Double Stuff

Here's a sketch I did a few days ago while sitting outside a local supermarket. My Modbook had about 30 percent battery life left so I had to work quick. It's done with my usual Photoshop settings. After completing this set I got the dreaded, "You're about to run out of juice" message so I saved and powered down.

That's when I switched to traditional since I was already warmed up. Those I have to scan and post another day for you.

Oddly enough, this one lady was dressed like the character "Nina" from my brother Ronnie's Paper Biscuit books so she definitely caught my attention. (the real subject had a little one sitting in the cart)

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On a different note, I had the opportunity to watch the acclaimed Swedish horror film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN last night at work. It's definitely one of the better films i've seen lately.

This movie is visually stunnning and a great one to study for composition. It uses that rather familiar european minimalist style to it's advantage. Set in the early eighties it tells the story of boy living in a Stockholm suburb who befriends a intriguingly strange girl who moves in next door.

What I truly love about this film is that it takes a genre and turns it on it's head. It's subtle, unnerving and genuinely emotional. It also demonstrates the effectiveness of story design using two complex and different characters and worlds, set against a simple back drop. Life is always a complex set of interweaving experiences and so is a good work of fiction. The tendency with most films set in a specific genre is to pay off the audience with expected events, all the while forgetting that there are no real absolutes in real life. People feel both love and hate, are both beligerent and kind, friend and foe. Here, director Tomas Alfredson weaves enough frightening tension and darkness with geniune innocence and purity of true love.

The story builds to really satisfying climax and one of the better endings i've seen in a while. This is what watching movies is about. A complete experience both viscerally and intellectually where the genuine emotions are stirred.

Oh and, if you like blood in your films, there's a nice helping of it here.

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... just found this out after putting up this post... The revered, modern american master Andrew Wyeth (1917 - 2009) has passed away at the age of 91. Wyeth painted in the realist style and is famous for his "Helga Paintings" in which he secretly painted a Prussian-born neighbor off and on for a period of 15 years. His tempera paintings are particularly intriguing and exuded a seemingly haunting quaility to them. He recieved the National Medal of Arts in 2007.

May he rest in peace.