to title a blog post that way, and she enthusiastically encouraged me to write a blog entry with a silly tale of a time-traveling, ear-cutting Van Gogh. I agreed that it would be hilarious, though I was thinking more along the lines of a serious summary of the true man (which she pouted at slightly). So I thought, why not do both? In a manner of speaking. Today I’ll post this silliness, next I might post a part II consisting of a silly short story (entirely fictional, of course), and then a proper blog post on the real man and his work. Should be fun! (Though obviously, I’ll have to read up on the man before I can write anything silly involving him. Wouldn’t be right otherwise.)

...Thus ends The Ears and Years of Van Gogh, Part I!

Yamato Nadeshiko - the ideal Japanese woman

Yamato Nadeshiko is a Japanese aesthetic and cultural concept defining the perfect woman. It has its basis in the Confucian concepts of Feudal Loyalty (Li) and Filial Piety (Hsiao), and the main characteristics of a yamato nadeshiko are loyalty, domestic ability, wisdom, maturity, and humility.

“Yamato” is one of the more poetic names for Japan, similar to “Eire” for Ireland, while “Nadeshiko” is the name of a wildflower (Dianthus superbus) native to not only Japan, but also parts of Europe. The kanji for the term, 大和撫子, translate into English as “caressable child” or “wide-eyed barley”. (Not sure how flattering the barley term is!) 

In anime and more, a properly portrayed yamato nadeshiko will have a subtle touch of iron, unwilling to let circumstances hurt the ones she cares about or distract her from her goals or missions. A poorly done yamato nadeshiko will often appear as what tvtropes.org refers to as an “Extreme Doormat”, or a character who is “silent and submissive without the inner strength of a true yamato nadeshiko”. 

Historically, most nadeshiko were noble women with traditional upbringings, and as many came from samurai clans they had some martial skills, typically trained at least in the use of the naginata (a polearm with a slightly curved blade at the end), if not more.

Konoka Konoe from Mahou Sensei Negima!

I found it interesting to go through the examples on the TV Tropes page, and though I didn’t know many of them I certainly agreed with the ones I recognized! Of interest to most people I know would be the mention of the concept in Mulan: “Men want girls with good taste, calm, obedient, who work fast-paced. With good breeding and a tiny waist.” Mulan herself has some of the characteristics of a yamato nadeshiko, possessing the looks and the devotion to her parents, and her core of steel is shown in taking her father’s place in going to war not for glory or any reason but to spare her father’s life and the family honor.

From the anime section I had to smile at the mention of Belldandy from Ah! My Goddess, Hinata from Naruto, Tomoe from Rurouni Kenshin, Konoka from Mahou Sensei Negima!, and several other manga/anime characters; in the literature section I was overjoyed to see a mention of the Protector of the Small series by Tamora Pierce, in which the Yamani women (the Fantasy counterpart culture for Japan) are known for their politeness, stoicism, and carrying weapons that look like decorations (such as war fans, called “shukusen” in the books).

 
Interesting to read in comparison to the concept of yamato nadeshiko is the concept of the "Proper Lady". Mainly retaining a Victorian British mindset, the Proper Lady is gentle yet strong, incorruptible and intelligent, witty and well-mannered, and typically upper class. Examples would be Disney's Snow White, Margaret (Meg) from Little Women, Penelope (Odysseus' wife) from The Odyssey, and Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, which is all about how one becomes a true lady.

Webcomic?

My cousin "Xander" commented on my last post asking if I've ever considered drawing a webcomic. I have to admit that the thought never crossed my mind, and I figured the best way to decide on my answer would be to draw a comic strip as a test. I ended up illustrating my thought process instead... (Click on the images to enlarge; the text is illegible otherwise, I fear! To see them even bigger, right click and open the image in another tab, and then you can enlarge and scroll.)

Concerning the interruption in the first page - I was at our apartment to let workers in to deal with the damage the leaks caused to our wall, and man, their accents... So hard to understand :(  Let me translate for you... (And I apologize for my atrocious spelling of the Swabian accent!)

"I' komm glei nommal g'schwind" - Ich komme gleich nochmal geschwind - I'll come back in a moment quickly. (Lovely translation, huh?)

"Könnet Sie amal komma?" - Könnten Sie mal kommen? - Could you come for a sec?

Yep... I just said things like "Yes, of course!" "Thank you very much!" and such. Ah well.

Funny thing about the comic is: I didn't even realize that I drew myself without glasses until I stepped in front of a mirror. Weird, huh? You'd think that I would remember to draw the object that is always on my face, but apparently not! Though I have noticed that even when I look in the mirror, I tend to overlook my glasses - maybe because they're rimless and thus less obtrusive, but I can ignore them quite easily. (Not that I don't like my glasses! I am, however, prettier without. In this, I'll choose ease over beauty anyday!)

So yep. That was fun! Gotta work on drawing expressions. Thanks for the suggestion, Xander!

Scribbles from Work

Until recently I worked at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Sytems, in the Perceiving Systems department (I even happen to be in four images on the home page!). My main task was to create digital clothing, which was both challenging and fun! I hope to post some of my work soon, but today I wanted to share some of the notes I took while there.

I always kept blank A4 pages on my desk (slipped partway under my keyboard, in fact, so that they were right in front of my eyes) to jot down measurements and other notes while working on designs. Occasionally I would also add a small drawing - typically while waiting for OptiTex (the software I used) to drape the pattern I was working on, or while an animation was running.

So my typical paper would look like the ones below: Covered in numbers, song titles I liked (mainly kpop, though I see some song lyrics from Lacuna Coil there), and little sketches. Often I would fill one side of the paper, then turn it so that the covered side was under my keyboard and I'd have a blank space to use - so these have upside-down drawings and notes as well! Sometimes I'd even use the back of the paper. No point in wasting perfectly good white space!

But yes, as you can see: song lyrics and titles, measurements, scribbles, checklist...

Some bow drawings...

Some Disney-inspired princess dresses... Hey, my job was nothing if not variable!

...And there are many other, similar papers. Ah, good times!

Turtle Illustration

I'm working on a digital painting of a sketch I did the other day:

Clearly, my skills at drawing animals without a reference are pretty terrible. Thankfully, it's easy enough to find photo references, and upon finding a nice photo of a turtle I set about recreating it digitally.

The original image

My digital version! As with the sunset from last Friday, I completely painted over the original photograph.

I do quite like the idea of a girl riding the turtle, but I'm afraid I'm still working on it! Here's a work-in-progress image, and I have to say that I'm quite pleased with the idea to copy part of the turtle's shell pattern to create a lace top for the girl's dress. So sweet! Lots of work still to be done, though.

So that's my current art project! Takes a while to paint all that. (I fear it'll take me a long time to get the girl's face right, too!) As always, click on the images to see them bigger!

Celtic Songs

When I was younger, I fondly remember listening to a tape called "Women of the World - Celtic". The tape had a lovely compilation of very fine Celtic songs, some sung in English and others in Irish (Gaeilge).

Available on Amazon!

Some kind soul uploaded the songs onto youtube, and I was delighted to find them there! Here's the playlist for Celtic I, and the one for Celtic II. The songs are all wonderful, though of course some are more fond to me than others. (I happen to love Sovay, It Ain't Funny, Home Again In Eireann, Against The Wind, Treasure Island, Dulaman, and Song For Ireland. If you're curious who any of the songs are by, just ask and I'll tell you the artist names if I know them!)

Recently I went hunting for some of these songs/artists on Spotify (a platform for listening to music, for those who don't know) and was frustrated to have to search long and hard before finally finding the version of Dulaman I had grown up with. You see, some of these songs are traditional ones, with either varying text or tune, and particularly of Dulaman there are quite a few different versions! All beautiful, to be sure, but not the one I was looking for.

Other nice versions are by Celtic Woman (a group with beautiful female voices) and Anuna (whose rendition reminds slightly of a Gregorian chant, as they are an all male group), but the version I was looking for was the one by Altan - and thankfully, I did find it in the end.

Basically, Dulaman is about a young man come to court a young woman, but rather than refer to the humans as such, they are called seawead - Irish seaweed (dúlamán gaelach), to be precise. You can read the lyrics here, and listen to the song here; it really is a beautiful song, and I find myself singing it to myself at the oddest of times.

If you have a Spotify account, feel free to check out my playlist of Celtic songs here!

Hallowtide

Some time ago, I had reason to read up on the origins of Halloween, and found myself drawn into the concept of the triduum of Hallowtide.

I don't think I had ever properly learned about it; indeed, as far as I know, All Souls' Day isn't even observed in Germany. So it was fascinating to read up on the triduum and the various customs that are, or were, observed.

I particularly liked the concepts of "souling" and "guising" - the first involves groups of people going around begging (or singing) for soul cakes, in return praying for the souls of the givers and their friends. Guising, on the other hand, has children going from house to house performing small party tricks such as reciting a poem or singing a song in exchange for money or food. A rather more interesting variant on the American trick-or-treating, guising is popular in Scotland and Ireland, and also involves costumes.

Personally, I'm always interested in food and song, so reading up on the practice of souling (which was popular in England from the medieval period up until approximately 1930) was more interesting that guising to me.

"Soul cakes" are small round cakes that are given out to soulers, and each cake eaten is said to represent a soul being freed from Purgatory. They're traditionally filled with allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger or other sweet spices, raisins or currants, and before baking are topped with the mark of a cross (often a simple one made with a knife). It seems that souling tended to take place on All Saints' and All Souls' Eve, and children and beggars would go around singing for soul cakes. I found a score and some lyrics for what appears to be a (or the?) traditional song. Check it out here!
And speaking of songs for All Saints' Day, also quite nice is the hymn "For All the Saints".

I find interesting that All Hallows' Eve is believed to be an eve where the veil between the material world and the afterlife is thinned, and thus in some cultures people visit the graveyards on this eve, placing flowers and candles, while in Wales this night is Nos Galan Gaeaf, when people avoid churchyards, stiles, and crossroads, as spirits are thought to gather there. There are many other practices in other cultures, of course, but this struck me as particularly interesting as Wales is so close to countries that observe the triduum of Hallowtide.

All Saints' Day is the 1st of November, and was referred to as Hallowmas by such characters as Shakespeare, though some have used the word Hallowmas to refer to the entire triduum of Hallowtide. There is some speculation as to why All Saints' Day is now observed on the 1st of November - some believe that it was chosen in the British Isles to replace or coincide with the Celtic festival of the dead, Samhain, but according to Oengus of Tallaght, All Saints' Day was once celebrated on April 20th. Interesting!

All Souls' Day, then, is celebrated the day after All Saints' Day - on the 2nd of November. It's a day of prayer for the dead, to complement the preceding day of the saints. Souling, ringing bells, and lighting candles to relieve the spirits in Purgatory came to be associated with this day.

Personally, I'd enjoy observing a few of the customs; learn the songs, bake soul cakes, bob for apples... (I never have before!) Maybe this year, in 2015, I'll try something a bit different around Halloween. After all, it's not like the Americanized celebration ever really made its way to Germany! (Though I will admit to enjoying a goth party on Halloween of 2014.)

We'll see! It's interesting, that's for sure. I think I'll read up on the four Gaelic seasonal festivals next, since Samhain is celebrated right around the same time. I'd be happy to hear comments of what you know about Hallowtide!

Sunrise

This morning I got up far earlier than normal - at the shocking time of 7 AM! (Yep, I've been spoiled these past few years, what with my 9 AM wake-up call.)

Basically, I went and hung around a cold apartment while men drilled and scraped and generally fixed up terrible water damage behind me. Fun? I used the time to work on my digital painting a bit, using the wonderful new computer I lugged down the hill. (Lugging it back up was worse.)

I spent quite a bit of time simply reacquainting myself with my Photoshop brushes (including some extra ones, such as this brush pack by DanLuVisiArt that I really need to work with more), before using a few brushes from the aforementioned pack to recreate this photo (by "Michael from Minnesota"):

Isn't it gorgeous? I had a lot of fun recreating it, but I have a lot to learn (and work on) still. Below is my rendition, achieved by painting over the original until none of it was visible anymore. (Click to enlarge!)

The clouds, in particular, need more work (or just more effort - I slapped those down first, so they're the roughest part of the painting), but apart from those, I'm really pleased with the result. I'll do more such paintings in the future, I think - copying really helps you learn how to create something realistic and apply that new knowledge to other paintings!

But seriously, those colors... *sighs happily*

New Computer!

One really great thing about living in Germany is the postal service. 

How come? Well, let’s put it this way: On Tuesday I ordered a new laptop, and it arrived the next day. Woo!! Of course, I immediately had to set it up and play around with it until I had it more or less at a customized state I’m happy with (don’t understand why they put Windows 8 on it, but maybe it’ll grow on me?). By then it was unfortunately too dark to take proper photos (I don’t have a great camera, and the lighting in my room is not the best), so photos had to wait for today!

I got a Medion Erazer X7829 (MD98774), which is a gaming laptop with the stats I wanted for a work computer. Since I’ll want it mainly for heavy Photoshop use (think many layers and different brushes), a bunch of RAM was a must, but hard to find. Most gaming laptops don’t have much RAM, contenting themselves with 8 or even 4GB – definitely not enough for my purposes! 

Luckily, I did find one or two laptops that had 16GB RAM, and settled on this one. It has great stats, and a big screen (17,3”), and though there are a few small things I don’t like, in general I’m pleased with it so far. 

The things I don’t like: 

1) The touchpad buttons are really hard to press (which hopefully will get better with use)
2) The touchpad itself is a bit rough and hard to use (which will also hopefully improve)

3) When I hooked up my tablet, Windows for some reason thought I had a touchscreen and gave me pop-up instructions to swipe my finger in from the edge to switch between applications – and the window wouldn’t go away unless I unplugged my tablet! And then it reappeared nearly each time I did something else with the tablet! I’m thinking I’ll only hook up the tablet when I already have Photoshop or whichever application I’ll use open, but it’s a hassle.

4) I’m not sure why, but today my computer had everything in Spanish. Probably because I added Spanish to the list of keyboard languages, but the language should still have been English, since that’s the language on the top of my list! So strange. Guess it’s a good thing I do actually speak Spanish.

5) There are a bunch of “apps” and programs on there that needed to be uninstalled or deleted, but there remain some that I can’t get rid of before I’m completely sure what they are. I have a feeling they’re useless, but gotta check first.

6) I’m a bit annoyed that the apostrophe key is so far on the right – I’ve gotten used to it being to the left of the Enter key, not over it! That’ll take some getting used to. (Photos of my otherwise awesome German keyboard below!)

Those points aside, I am really happy with the computer. It was easy to set up, fun to play around with, didn’t take long to get used to Windows 8 (though I still prefer previous versions), and the computer runs quickly and silently. It even came with a really neat drawing/painting app, which of course made me happy! Also, I liked being able to set a full-screen image for my lock screen, though I wish I could do the same for the menu screen. I guess the blue swirls aren’t so bad. (It’s the icons that are.)

It also seems like Photoshop and other applications will be really easy to use – playing around with the tablet yesterday was tons of fun, and I’m looking forward to doing more! I’ll have to get used to using a laptop at a desk, though – I’ve gotten so used to having my laptop in my lap, but the new notebook’s a bit big for that! I still have my first laptop for that, though – and this one will probably remain my computer for browsing purposes. The other one should be mostly reserved for work. 

We’ll see how long that resolution lasts! 

See what I mean about the apostrophe key being over the
Enter key?

This beautiful image (which I'm using for my
lock screen) is by Kirk Quilaquil.

And my current desktop image is a gorgeous
shark mermaid by Neolucky.

Seriously cleaned up the Start menu until only the most basic 
applications are shown there: Microsoft Word, Skype, Notepad...

In fact, my computer also has a name. I never named my first laptop, not having seen a need, but when I first turned on the Medion computer it actually asked me to name it! That started a frantic search for a suitable name. My first thought was "George", because that's Mom's go-to name for everything, but my sister's computer already has that name - then I thought "Nuria", because that's a name I've considered my "Spanish name" since I first started learning the language (Thank you, Frau Ortleb!), but I didn't really think it suited the computer. I couldn't quite decide whether a male or female name would suit, so I turned to the internet - this list of Shakespearean characters, to be precise. I thought an S name, to suit my own, would be nice. 

Scrolling through, I soon found myself drawn to the name "Lord Saye", and thought that "Saye" was an appropriately genderless name when the "Lord" was removed from it. Thus, my computer was named Saye. Here's to a long and fruitful partnership!