More Books to Catalogue
Dec. 20th, 2010 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darthfarOur concert on Saturday night went... a little better than I expected, really. On my part, I managed *not* to mess up the opening for West Side Story (even if it wasn't as legato as it was meant to be because I sacrificed a little smoothness to make sure I managed to hit the notes at all), and didn't panic when the trumpets somehow missed their re-entry in E.T. The Extraterrestrial (how did that even happen...), leaving me to carry the theme on my own for eight gut-wrenching bars. Public reception was generally good, and it was nice that the people I invited enjoyed themselves, even if my mother never managed to work out which parts I was playing. (I was playing the duet with the trombone for the German Carols, mom!).
Went out and got myself two books yesterday:
1. Andras Szunyoghy's Anatomy Drawing School: Animal. Szunyoghy's (I hate typing his name >.<) Human Anatomy for Artists is my personal bible, and sits on my music stand when there's no music on it, so I was delighted to find this other volume because this man *rocks* at anatomy. I've always had trouble drawing animal movement, mostly because I've never actually had the chance to observe said animals but also because I knew doodly-squat about their musculoskeletal systems. This book not only illustrates the complete skeletons and musculature of select mammals from various angles, but also separate bones and muscle masses as well as the movement of their limbs/bodies and the corresponding position of the bones during said movement. It's too bad the book doesn't cover avians as well; *that* is another area I know very little about, and could use an anatomy book to help me with.
2. Geoffrey Abbott's Execution: The Guillotine, the Pendulum, the Thousand Cuts, the Spanish Donkey, and 66 Other Ways of Putting Someone to Death. Probably not everybody's choice of bedtime reading, but I've always been fascinated by methods of torture and putting people to death - from a purely educational viewpoint, of course. (It's all research!). That, and I suspect that macabre/gruesome books, movies and games are a coping mechanism for when the world gets too stressful or upsetting. [Wait, I already know this: whenever I get upset, I go and kill hordes of zombies with headshots, and feel massively better afterwards.] A bystander should have no claim to distress, but it's nevertheless highly unsettling to watch chaos descend and claim casualties, particularly when they're not anonymous but have names that mean something to the observer, and having no right or business or way to do anything about it.
Went out and got myself two books yesterday:
1. Andras Szunyoghy's Anatomy Drawing School: Animal. Szunyoghy's (I hate typing his name >.<) Human Anatomy for Artists is my personal bible, and sits on my music stand when there's no music on it, so I was delighted to find this other volume because this man *rocks* at anatomy. I've always had trouble drawing animal movement, mostly because I've never actually had the chance to observe said animals but also because I knew doodly-squat about their musculoskeletal systems. This book not only illustrates the complete skeletons and musculature of select mammals from various angles, but also separate bones and muscle masses as well as the movement of their limbs/bodies and the corresponding position of the bones during said movement. It's too bad the book doesn't cover avians as well; *that* is another area I know very little about, and could use an anatomy book to help me with.
2. Geoffrey Abbott's Execution: The Guillotine, the Pendulum, the Thousand Cuts, the Spanish Donkey, and 66 Other Ways of Putting Someone to Death. Probably not everybody's choice of bedtime reading, but I've always been fascinated by methods of torture and putting people to death - from a purely educational viewpoint, of course. (It's all research!). That, and I suspect that macabre/gruesome books, movies and games are a coping mechanism for when the world gets too stressful or upsetting. [Wait, I already know this: whenever I get upset, I go and kill hordes of zombies with headshots, and feel massively better afterwards.] A bystander should have no claim to distress, but it's nevertheless highly unsettling to watch chaos descend and claim casualties, particularly when they're not anonymous but have names that mean something to the observer, and having no right or business or way to do anything about it.
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Date: 2010-12-20 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 05:34 am (UTC)Does it make me a bad person that I wish all the chapters had illustrations?
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Date: 2010-12-20 07:42 am (UTC)*g*
There used to be this section the SF Wax Museum that was based on this. <3