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shina913 · 2 years ago

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Flowerworks | KNJ

Flowerworks

Pairing: Namjoon x Fem!Reader

Rating: M (SFW)

Genre: Exes; pure angst; fluff

Warnings: a lot of angst; pining; meet-cute; suggestive language; missed opportunities; vague infidelity

Word count: 4,241 words

Summary: “The love you had in your past...unfinished, untested, lost love...seems so easy, so childish to those who chose to settle down. But it’s actually the purest, most concentrated stuff.”

A/N: This story was inspired by an anthology series that I had binged while I had Covid back in January this year. For a while, I've been wanting to do a rendition of that but I wasn't sure which member to 'cast.' But Indigo has such a great inspiration so I've revisited this draft and thought Namjoon would be the perfect angsty main character here. Also, Kelly Price's rendition of As We Lay was a good inspo for this as well, except it's got none of the spicy stuff and you're left with all angst!

A/N2: I've never been to the UK or Europe 🤡 so a lot of this is just talking out of my ass hoping it would make for an interesting backdrop. I apologize for any geographical inaccuracies. This isn't the first time I've mentioned Juan Luna in my fics--I just thought, wouldn't it be cool if Namjoon studied Filipino impressionists🤪. Anyway, hope the story still lands! 💙

“Thank you so much for the presentation, Dr. YLN. It was so refreshing to hear a new take on a subject that’s so rarely…uhm, what’s the word…”

“Discussed? Thought of?” You finish their sentence for them. You smile warmly at a young journalist who was covering your lecture as part of a feature piece they were doing for a magazine. After the program ended, they decided to come up for a side conversation.

“Yes, that’s right,” the journalist says. “Your perspective is so fascinating to me. I mean–when we were in grade school, these lessons were just so repetitive and boring. It’s practically a bird course,” they chuckled.

“Right, because you’re supposed to just fly right through it?” You joked. You, too, had that impression when you were much younger.

“Your research style is so much more interesting. I was elated to find out that you’re the historical consultant on that ‘Ilustrados’ series!”

You tried your best to stay humble but deep down, you were still pinching yourself about getting to work with a major studio and top-tier production team. “I saw it as a great opportunity for us history and literature majors to flex a little, you know?” Then you caught yourself and laughed. “Oh my god, that sounded so nerdy,” you flushed.

“Not at all! Don’t be too modest,” they giggled. “I think it’s great that we get to give stories like this a new angle.”

You smiled and mouthed your thanks.

“I’m curious, do you remember what or who inspired you to pursue history as one of your fields of expertise?”

You grew flustered then blew out a quick breath. “Wow, uhm��nobody’s ever asked me that!”

“I don’t have to include it,” the journalist adds.

Your brows furrowed. “Include what?”

“That story that’s written all over your face,” they say with a knowing look.

“Oh, well…I think I’ve always been on track to study literature in some shape or form. That was my chosen major in college. Pursuing a career in history, however…was a happy accident,” you recall fondly.

They smiled excitedly. “Please tell me more,” they urged.

You stifle a grin. It was one of, if not the most unforgettable time in your life. If you could ever capture lightning in a bottle–that was the moment to do it.

You began, “He was an art history major spending a year in France while I was a language and literature major spending a semester in London. I met him while on holiday at a cafe in Paris–”

“Hang on! I think I’ve heard this story before!” They interject.

You give them a confused look. Up until this moment, you’ve only spoken about him to your former flatmate and a couple of close friends. “Y-you have?” You ask slowly.

They let out a soft chuckle. “I’m sorry, I’m kidding! Is that real?”

You laughed. “Yes, yes it is!”

“You know, most people are like–we met in college, lost touch for a while, then ran into each other on the street years later and had coffee.”

“Well…it does sound like quite the Hallmark movie plot, huh? The place we were at was certainly the perfect backdrop for it,” you smiled at the memory. “But, as unbelievable as it sounds, if it weren’t for him sparking my…” You cleared your throat, “...Enthusiasm in the subject and history in general–I wouldn’t be in this position today.”

It was indeed a serendipitous time in Paris, which began as a casual encounter over drinks, then eventually led to hours of exploring historic art districts with him. The day trips around the city certainly brought your interest in history to a whole different level.

“W-what happened to him?”

You shrug your shoulders. “After my break, I had to return to London. He wanted to come with me but he had some travel commitments with his fellow students. We agreed to meet at my place but–it just…didn’t work out for some reason.”

The journalist listened intently, indulging you in your story.

“I don’t know what happened. I thought we had a great connection. I mean, wasn’t that as perfect an opening to a relationship that you can get? Back then, I would go back and forth trying to think about how different it felt for me than it did for him.”

For a moment, you felt yourself slip again. But as you had done for the past several years, you smiled and shook your head to brush the memory aside to lock it away. Then, at your most vulnerable, you can unpack it again. You wave them off, “Anyway, that was such a long time ago, though!”

“How long?” They ask curiously.

“10 years,” another voice answered.

For that fraction of a second, your heart drops to your stomach, and you’re afraid to look up. This has to be another figment of your imagination. Still, you couldn’t help thinking about the times you wished to hear that voice again.

The journalist steps aside to clear the path. You finally peer up, blinking a few times to assure yourself that this was real.

There he was, standing in front of you–your lightning in a bottle…Namjoon. He had the biggest smile on his face and it was just as warm and bright as you remember it.

Suddenly feeling that they’ve intruded in a special moment, the journalist excuses themself and thanks you for the lovely conversation, promising to send you the initial draft of their feature via email.

As stunned as you were, you managed to string some words together. “I can’t believe it’s really you.”

“Hello, YN,” Namjoon greeted you as he moved closer.

“H-hi.” You were shocked to hear how calm your voice sounded when all you wanted to do was melt into a puddle.

You both stand in front of each other not knowing whether to shake hands or hug. Before you knew it, you were throwing your arms around his neck to embrace him. You feel his warmth envelop you, hearing him sigh faintly into your hair.

“It’s been a long time,” you say after pulling away. “Weren’t we supposed to meet in London?”

//FLASHBACK

When you met in Paris, he was only one of the handful of patrons who spoke English at the cafe. You don’t know how exactly your conversation began, but he started spouting some facts about craft beer as opposed to wine–and tried to convince you that one was better than the other.

After a few spirited arguments, you agreed to settle things…back at his flat, which was a block away from the cafe. Your worked out your differences in opinions in bed, eventually agreeing to disagree after he made you orgasm.

He later confessed that the spontaneous debate was a pickup tactic from him. He thought he was being clever but never expected you to offer up some valid points. But you told him that you thought he was cute so you were all-too-willing to be reeled in anyway.

Though you were on break, he was in the middle of his school term and had to spend time traveling within the city to check out recommended sites to fulfill his course requirements.

He invited you to come with him on a day trip to check out the former studio of an artist who turned out to be instrumental in their home country's rebellion. You were apprehensive but came with an open mind--and you never regretted it.

You spent the evening at his place once more...and a few more times after that. Your favorite thing was waking up next him in the mornings, exchanging innocent kisses in bed that always escalated to the point where one or both of you would end up moaning each other's name.

But when you weren’t in bed, you spent many hours just talking. He was so passionate about his studies as much as you were about yours. The way he spoke about art, its origins, and inspirations was so reverent, it was fascinating to experience a drop of his enthusiasm.

The day you had to return to London was difficult, not just for you but for him, too. He and a few of his fellow students were supposed to travel to Rouen and spend a few days there to check out some impressionist exhibits recommended by their teacher. He planned to take the ferry to visit you right after.

When you arrived at the train station, he noticed that he lost his phone somewhere between the ride from his flat to this point. You dug into your bag and retrieved an old receipt where you wrote your number and address down. He took it and slid it in between his book that he carried with him. Then, on the week that you were supposed to meet, the borders shut down.

//END FLASHBACK

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“Mm-hm…you better be,” you respond wryly.

He rubbed at the back of his neck sheepishly. “I, uh…missed my alarm then, got caught up in the border lockdown. Before I knew it, I was stranded in Normandy for a bit before the school managed to make arrangements to get us back to Paris then back home.”

You’ll never forget it, since you, too, were stuck in a foreign land so far away from family.

“How come you never called?” It was a question that niggled at you for years.

He chewed at his bottom lip helplessly. “In the midst of all the chaos, I misplaced my book–the one where I kept that receipt where you wrote down your information.”

That all sounded too easy and far-fetched. But in the week that you spent with him, it wasn’t that hard to believe. He nearly left his passport behind at the bar that first night before going back to his flat; Once, he got off at the wrong stop after mixing up north and southbound trains.

You sighed. “Well…you’re here now. That’s all that matters, right? How did you know I’d be here?”

He smiled wistfully. “I saw your picture in one of our e-newsletters I get at work,” he answers. “I normally send those straight to my trash but something told me that I needed to take a look at it and…I’m sure glad that I did.”

That made your heart flutter. You made a mental note to thank the university’s Communications team for convincing you to do a headshot to promote the lecture series.

“Do you live around the area? Are you local?”

He shook his head gently. “No. I made the trip out here because I wanted to come see you.”

Your mouth falls open at his confession. “O-oh.”

“I wondered if I could take you out for dinner? There’s a bistro that I passed not too far from here. U-unless…you’ve already eaten–”

You snorted loudly then interjected, “Oh, please–you know I could always eat!” He laughs hysterically.

******

“Have you ever gone back?”

His eyes flick up at your question but the look he gave told you that you didn’t need to clarify it further.

“Mm-hm,” he answered affirmatively before adding, “Not as often as I’d like, though. And you?”

“Yeah,” you reply. “Actually, a year after travel restrictions eased up, I went back right away.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

You nod and look at him enigmatically. “I went straight to Villa Dupont.”

Remembering the area so clearly, his lips twitch at the thought. “Luna’s atelier?”

You nodded again. He sat back on his chair then interlocked his fingers behind his neck before he tilted his head against them. “Wow. That’s…amazing!”

“What can I say? That’s where my career started,” you quipped.

“And here I was, thinking that I was such an idiot for taking this beautiful girl on the most boring, mind-numbing walking tour of Asian impressionist artists.”

You both laughed, but those walks with him were one of the best memories of your time there.

“Anyway, I came back a few more times after that for my doctoral dissertation. And now here I am, giving lectures on it.”

The look on his face showed pride and admiration. All those hours you spent talking, you both shared your dreams and hopes for the future. You both had your head in the clouds…just two kids trying to justify the relevance of your respective liberal arts programs.

“That’s amazing. Consider me envious,” he says in jest. “You’re traveling around the world…and living your dream.”

You wave him off. “It’s not so glamorous. These days, I’m happy if I get to squeeze in some personal time. Usually, I get to a place, spend most of my time working and…” Your eyes drift down to your left hand, picking up your drink, “...then I have to get back to my family.”

He follows your line of vision. It wasn’t the first time he’s clocked in the piece of jewelry you’ve worn for a number of years now. He noticed it when you took the menu from the host after they sat you down at your table.

He hadn’t asked about it then, nor did you ask him about the ring that he wore on his finger when he moved his wine glass to the edge of the table when the server returned to pour him a glass of red wine.

You cleared your throat. “So, what else have you been up to these days? Are you just calling up former lovers?” You teased him.

A low laugh rumbled within his chest. “I’ve only ever had one former lover,” he held up one finger and stared. It was so unnerving, you had to break eye contact first. “Then, I got married. Really quickly…to the first girl that I met a year after I got back from France.”

You couldn’t hide the shock written all over your face. “Wow,” you managed to say. “That’s…” You try to think of a word that didn’t sound too reproachful.

“Crazy? Impulsive? Yes. I was really young and I thought the world was ending. I just didn’t want to lose anybody again.” he trailed off.

You and your husband were together for five years before you even thought about getting married. Maybe you were unconsciously holding out hope that you’d run into Namjoon again.

You swallowed the lump in your throat and smiled sadly at the thought, but that was quickly interrupted by the server bringing your dinner to the table.

******

You go through the rest of dinner talking about your most recent work and him sharing some of his more recent projects. When the server returns to dish out your plates, they ask about dessert. Namjoon declined but immediately looked at you.

“Oh, no thank you,” you declined politely.

Namjoon’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Who are you? I could have sworn that moelleux au chocolat was calling your name,” he teases, remembering your favorite treat that you indulged in while you were together.

“Shut up,” you laughed. “We’re not 21 anymore. You can’t…eat chocolate cake just like that.”

“Not even in bed?” The soft crinkle in his eyes deepened as he smiled cheekily.

You try to put aside those memories of chocolate and him. You cock a serious eyebrow at him, his expression unchanging. “Nope, not even in bed.”

You fall silent for a bit. Then he asks, “How many kids do you have?”

“Two girls. You?”

“I have a son,” he answers.

“Must be blissful to just have one,” you commented, polishing off your wine.

“Oh, trust me,” he says, picking up the bottle to pour you another glass but you hold your hand up, feeling like you’ve had more than enough for the night. “He’s still a handful, though.” he laughs, proceeding to empty out the rest of the bottle’s contents into his glass.

“But he’s my handful, so…” he trailed off, setting the empty wine bottle on the table.

“Are you and your wife still together?” You thought maybe the question was out of line but curiosity was getting the best of you.

His expression turns wistful. “We live under the same roof, let’s put it that way. She’s a great woman, a good mother. And I don’t deserve her.”

You smiled sadly at him, then stared at him silently. You begin to question why you even decided to come with him. Perhaps it was all a big mistake.

And yet, even though it's been so long, your memories of him were so incredibly vivid that you could just reach your hand out and you'd feel them. Feel him.

“What are we doing here, Namjoon? Why did you show up at my lecture? What did you hope to achieve?”

“Honestly?” His eyes flicked downward and he began to fidget with a loose thread on the table cloth.

“When I found out that you’d be in town, I booked a room within five minutes.” He chuckled. “I didn’t even care if the rate was ridiculous…”

Then, his gaze lifted back to your face. “I was hoping that we could pick up where we left off."

Your hand instinctively clutches at your chest. Your heart was beating so fast, you were afraid that it would just burst out of it.

"For 10 years, I imagined what our life would have been like. And if I ever saw you again, would I feel the same way about you? Would you feel the same way about me?”

You purse your lips and lean in closer. “You didn’t need to book a hotel room to find out if we still love each other…” You paused, then gave him a small smile. “Because clearly, we still do.”

His lips curved into a smile and the dimples in his cheeks grew deeper.

“For 10 years…Just the idea of you, knowing that you existed and that you were in my life…I held onto those memories and they got me through some tough times.” Your throat tightens but right before your tears fall, he reaches across the table, holding his hand out, beckoning you to put your hand in it.

After some hesitation, you acquiesce. He gives it a gentle squeeze, then brings it up to his lips to kiss it. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

******

You took a leisurely walk by the avenue and into a small pub a few blocks away. You shared a few more drinks and stories. For hours, you caught up with each other’s lives.

You excitedly talk to him about your new television project while he enthusiastically describes recently studying works by the late Yun Hyong Keun, even developing a friendship with his family.

Art was Namjoon’s pride and joy. His eyes, though the corners were now wrinkled with laugh lines several years later, still lit up the same way when he talked about his passions and the things that he loves.

When one pub closed, you moved into another. And when that closed, you moved your conversation to a park bench, right outside of your hotel by the waterfront.

It was a little after 5:30AM and daylight was breaking through the horizon. Most of the town’s commercial avenue was still asleep, save for the cafes that were gearing up for a new day for early-morning patrons.

When you sat down next to him, he lifted his arm up, inviting you to sidle up closer to him. And you did. You basked in his warmth and rested your head against his chest. You caught a whiff of him…cinnamon and coffee mixed in with faint traces of lavender-scented fabric softener. Even though you felt fatigue set in, you couldn’t close your eyes. You crane your neck up to find him sitting still with eyes closed while the sunrise kisses his face. Now, how could you possibly miss that?

******

You head back into the hotel and go up to your respective rooms only to retrieve your things so you could check out and head to the train station.

“You don’t have to take me, really–”

“I know I don’t have to but I want to,” he insisted.

You laugh at him. “You’ve gone and rented out a room that you didn’t even sleep in. Now you’re saying that you’re going to take the train with me, see me off at my stop, then transfer at a station that’s completely out of the way for you?”

He laughed in return. “It sounds so crazy when you put it that way but…yes, I want to do all that.”

You shook your head at how ridiculous that was. “Joon…”

“Please? Just let me do this,” he all but pleads.

You wanted to protest again but instead, when you open your mouth, a yawn escapes you.

“Look at you…that’s like, the fifth time in a row you’ve yawned,” he snickered.

“Spare me,” you chuckled with a slight eyeroll. “I know we barely slept when we were together. Now I can barely keep my eyes open.”

“Dawn is for lovers…and bakers,” he adds with a grin while his eyes peered up at a bakery that had just turned over its ‘open’ sign on the front door.

Your cheeks flushed with warmth. “You always had a way with words.”

“Things haven’t changed much,” he replied as you made your way out of the hotel to catch a cab together.

******

Hours later, the train approaches your stop, and you begin to gather your things.

“Thank you,” you say to him.

He smiled wordlessly then dipped his head down. You didn’t stop him and instead, met his kiss halfway. Warmth bloomed within your chest when your lips brushed against each other’s. In an instant, you had traveled back in time…back into his embrace. It was like coming home.

The train comes to a halt, making you bump against each other. Pulling away, you stare at each other with half-lidded eyes. Both your pulses raced but ironically, there was a calm that washed over you.

Neither of you said anything for a few beats until a smile broke through his lips. It’s so infectious that you do the same. He leans in again and plants a soft, lingering kiss on your forehead. You find yourself squeezing your eyes shut.

When he lets go of you, he looks into your eyes again. “We should do this again.”

His invitation was so unexpected that it knocked the wind out of you. You give him a small smile and a nod. “Sure, just call me.”

“I definitely will. You know, since I have my phone with me now instead of an old receipt,” he says.

You gather your things and off-board the train hand-in-hand. You put your luggage down then faced each other on the platform.

“So…have a good life!”

Your comment tickles him. “‘Have a good life’?” he echoed. “That sounds like something people say when they won’t see each other again.”

You didn’t really mean anything by it. You thought it sounded better than saying, ‘That was fun,’ or ‘Take care.’

You chuckled at him and shrugged. “You never know what could happen between now and the next time we see each other again. I could die; you could hit your head and fall into a coma; another border lockdown could happen, or…maybe one of us decides that they want something else,” you reply casually.

He took a step to narrow the gap between you. “I’ve always loved your wild imagination,” he says, tucking a few strands of your hair behind your ear.

You grinned at him. “So you’ve told me.”

His expression turned serious. “Well, none of those things will happen. We’ll see each other again.” he promises, keeping his eyes locked with yours.

You nodded softly and gave him a small smile. “Alright.”

His smile grew wider and you tilt your chin up to kiss his lips again before his train home arrives on the other side of the platform. You watched him board and saw that he sat by the window seat, his eyes still on you.

True love in its absolute form has many purposes in life. It’s not just about bringing children into the world; or romance or soulmates or even lifelong companionship. The love you had in your past...unfinished, untested, lost love...seems so easy, so childish to those who chose to settle down. But it’s actually the purest, most concentrated stuff.

For years, you imagined what it would be like to see him again. To learn that things hadn’t changed and that spark between you was just as bright and electric as when you first made eye contact.

And while you were happy to learn that he still felt the same way, just like any spark, there’s a brightness for a few seconds…before the wind blows it out. Like a firework that shoots up into the sky, bursting into different colors, only to fall back down as smoke and ash. Like a bolt of lightning, crackling through the storm clouds, followed by a loud thunderclap and a burst of rain.

Up until the last few hours, you realized that something this good can only last for so long.

You had your beautiful moment with him. And that’s how it will always stay in your heart.

When the train rain pulls away from the station, you feel a twinge in your chest. You blew him a kiss and stood there silently until he was far enough away from you.

He waved at you through the window then turned to look straight ahead.

“Have a good life, YN,” he whispered to himself.

Crossposted on AO3 | Main Fic Masterlist

You’ve reached the end! Thank you so much for reading!

If you loved it, please comment, reblog, or send me feedback! 📩. I love hearing from readers! If you didn’t like it so much, I would still like to hear about it. Help me become a better writer! 💜

Tagging: @internetjunkdrawer @deepseavibez @itdoesntmatterwhy @joonschocochip @yu-justme @e-cm

#bts fanfiction #namjoon x reader #namjoon angst #namjoon fanfiction

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eltanin0 · 9 months ago

Note

Haven't done this in a while. So here comes the mandatory pic of this bastard of a car.

Hungarian painter Színyei Merse Pál who was active during the impressionist artmovement (even tho he technically can not be considered one). Once in the later stages of his carrier he exhibited in Künstlerhaus (1883). One of his paintings titled Skylark received a whole lot of negative criticism.

This was for multiple reasons but most impotantly people thought that the colors were way too strong, lnotably the grass was considered to be too vibrant and unrealistic. He reacted by getting blocks of grass from outside and placing them right under the painting to show that it was accurate.

that is a very comfy looking car.

and wow, even back then people were hating. they really didnt like his art because it was too vibrant? i mean his response was great, a solid fuck you to the doubters. but still, that's such a nitpicky thing to get hung up on.

these asks are always interesting to read. you should do more of these. unfortunately i dont have any cool knowledge to share with you, but still thanks for the ask.

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wanderingblindly · 1 year ago

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🎈 🦋 for the ask! :)

!!!!!!!! Helllo !!!!!! Thank you so much for the ask!!!!!!!!

🎈: wow do I wish I knew what my style is lmfaoooo. Someone in the comments of Changes, Beginnings said that if felt sort of impressionist, which felt like a real high point for me. That said, I don't think my style is very fixed, it depends heavily on what type of story I'm writing. I do wish I had a more... recognizable voice, but I think the ability to be flexible has it's benefits. That all being said, if I were to use one word it would be... probably 'belabored', oof.

🦋: EVERYTHING LOL. I get horrifically worked up after I post, my heart rate is high for hours (and I'm not a very anxious person by nature). I guess what I'm most nervous about is that people just won't... react to it. That they won't care, that what I wrote wasn't interesting enough to even actively dislike. To me, putting a piece of yourself out there and having it go unnoticed at all somehow feels worse than people just not "getting" it. Something something art is about eliciting a reaction something.

#the question about insecurity made me just #huh #I should work on dissecting that huh #THANK YOU ALSO HELLO I LOVE YOUR WORK #ask me :)

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alfalfascouting · 2 years ago

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My Friend is an Amazing Artist and I Don't Know How to Talk About Art! 😰 Help??

No need to fear. Most of us art folk don't expect non-art folk to tell us that you can feel the echoes of impressionist thinking or that we have great economy of line. Some of us might not even know what to do with a statement like that. We just made something cool and we wanna share it with you.

So, if you're floundering trying to think of something to say, here's a buffet of examples for you. Some artists might like some of these more than others. You might like some of them more than others. They're food for thought; get thinking.

Talk about the Subject

And don't be afraid to state the obvious! We work hard to make the characters recognizable, to make the fabric look like it's caught in a breeze, to frame a city so that it looks alive. A great start is recognizing what you see.

Do you know the person, creature, place, or thing in the art?

"Hey, I remember you talking about him!"

"That's beautiful, what kind of bird is that?"

"That is the most haunted castle I've ever seen."

Do you know them REALLY well?

"Oh my god, that's my character! I love the way you did their hair!"

"That was one of my favorite places, growing up. I think you really got what I liked about it."

"I remember when that happened, in the story. When they were looking up through the fire and the clouds and it felt like they weren't going to make it, like... damn."

Is something happening in the art?

"Ough, that looks super painful."

"Wow, it's almost like she's flying. Like she could dance right off the paper."

"Now I know that when you said explosion, you meant literally all of it."

Attention to details

"Did you design this outfit for them? It looks awesome."

"It's so spiky. Menacing. Like it's really gonna eat you."

"I'm always amazed by how well you draw hands."

Talk about the Methods & Medium

You don't need to know fancy art words to do this. You just need to dig a little deeper into how they made it and how it turned out.

Recognizing style

"Your lines are always so smooth and graceful."

"The texture of this is really interesting, like waxy and crumbling..."

"I love the way your art is so bright and intense, all glitched out."

Some open-ended questions

"How do you get the colors to turn out this way?"

"You said you make these all out of found materials, so, how do you choose which ones to use?"

"How long does it take you to make these?"

"Did you do a lot of planning for this, or did you make it up as you went along? (And if planned, what do the plans look like?)"

"Can you tell me more about how you decided to make this? Were you inspired by anything?"

Talk about Your Experience

There's a reason we showed you, and it's usually because we thought you in particular would get something out of this artwork. So what are you getting?

How do you feel?

"Seeing them together makes me really happy. All is right with the world."

"I don't know what it is about it, but it feels really sharp, like it could burn me if I get too close."

"It looks so cold and quiet, like the middle of winter in the middle of nowhere."

"This is one of those feelings that you can't really describe in words, and I didn't think anybody would be able to put it down on paper, either, but you did it."

What are you thinking about?

"All those little things on the shelf make me think of traveling around the world and getting souvenirs from each place."

"I wish I could live in your fantasy forest."

"This makes me think of some of the dark times in my life, too. But I got through it. And we'll get through it."

"Honestly, your drawings of cats always make me want to go pick up my cat even though I just talked to her 2 minutes ago. They're that fluffy."

"Every time you send me one of these I just can't get over how incredible all of it is, and I want to point at every single thing and wave my arms around and babble nonsense until you understand just how excited I am that this is sitting in front of me right now and you made it."

In Conclusion

I found a lot of funny public domain pictures of people looking at (or pointing at) art and now that's your problem.

Also, feel free to share your own tips on talking about art for non-art people.

#advice #talking about art #scripts #how to talk about art #communication #compliments #social skills

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thedalatribune · 2 years ago

Photo

[L] Wind Effect, Popular Series Claude Monet (1891) Louvre (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates)

[R] Charing Cross Bridge Claude Monet (1926) Louvre (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates)

Impressionism

When Impressionist paintings are presented in museums today and sold for millions at auction, no one questions their legitimacy as works of art worthy of attention and esteem. But when they were first exhibited in Paris in 1874, they were regarded as unfinished, slapdash, lowbrow, and renegade. With the way art history has since evolved, or in the view of some, devolved, how do we understand these pictures whose original power lay in their ability to shock, especially when to contemporary eyes they look old, and totally unradical? What remains of their power? Why should we look and them, and what do we see? This is the case for Impressionism.

This new style didn’t arrive out of the clear blue sky, but the paintings were often created under one. A hallmark of the art that would come to be known as Impressionist was that many were painted outside of the studio and in the world, or as the French say “en plein air”. Unlike the slow, studio-based approach that held sway at the annual salons of the French Royal Academy, whereby tonal gradations were gradually built up with layer upon layer of glazes, Impressionist works were frequently begun if not completed entirely out of doors. These artists used smaller canvases that were easy to transport and finish quickly before the light or weather changed. Artists had been painting in the landscape for some time, like Dutch artists of the 17th Century, and even more recently in England, where the likes of John Constable won admirers for his pictures of villages and countrysides, and J. M. W. Turner wowed with his own highly dramatic and abstracted scenes from nature. In France, where Impressionism was brewing, painting in the landscape was an established practice, artists escaping Paris and political instability to observe nature and render it in a relatively lifelike manner. These artists also experimented with style and technique, trying out looser brushwork and brighter colors. But landscapes were considered to be genre painting and less important in the eyes of the Academy that, more than nature, valued the study of ancient Greek and Roman art. Figures were to be strongly defined, and set amid ordered and harmonious compositions. This was the kind of subject matter favored by the Academy, pulling from history, mythology, and religion. They didn’t want to see regular people doing regular stuff. The so-called Reaslists had already challenged the academy’s values by painting scenes from contemporary life, sometimes admitted to the salon and sometimes denied. Gustave Courbet built his own pavilion during the 1855 Paris World’s Fair, circumventing the official juried exhibition, and showing this painting where, it’s worth noting, the focus is on a landscape painter. In 1863, the state organized a special exhibition to feature works rejected by the Salon, including challengers to the status quo who wanted to paint their own way and show the here and now. Like Édouard Manet, who would not go on to show with the Impressionists, but was close friends with them, endorsed their work, and shared numerous interests and techniques. The artists who participated in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 had shown their art within the Salon and also grown tired of having work rejected from it. So they put together their own show in the former studio of the photographer Nadar, calling themselves the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. There was no state involvement, no jury, no hierarchy of subject matter. They were each exploring their own concerns, not working toward any shared mission or manifesto. If there had been a manifesto it could have only read something like: “Not the Salon” or “I want to do my own thing, thanks.”

But IN GENERAL we could say this group was mostly painting from modern life, from modern life, cityscapes and landscapes, using a brighter palette of colors, broken brushstrokes, and loosely defined forms, that gave the works an air of spontaneity. So much so that art critic Louis Leroy commented on the accuracy of the title of one of Claude Monet’s paintings on display, Impression: Sunrise. To Leroy, it was merely an impression, a sloppy and unfinished sketch, unsuitable for display or sale. He dubbed the show “Exhibition of the Impressionists” as an insult, but another critic recast the name in a positive light, saying of the new work: “It’s lively, brisk, light - captivating. What a rapid grasp of the object and what an amusing facture. It’s summary, agreed, but how spot on the marks are!” As you know the name stuck, and the artists came around, too. Impressionist landscapes, unlike those that came before, often betrayed their place in time, showing city folk in the latest fashions or enjoying leisure activities in the Paris suburbs. New railway lines had made travel out of the city easier than ever, and the Impressionists were unafraid to show signs of this new way of life, and also of the increased industrialization around them. Life was getting faster, and it followed that art should, too… Paris had changed enormously in the preceding decades, having undergone wholesale renovation beginning in the 1850s. A crowded, medieval city had been replaced with one that was much more open, cleaner, and safer, with wide boulevards, public gardens, and lots and lots of light. And the Impressionists did love their light, trying again and again to arrest its ephemeral effects. They liked to show it broken by clouds, dappled and filtering through the trees, oh and especially as it reflects on water. Even when painting interiors, which they did indeed do, they loved to include a window, often with sheer drapes through which light could filter. Because they were often capturing atmospheric effects that would change with the passing minutes, the paintings have the feel of improvisation, even if they took a while to get just right.

Monet often worked on several canvases at once, shuffling to different works as the light changed, or returning to the same spot daily to patiently await the return of the desired conditions. New and brighter pigments had recently become available, which the Impressionists put to good use, juxtaposing vivid colors in ways that were startling to audiences at the time. Even shadows, it turned out, didn’t have to be just black or brown or gray… The arrival of photography had also revealed new ways of framing images, suggesting the possibility of unbalanced, snapshot-like compositions, long before cameras would reach snapshot size and speed.

Some have theorized that now that photography could capture reality so well, painting was then freed from the shackles of realism and could do what paint does best, which is being colorful and tactile, and you know, painty. This new kind of art also involved more women and represented them in new ways. Berthe Morisot participated in all but one of the Impressionist exhibitions, and gave us remarkable views into the domestic sphere and lives of well-to-do women. Mary Cassatt joined the ranks as well, and became known for depicting women and children as well as her own family. Women of a variety of classes were subjects for the Impressionists, and not just nude and lying on a bed anymore, but shown doing the things they actually do, in the home as well as out in the world, enjoying. Paris’s nightlife, and also being it. A population boom following the Franco-Prussian war had brought about a new mixing of genders and social classes, which we see unfolding in Impressionist depictions of street life, cafe culture, and various forms of entertainment. The membership of this motley crew of artists fluctuated with each exhibition, including names you’ve definitely heard of as well as ones you probably haven’t. By their last exhibition in 1886, few of the artists were working in style you’d likely identify as “Impressionist.” Core members had evolved their own styles and were exhibiting independently. And the artists we now consider Neo-Impressionist had arrived, like Georges Seurat and Paul. Signac, who were interested in the more scientific aspects of color and how our eyes process it…

Impressionism was one of the first of a string of avant-garde art movements, each rejecting tradition and embracing the modern, promoting new ideas about what art could be and what it could do. Whether or not you’re familiar with the succession of “isms” that followed, you already know the narrative: students learn from their teachers, but then repudiate their lessons and push on to forge their own paths. Novel methods over time lose their ability to shock, new ideas replace old, and the cycle continues. And now it’s gotten ever faster. An 1874 review of the first Impressionist exhibition posed the question, “Is the absence of rules a good thing? Only the future will enlighten us…” And enlighten us it has, demonstrating the breadth of what the pursuit of singular vision can bring forth.

But the best case for Impressionism is the art itself. In a museum filled with the dark and dramatic art that preceded it, and the often confounding art that follows, Impressionism is really… pleasant. It’s not violent or distressing or sentimental or moralistic. It’s recognizable subject matter rendered in an interesting but not overtly challenging - by contemporary standards - kind of way. It’s an optical delight, giving us windows into a fascinating historical moment, created by supremely talented artists who pushed art in new directions to better represent that moment and their own view of it. And that is enough.

Sarah Urist Green The Case for Impressionism

#Sarah Urist Green #The Case for Impressionism #Claude Monet #Wind Effect Popular Series #Charing Cross Bridge #Art #Impressionism #Museum #Gallery #Louvre #Art Assignment #Abu Dhabi #United Arab Emirates #Painting

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hospitalterrorizer · 4 months ago

Text

diary318

8/2-3/24

friday - saturday

listening to jpop right now.

it is meg's album "step" and it's cute. pretty often though sometimes songs on jpop records feel like nothing, until the big ones come. obv there's groups where this is not an issue, other times it's more pronounced, but sometimes the albums w/ peaks and valleys in that way have really special songs lodged in them, or they feel that way by their nature i guess.

i really like the synths on this album... really good to hear stuff like this right now, maybe i should let myself make some more "regular" sounding synths or something... we'll see.

youtube

the art in the album is super cute, her outfits are awesome:

i really love all of these looks... i need some colored tights i think.

and wow, look at this album art for one of her later albums:

i really love this... i do wanna do more weird pattern-y eye-hurty stuff. reminds me a lot of black dice.

it's fun seeing stuff on here circulate w/ tags like "eye strain", all the pleasure of glistening / shimmering / oscillating noise and its spread, i've always liked that kind of intensity where it's kind of asking something of you, as you stare at it, but it's also kind of apathetic to you, it simply is that odd and excessive, at least that's how it feels when i come to it, maybe part of why i like it is something to do with nature documentaries and all the closeup shots of things too detailed and strange, magnifications, patterns made evident, maybe it does make sense, i used to spend so much time looking at bugs which were trying to pattern themselves so animals wouldn't eat them or would ignore them, being able to see them in the noise, or make the noise out of them, and then other animals as well, reptile scales, and then my stepsisters and all the garish stuff they adorned their rooms with. an interesting lineage there in things which are difficult to look at, or people say are difficult to look at but for me they're really nice.

oh videogames too, and crts too probably, sticking my face too close, the white noise, that kinda thing... maybe an early introduction to the impressionists also? the smeary/blurriness, excess of color and stippling, my mom was eager to show me matisse, and then art class when i was in elementary school was similar. gaudiness as a kind of violent eruption, beyond kitsch really, these very odd things, over-vibrant, i didn't know it at the time but it was imparted with a kind of sexuality, i didn't really know what i was seeing for instance in how frida khalo painted but i absorbed it. very odd times. not that the point is that it's special that i like/know this or whatever it's just interesting to get any kinda vision on the lineage there of what makes me able to like this sort of stuff... the beatles even, their album art, when i was a kid that stuff meant a lot to me, their movies too.

anyway, i saw something funny today, someone added my current screenname to rym, hospitalterrorizer, as an artist. it is an artist name too... honestly though it feels less like a project and just a thing i like calling myself. anyway it's just funny, it's someone who i don't know at all i'm pretty sure, i wonder how they found it, and why they decided to put it in there. i suppose it's for the best that it is there cuz it might draw more people to the thing, but we'll see, to be honest i sorta doubt it... but that's just meeee...

now i am listening to john cale's paris 1919, i need to finish this tomorrow, cuz i am sleepy and i need to sleep now basically. my sleep is so fucked up #lol. and i need to get back to reading soon. i just spent all of today working on songs, one of them i need to go in and lower the master send reverb, and the other's got a lot of fun progress made, imo, i got some new plugins which makes things a bit easier on me i think... a lot of really fun distortion sounds in there, excited about having all of that to mess with, to see where it goessss,

so, with that: a song:

youtube

one of the best ever, i think, i really love this one,

and now:

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#Youtube

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fakeoutbf · 2 years ago

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hiiiii ✨

okay before i start, i love how i literally just found you and we already share braincells because i was reading through your answer and i had the same feelings about niall's tour and was literally just about to ask you what your favourite niall and zayn songs were 🙈 okay my favourite niall song is paper houses, but still and everywhere are a close second 🫶 also special mention to this town, you'll always be my beloved. as for zayn, my favourite is tightrope. when nil came out, i listened to that one on repeat for a month straight, my mum and sister went from loving that song to being annoyed by it 🤭 what about you? 👀

see you get it!! i think big cities are fun when you're living with a bunch of people and are studying or something, and just have a bunch of fun and exciting things happening but sometimes, you crave a little bit of quiet which you can never get because there's always something happening. i wouldn't want to immediately settle in scotland, but i think i'm also tired of places that are always busy, so i'm planning to move to an in between place after uni next year. oh i completely agree about the inaccessibility of small towns and how frustrating it can be sometimes. 😔

how was your harry show though, did you have fun? on that note, did you get to see louis too? and, have you seen 1d as well? 👀

i do agree about familial love and i am lucky that my parents and sister are always supportive of me no matter what, and i wouldn't have been here without that 🤍

very interesting choices to go back to!!! since you mentioned being an art nerd (i by no means am, i just go for the aesthetics), what's your favourite painting? who's your favourite artist? i think i'd probably want to go back to the early 1800s, during the victorian era, but also in the same period itself, i'd love to explore some of my own country's culture and traditions because we had loads of kingdoms and such and all of them looked magnificent ✨

today's question, and it's sort of related to one i've already asked, but if love and friendship were colours, what colour would they be? 🤍

- s 💌

hiii 🫶🏻

we share the same braincell what the hell ajnrjfks my favorite niall song is still, hands down. it’s so heartbreaking but such a good way to close the album. and my favorite zayn song is tightrope too JWJRJDKEK ngl if i ever get married i need that song to be in there somehow, it’s one of the softest love songs i’ve heard that was written recently and it makes me ache so bad 🥺

yes, i feel like i’d definitely want to try to live in a busier city at some point in my life, but i feel like you have to have a group of friends to be busy with and you have to be ready for the rush and i’m not there yet ajejfnkswm but i also wouldn’t mind just living somewhere slightly bigger that’s got a little more going on but that i don’t feel like i’m missing too much, you know? and just maybe someone to spend more time with 😪

here’s to wonderful supportive families 💓💓

i really love impressionist paintings, i think it’s my favorite style by far, but idk how i’d pick a favorite painting ajejfjks some of my favorites are the japanese bridge by monet and abandonment by henri toulouse-lautrec that i just love. and favorite artist is probably van gogh, sorry to be basic ajentnsk i’m just really fascinated by the struggle he went through and all his backstory to not even be a paid artist while he was alive but to become such a renowned artist after he passed?? wow. my favorite van gogh painting is probably almond blossom.

the victorian era sounds so interesting! ngl i’ve never actually studied much of it but i’d love to know more. and the kingdoms, culture and traditions sound fascinating! i love when countries have so much history and culture that you just can’t ever learn enough of it, makes me feel even more in touch and proud of it ��🏻

friendship is a yellow / golden / orange shade that glows brighter the more you share laughs and love is a soft pink or sage color, whichever brings more calmness / tenderness. what do you think?

sending you lots of love for the rest of the week 💖💞💗💓💕💝🧡

#i’m loving all your questions by the way #love sitting for like half an hour pondering over these ajejfnkdke #answered #holiday pals #s 💌

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neonphoenix · 4 years ago

Note

Re: your "draw me like one of your french girls" post, I love to think that two days later Joey decides to paint a french impressionist portrait of him just to fuck with the joke

Joey would show him and Dick would say, “Wow, that’s cool,” but internally have a meltdown because ???He just did that???What does it mean???Need to go talk to Donna.

And now I’m thinking about Joey’s art style, because the comics only really showed us generic portraits and landscapes, from what I remember. Tbf, he’s more of a hobbyist than a career artist, so that might change how much he screws around with his art.

Your French impressionist thing initially made me think Renoir, but I honestly think he might be a lot more like Degas. (For context, if people want that: Renoir tends to paint people existing in daily life, and I generally consider his paintings to be pretty still in comparison to Degas, who is the ballerina dude)

My Degas diagnosis might actually have basis in canon, but looking through some of the other examples of his work, I don’t feel like there’s much of a common thread. The writers probably didn’t put that much thought into it, so I may just be grasping at straws; also his paintings are kind of comic book art style by default, so you can’t really see brush strokes or anything.

It looks like he might be putting himself into this painting, which I think is interesting. Alternatively the writers are trying to give you a picture of him wooing women.

Sidenote: look at this dude just casually painting in his superheroing uniform.

He clearly does enough figure painting that it’s strange for him to deviate from it, although I do remember him painting a portrait for Donna and Terry, which could just indicate a flexibility in what he paints.

Anyways, this just turned into me rambling about Joey’s art style, so have that I guess.

#lol i doubt dc would ever put this much thought and care into a character #he's a painter as long as they show paintings #i used to intern at an art gallery pre-pandemic #I spent a lot of time talking to artists #and photographing shows #so i like to think i know a thing or two about art #but i am not personally engaged in art making #dickjoey #i guess that's what this was originally about #joey wilson

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theolddalatribune · 3 years ago

Video

Impressionism by Paolo Dala

Las Lavanderas Fernando Amorsolo (1951) National Museum (Manila, Philippines)

This new style didn’t arrive out of the clear blue sky, but the paintings were often created under one. A hallmark of the art that would come to be known as Impressionist was that many were painted outside of the studio and in the world, or as the French say "en plein air". Unlike the slow, studio-based approach that held sway at the annual salons of the French Royal Academy, whereby tonal gradations were gradually built up with layer upon layer of glazes, Impressionist works were frequently begun if not completed entirely out of doors. These artists used smaller canvases that were easy to transport and finish quickly before the light or weather changed. Artists had been painting in the landscape for some time, like Dutch artists of the 17th Century, and even more recently in England, where the likes of John Constable won admirers for his pictures of villages and countrysides, and J. M. W. Turner wowed with his own highly dramatic and abstracted scenes from nature. In France, where Impressionism was brewing, painting in the landscape was an established practice, artists escaping Paris and political instability to observe nature and render it in a relatively lifelike manner. These artists also experimented with style and technique, trying out looser brushwork and brighter colors. But landscapes were considered to be genre painting and less important in the eyes of the Academy that, more than nature, valued the study of ancient Greek and Roman art. Figures were to be strongly defined, and set amid ordered and harmonious compositions. This was the kind of subject matter favored by the Academy, pulling from history, mythology, and religion. They didn’t want to see regular people doing regular stuff. The so-called Reaslists had already challenged the academy’s values by painting scenes from contemporary life, sometimes admitted to the salon and sometimes denied. Gustave Courbet built his own pavilion during the 1855 Paris World’s Fair, circumventing the official juried exhibition, and showing this painting where, it’s worth noting, the focus is on a landscape painter. In 1863, the state organized a special exhibition to feature works rejected by the Salon, including challengers to the status quo who wanted to paint their own way and show the here and now. Like Édouard Manet, who would not go on to show with the Impressionists, but was close friends with them, endorsed their work, and shared numerous interests and techniques. The artists who participated in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 had shown their art within the Salon and also grown tired of having work rejected from it. So they put together their own show in the former studio of the photographer Nadar, calling themselves the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. There was no state involvement, no jury, no hierarchy of subject matter. They were each exploring their own concerns, not working toward any shared mission or manifesto. If there had been a manifesto it could have only read something like: “Not the Salon” or “I want to do my own thing, thanks.”

But IN GENERAL we could say this group was mostly painting from modern life, from modern life, cityscapes and landscapes, using a brighter palette of colors, broken brushstrokes, and loosely defined forms, that gave the works an air of spontaneity. So much so that art critic Louis Leroy commented on the accuracy of the title of one of Claude Monet’s paintings on display, Impression: Sunrise. To Leroy, it was merely an impression, a sloppy and unfinished sketch, unsuitable for display or sale. He dubbed the show “Exhibition of the Impressionists” as an insult, but another critic recast the name in a positive light, saying of the new work: “It’s lively, brisk, light - captivating. What a rapid grasp of the object and what an amusing facture. It’s summary, agreed, but how spot on the marks are!” As you know the name stuck, and the artists came around, too. Impressionist landscapes, unlike those that came before, often betrayed their place in time, showing city folk in the latest fashions or enjoying leisure activities in the Paris suburbs. New railway lines had made travel out of the city easier than ever, and the Impressionists were unafraid to show signs of this new way of life, and also of the increased industrialization around them. Life was getting faster, and it followed that art should, too... Paris had changed enormously in the preceding decades, having undergone wholesale renovation beginning in the 1850s. A crowded, medieval city had been replaced with one that was much more open, cleaner, and safer, with wide boulevards, public gardens, and lots and lots of light. And the Impressionists did love their light, trying again and again to arrest its ephemeral effects. They liked to show it broken by clouds, dappled and filtering through the trees, oh and especially as it reflects on water. Even when painting interiors, which they did indeed do, they loved to include a window, often with sheer drapes through which light could filter. Because they were often capturing atmospheric effects that would change with the passing minutes, the paintings have the feel of improvisation, even if they took a while to get just right.

Monet often worked on several canvases at once, shuffling to different works as the light changed, or returning to the same spot daily to patiently await the return of the desired conditions. New and brighter pigments had recently become available, which the Impressionists put to good use, juxtaposing vivid colors in ways that were startling to audiences at the time. Even shadows, it turned out, didn’t have to be just black or brown or gray... The arrival of photography had also revealed new ways of framing images, suggesting the possibility of unbalanced, snapshot-like compositions, long before cameras would reach snapshot size and speed.

Sarah Urist Green

The Case for Impressionism

#Las Lavanderas #Fernando Amorsolo #Sarah Urist Green #The Case for Impressionism #Impressionism #Art #Art Assignment

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crocodilenialledfics · 4 years ago

Text

You’re all I need (the air I breathe)

Two - in which Niall and Stella study, plans are made, and secrets are not shared

join the taglist

The love-at-first-sight, falling-too-fast, uni au that will make your heart ache (in a good way)

catch up here

“Is this seat taken?” A voice asked from across the table.

Stella sat up, blinking as she adjusted to something other than the fine print of Faulkner. It was Niall. Stella smiled, shaking her head.

“Faulkner,” he commented, sitting down across from her. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fallen asleep reading his stuff.”

“William just rolled over in his grave,” Stella laughed, eyebrows raising. “You can’t talk about him like that.”

“I would say I didn’t mean it, but it’d be a lie,” Niall chuckled, pulling his book bag onto his lap. “I’m glad I ran into you. I wanted to ask you a favor- well I guess it’s not really a favor. A proposition, maybe- that didn’t sound like the right word either.”

“What is it?” Stella laughed, amused by his ramblings.

“Well I’m in this art history class and I’m really not doing too well. The exams are really hard but our professor has given us extra credit opportunities,” he explained. “We can go to the museum and write a reflective paper. Was wondering if you wanted to come with me. I figured museums were right up your alley.”

“They are,” Stella nodded. Smiling she said, “I would love to go with you.”

“Aces,” Niall grinned. “We can go whenever you’re free.”

“What about this weekend?” Stella asked. “I work here in the evenings the next few days.”

“Saturday?” Niall asked.

“Sounds good,” she nodded.

Stella tried to fight the smile off of her face but the longer that Niall had his on his face, the harder it got. Until Niall laughed, looking away. Stella’s cheeks ached.

The next few moments Niall got situated with his books in front of him. Stella read a little bit from her book but it was decided that Niall was a distraction.

“You know anything about impressionist art?” Niall asked, eyes focused on the book in front of him.

“I’m afraid not,” Stella mumbled, leaning on the table.

“Me either,” he mumbled back, lifting his head to look at her. “I have an exam tomorrow. Think I’m gonna fail it.”

“With that mindset, probably,” Stella agreed with a curt nod.

Niall laughed, a loud one, much louder than probably what’s acceptable in a library. Stella couldn’t help her own laugh, one of surprise at the volume of his.

“We’re in the library,” Stella emphasized, laughing along with him.

Niall shook his head, containing his laughter. “Stop being funny, then.”

“Stop laughing like a crazy person,” Stella retorted, challenging him with her eyes.

It was unfair, the chemistry they had. Stella thought it was a waste. Niall started telling her about the classes he was taking, asking about hers. It was the boring kind of conversation she had every time she met someone knew but listening to Niall was riveting. Maybe the most interesting thing she’d ever heard.

Only when Niall’s stomach growled so loud that the walls nearly shook, did they leave. No homework was done. Niall didn’t study. He left knowing less about impressionists than he did when he walked in. That was all thanks to Stella and her infectious smile.

Stella stood in the food line beside Niall, looking over the dinner options. It looked only half appealing. They’d been in uni for nearly a month and she felt like she’s eaten everything a million times.

Niall got pasta while Stella got a quesadilla. They sat across from each other at a table in the back and Niall told her what it was really like living with Louis.

“He wakes me up all the time,” Niall told her. “Middle of the night he’s kicked his shoe halfway across the room, fallen over before making it into bed. When he’s high, he’s absolutely useless.”

Stella was amused at that, nodding, she’d known him well enough to know first hand what a terror he was. Niall wasn’t complaining though. Louis was easygoing, didn’t care about much.

“I talked to Nadia,” Niall told her, voice a bit rough. He cleared his throat.

“How’d that go?” Stella asked, trying to sound concerned but not eager despite the way she felt.

“She uh...” Niall trailed off, holding her gaze. “She’s moved on. Of sorts. Has a new... boyfriend- or at least someone that she wants to be her boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Stella murmured. “I’m really sorry. Is that what you wanted to happen?”

“No,” Niall chuckled, shaking his head. “Like. I guess on some level I knew it’d happen. Just didn’t think it’d be so soon.”

“I bet,” Stella agreed, watching him closely. They’d only talked about it a couple weeks ago. It wasn’t that long ago.

“I didn’t really feel anything,” he admitted. “Maybe just guilty that I didn’t feel anything. I don’t know. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, of course,” she nodded. “A three year relationship ending is kind of a big deal, I’d think. A part of your life is over and another one is starting.”

“I guess,” he agreed with a nod. “Truthfully I thought I’d be the one to end it. I respected her too much to get invested in someone else while we were still together-ish.”

“Right,” Stella nodded. “Were you planning on breaking up with her or was your heart still in it?”

“I don’t know,” he laughed, shrugging. “I have no idea what I was going to do. What I wanted. What I felt. No idea.”

“Well that’s okay,” Stella chuckled. “You can’t name every single feeling or thought.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“This other person...” Stella began slowly. “You’re still thinking about them?”

Niall nodded, looking away, “I think that’s why I didn’t know anything- still don’t know anything. Can’t really read her.”

Stella hummed, declining to comment. Her curiosity got the best of her. She felt guilty for asking, though she wanted to know more. Everything about what he was thinking.

“Anyways,” Niall chuckled, checking the time. “We should get going. I still have to fuckin study. You did nothing to help me.”

“I have to read ten chapters for class tomorrow,” Stella argued, laughing. “But all you wanted to talk about was how you thought all the artists were visually impaired and didn’t know it.”

“It’s logical,” Niall argued with a smile.

“Glasses were invented in the 1300’s,” Stella told him.

“And what was the quality of glasses in the 1800’s?” He asked.

“I don’t know,” Stella shrugged, standing up.

“Wow so there’s something that Stella doesn’t know,” he murmured, standing up too. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

“I don’t know lots of things,” Stella sighed, shouldering her bag.

“Like?”

“Like...” she trailed off, thinking it over. “I don’t know what happens to fish when water freezes. And I don’t know why there’s the temperature and then the real feel temperature.”

“All very good questions,” Niall agreed. “I don’t know the answer to either of them.”

“I also don’t know who this mystery person is that you just can’t stop thinking about,” Stella added on, tactfully at that.

Niall laughed, nodding, “that’s a secret.”

“Well maybe I have a person that I can’t stop thinking about too,” Stella shrugged, adjusting her bag on her shoulders.

“Who?” Niall asked, head tilting to the side.

“Oh it’s a secret,” Stella laughed as they began to walk outside.

“Ha ha,” he deadpanned. “You just made it up to get back at me.”

“I didn’t,” Stella shook her head. “There is a person that I can’t stop thinking about.”

“One day I’ll get you to spill,” Niall told her, very confidently. Stella believed him, too.

“Only if you tell me yours,” Stella said with a shrug as if the thought didn’t make her want to vomit anyways. It was a very stupid deal.

“Is it Zayn?” He asked.

“I’m not saying,” Stella laughed, shaking her head. “My lips are sealed.”

“Fine,” he mumbled, eying her skeptically.

“Besides,” Stella murmured, looking up at him. “I’ve got my person and you’ve got yours.”

Stella and Niall stood side by side, eyes on Renoir’s La Grenouillère. Niall’s face was scrunched up and Stella tried her best not to laugh but she did, hand over her mouth.

“What?” Niall laughed. “I’m trying to look at this painting.”

“Well why are you squinting?” Stella asked, eyebrows furrowing.

“It’s blurry like,” he laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

“And squinting would make it more blurry, right?” Stella asked, looking back to the painting.

“I don’t know,” he laughed, slouching. “Help me.”

“So just look at it,” Stella told him, voice soft. “Think about what you see. How it makes you feel.”

“I just don’t know,” he repeated, shaking his head. “They’re having a party.”

“Yeah,” Stella nodded.

“Is that right?”

“There’s no right answer to impressionist art,” Stella told him, turning to face him. “That’s the point. They’re open ended, like. That’s why they’re blurry so there isn’t any specific details, you can imagine or feel your own.”

“Fuck,” Niall whispered. “I got a whole section wrong on my exam.”

“Jesus,” Stella laughed, shaking her head. “Okay let’s keep going. Maybe there’ll be one you can... feel.”

“I like history,” Niall muttered. “Where there’s just facts. That-that this is what happened and you don’t have to imagine your own version of events.”

Stella shook her head as they continued walking down the row of art hanging on the walls. She could admire the beauty in art. Literature and art went hand in hand. History went along with them too, Stella just didn’t want to be the person to tell him that.

They stopped in front of Monet’s Sunrise. Niall let out a disgruntled sigh, rubbing his eyes, “This is quite literally a mess I..”

“It’s a sunset,” Stella told him, pointing toward the setting sun.

“Stella, I have to tell you something,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “I’m like colorblind. I have trouble with the greens and blues and yellows.”

“Niall,” Stella laughed, rubbing her head.

“I didn’t think it’d be a problem but since impressionist art is erm...” he trailed off, looking up respectfully. “Blurry?”

“I think that this effects your ability to write a reflective piece on art, wouldn’t you think?” Stella asked, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, eyes trailing over the paintings in front of him. “Can you help me? I’m so desperate, Stel. This impressionist shit is so hard. One bad grade and I lose my scholarship. I’ll have to go back to London and get a fuckin’ job the last thing I want is to-“

“Okay,” Stella cut him off with a gentle laugh. “I’ll help you. You’re doing all the writing, though. And you have to try.”

“I will,” he nodded. “You have no idea how much this means to me. I really appreciate it. I’ll buy you lunch. And coffee. And dinner!”

“That’s really not necessary,” Stella laughed, nodding toward the next painting. They began walking. “But of course, I’ll take you up on it.”

They must have stood in front of twenty different paintings. It was an obvious struggle, but Niall tried. With Stella’s help he’d settled on the one he’d write about. It was Les Déjeuner sur l’herb. A non complicated piece by Édouard Manet about eating lunch in the grass.

Niall and Stella found themselves on the futon in his room, two coffees between them and lunch on the way. Niall had his laptop on his lap, eyebrows scrunched up as he worked on his reflective piece.

Stella was there for what seemed like moral support, and maybe possibly revisions. She zoned out looking at the ceiling, thinking about how romantic museums really are. She thought about how she’d love to be kissed in front of Les Printemps by Pierre-August Cot. Or to hold hands in front of The Kiss by Auguste Rodin.

“Okay,” Niall said, pulling Stella from her thoughts. “I think I’m almost finished. What do you think?”

Niall passed her the laptop. She set it on her lap, sitting up. Stella read his work carefully, admiring his writers voice. It was detailed for the length of it. Surely, an extra credit worthy piece.

“It looks good,” Stella told him with a nod, looking up at him.

“You think it should be longer?”

“No it’s a good size,” Stella shook her head. “Especially because you’re just writing a one piece reflection. If you were comparing two paintings, or reflecting on Manet’s work as a whole it’d be a bit longer.”

“Okay,” Niall nodded, letting out a sigh. He looked up at her, taking the laptop back. “You know we’re doing this once every unit, you know.”

Stella laughed, shaking her head. Niall’s phone rang as he smiled, sitting up. He answered it, already standing up. He slipped his shoes on, grabbing his wallet off the table. “I’ll be right back,” he mouthed, nodding to the door.

Stella nodded, slouching down on the futon. She took a sip of coffee as the door closed behind him. The door swung right back open and Louis walked in, a grin on his face, “Stella Bella. What’s going on here?”

“Helping Niall with some homework,” Stella chuckled, looking up at him.

Louis sat down beside her, shoulders bumping into hers. “Tomorrow we’re all going to Whitworth to play a bit of footie. Like everyone’s coming. You should too.”

“Is veda going?”

“Yeah.”

“Zayn?”

“Yeah.”

“Niall?”

“Yeah.”

“Heather?”

“Stella don’t worry about it,” Louis laughed.

“Just tell me so I’m prepared.”

“By prepared I hope you mean you’ll leave your cat claws at home,” Louis chuckled. “She’s coming.”

“Great,” she mumbled, shaking her head.

“She’s bringing Liam, Danielle, and this new girl Eleanor. I guess she’s like incredible looking. And smart and funny and- just play nice, okay?” Louis nearly begged, sitting up.

“I always play nice with everyone except fuckin’ Heather,” Stella mumbled almost begrudgingly.

Louis went over to his desk, pulling out some books to shove into his book bag. “I’m going to the library to work on this math shit with Veda.”

“Have fun,” Stella mumbled.

“Yeah you have fun too, Stella,” Louis grinned, walking toward her. “Have I told you recently how much Niall just loves you.”

“Go away,” Stella laughed, putting her foot out to nudge him away.

“We’ll talk later,” he promised with a wink, hearing for the door. “Hands stay above the waist, you hear me? No funny business on my futon.”

“Fuck off,” Stella shot back, shaking her head as he walked out. It made her cheeks flush, just the mention of that. She didn’t think about it, or didn’t have the time to because Niall came back with their food.

He set the pizza down on the table in front of them, sitting down on the futon beside her. He sighed, turning the tv on. “What do you wanna watch?”

“Anything,” Stella shrugged, sitting up. She opened the box, picking up a slice for herself.

“Thanks again for helping me,” Niall told her as the Netflix logo appeared on the screen. “It means a lot.”

“Of course,” Stella smiled, watching him grab his own slice of pizza.

“You ever need help with history, let me know,” Niall told her, flashing her a smile as he sat back.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Stella nodded, eyes lingering on him a bit longer than necessary. She wanted to take him all in, the smile on his face, the way his eyes shined. Niall let her, holding her gaze. Stella was beginning to feel that there was something unspoken between them. She was dying for Niall to say it.

taglist: @niallsguitarsthings @exoticniall

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minjin · 4 years ago

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your art is really nice!! i love your paintings especially, theyre super pretty! the colors you use look really warm and nice together ^^ i saw on your carrd you're interested in art history, do you have any fav artists and/or art pieces?

OMG hi ursula wow thats SOO nice especially coming from u... ur art is soo cool esp ur style and the way u draw outfits <33

ALSO omg art history... i think a lot of people hold similar opinions but i really like impressionism and post-impressionism :]

some favorites are berthe morisot

and very classic LOL but i like claude monet

and i think my carrd is pretty obvious but vangogh is my fav impressionist ❤️__❤️ his art is so beautiful it makes my jaw drop

a lesser known painter (also not an impressionist!) i learned about is adolph von menzel AND HIS PAINTINGS R REALLY LIKE.... WOW......

HELP this post is getting wayyyyy too long so honorable mentions are thomas blackshear II (SOOOOO AMAZING) and gustav klimt and egon shiele. i might be forgetting some more faves </3

#omg thank u for asking this it was sooo kind of u ;__; and i really enjoyed answering it i love art SOOO MUCH #screentunes #long post

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watusichris · 4 years ago

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Leon Russell Au Naturel

When Les Blank’s A Poem is a Naked Person, his long-suppressed feature about Leon Russell, was finally exhumed some years back, I wrote about the film for the Night Flight web site. The story has since been scoured from the web. The film is airing Monday on TCM at the ungodly hour of 7:15 a.m. PT, as part of its Labor Day music movie marathon, so I decided to dig up my old piece and re-post it to supply some back story. It’s quite a picture, but it is not for the impatient or the squeamish. ********** Virtually unseen for more than 40 years, A Poem is a Naked Person, Les Blank’s portrait of Leon Russell, receives a formal Los Angeles premiere on July 8 with a screening at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel; a week of showings at Cinefamily, under the auspices of Allison and Tiffany Anders’ Don’t Knock the Rock Festival, commences on July 10. The reason for the picture’s long suppression is simple: Russell and his Shelter Records partner Denny Cordell commissioned Blank to make a promotional movie, and he gave them an art film, and not a flattering one at that. Therein lies a very interesting rub.

Some slightly convoluted back story is necessary. By 1972, when Blank was hired to create his portrait of the musician, guitarist-keyboardist-songwriter Russell had risen to a position of commercial eminence after years as one of L.A.’s top studio guns. Graduating from work in the house band of the weekly TV rock showcase Shindig! and record dates with such diverse clients as Phil Spector, the Byrds, and Herb Alpert, the Tulsa-born musician moved into the spotlight as musical director for Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett’s stomping R&B- and gospel-infused group and Joe Cocker’s huge, circus-like Mad Dogs & Englishmen unit.

Dubbed “The Master of Time and Space,” Russell began a fruitful label partnership with British producer Cordell with the inauguration of Shelter in 1970, a year before a high-profile appearance in the house band at George Harrison’s Concert For Bangla Desh. He bumped into the U.S. top 20 with his second solo album in 1971, but the 1972 LP Carney soared to No. 2 and spawned the No. 11 single “Tight Rope,” which was animated by Russell’s rolling keyboard work and rough yet affecting singing. The three-LP concert collection Leon Live would reach the top 10 and cement his position as a solo star in 1973.

Russell and Cordell doubtlessly envisioned a conventional feature surveying the musician’s stage show and sessions for a forthcoming country album when, on the recommendation of the American Film Institute, they commissioned Blank. By then active in Northern California for a dozen years, the director had made his rep with earthy short features about a pair of Texas musicians, bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins (The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins, 1968) and songster Mance Lipscomb (A Well Spent Life, 1971).

For nearly two years, Blank and his collaborator Maureen Gosling set up shop at Russell’s home and studio complex on a lake outside Tulsa, where they filmed the performer at work and play, and also cut their footage of Louisiana zydeco musicians Clifton Chenier and Boisec Ardoin into the pungent short films Hot Pepper and Dry Wood. The filmmakers humped their gear to gigs in Anaheim, New Orleans, and Austin, and to studio rehearsals at Bradley’s Barn in Nashville for the album Hank Wilson’s Back, the sincere and soulful 1973 country project that bewildered his core fans, essentially marking the end of Russell’s tenure as a top-flight rock attraction.

After an abortive attempt to screen A Poem is a Naked Person at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival – the print wasn’t ready – Russell and Cordell basically put the feature on semi-permanent ice, allowing it to be screened only by permission, with Blank in attendance. It remained an elusive commodity until the director’s death in 2013. At the urging of Blank’s son Harrod, Russell reconsidered the matter of its availability; a screening at this year’s South By Southwest Film Festival prefaced a national theatrical release, and a DVD from the Criterion Collection, distributor Janus Films’ home video line, is anticipated.

Russell has long been mum about his reasons for keeping the picture out of circulation; queried in recent interviews, he has glibly replied, “I don’t know,” or “I don’t remember.” But it seems obvious that the producers’ intentions and the filmmakers’ execution were widely divergent. If Russell and Cordell thought they were going to get a puffy documentary that would push their product, they were sorely disappointed.

A Poem is a Naked Person bears a striking resemblance, in style if not entirely in content, to a pair of quite radical contemporaneous films. The most obvious analog is Cocksucker Blues, Swiss-born photographer and indie filmmaker Robert Frank’s notorious backstage look at the Rolling Stones’ 1972 U.S. tour; a jumpy saturnalia of sexual escapades, heroin abuse, and hotel-room boredom, with occasional concert footage, it scandalized the band, who have enforced restrictions similar to those imposed on Blank’s movie upon its exhibition. Photographer William Eggleston’s long-gestating Stranded in Canton, which features pianist Jim Dickinson and musician/bank robber Jerry McGill among its cast of Memphis and New Orleans weirdoes and eccentrics, was shot on portable video equipment ca. 1973 and finally cut into something resembling finished form by Bluff City writer-documentarian Robert Gordon in 2005. It’s an incandescent rebel depiction of life on the distant fringes of art and music.

Frank’s and Eggleston’s highly personalized, jaggedly edited, impressionistic features, brimming with often appalling extra-musical incident, don’t fit the description of what we’ve come to call “music documentaries,” and neither do Blank’s pictures. The best-known films the director made before his encounter with Russell, though they boast musicians (Hopkins and Lipscomb) as their central figures, likewise operate well beyond the parameters of conventional music docs. Though there is a good deal of music-making and ass-shaking in them, they are at heart about the communities in which the music was made, with their indigenous landscapes, customs, cuisines, and spiritual concerns. An observer of folklife at heart, Blank was an unlikely, even incongruous, candidate to make a movie about a rock star – essentially, an industrial film for music consumers.

Like the subjects of Blank’s earlier films, Russell is witnessed at home a good deal, and the director slathers his film with super-saturated images of local color shot in and around the musician’s Oklahoma base – a pow-wow of the Tulsa Indian Club, a tractor pull, a holiday parade, a literal wild-goose chase, the implosion demolition of Tulsa’s ancient (and perfectly named) Bliss Hotel. But Russell – prematurely gray, long-haired and bearded, always bearing a glazed, slightly stoned mien -- appears before us as a man without a country, almost an alien, dislocated from his roots, ferried to his far-flung gigs in long limousines as black as hearses.

As a protagonist, Russell most resembles the central figure in a later Blank production, 1982’s Burden of Dreams. That unsettling feature follows the chaotic production of German director Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon. The reckless and megalomaniacal filmmaker is seen slowly coming apart as, cut off entirely from civilization, he single-mindedly pursues his quixotic and extremely hazardous project, which entails the climactic hauling of a 20-ton boat up a steep incline; by the film’s end, Herzog appears as mad as the lunatic hero of his saga, who longs to build an opera house for Enrico Caruso in the middle of the jungle. Though Russell is never depicted in extremis, as Herzog is, Blank implies that, unlike the Southern musicians the director depicts so affectionately and respectfully, the Oklahoman is like Herzog also a man who has drifted too far from his native shore.

Music plainly is what brings Russell alive; it is at the heart of A Poem is a Naked Person, and it is often splendid, a saving grace. There are lovely cameos by George Jones (playing “Take Me” solo in Russell’s home studio) and Willie Nelson (essaying “Good Hearted Woman” at a gig in Austin, and accompanying fiddler “Sweet” Mary Egan on “Orange Blossom Special”). Several truncated yet forceful performances by Russell’s road band – augmented by a gospel-styled quartet, Blackgrass, led by Rev. Patrick Henderson – are on view. In one simple yet eloquent sequence, Russell’s deeply felt cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” plays under footage of clouds drifting across the face of the moon, as they do in Williams’ lyrics; it’s obvious, but nonetheless affecting.

One of the bleaker streaks in the film can be found in some of the sequences shot during the sessions for Hank Wilson’s Back in Nashville. These scenes are not totally bereft of a certain joy: Russell takes obvious delight in the expertise of his A-Team accompanists. One delicious scene finds him in an awed duet with Charlie McCoy, a secret hero of Bob Dylan’s Nashville-based albums from Blonde On Blonde to Self Portrait; the bespectacled McCoy looks like an accountant on his way to a tee time, and he plays and sings his ass off. But some of the other Music City studio gunslingers’ envy of and contempt for their contractor – like themselves a session guy, but one who has hit the jackpot – is scarcely concealed. Hotshot pianist David Briggs – whose obscene rendition of the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna” was expurgated in later prints of the film at Russell’s insistence – says at one juncture, in a blatant dig at his session boss, “I’m the guy they call when you can’t do your own fucking piano work.”

There is also an ugly confrontation in the Nashville studio with folk singer-songwriter Eric Andersen, who was apparently barred from entering the facility for his own session by Russell’s security staff. Russell belittles and insults Andersen with an arrogant rocker’s noblesse oblige, drily telling him, “You write some very beautiful goddamn songs,” which prompts the reply, “You’re jiving.” For his part, Andersen voices skepticism about the legitimacy of Russell’s onstage thunder: “I couldn’t tell if you’re a revivalist man, trying to put something over, where it was coming from.” You find yourself asking if Blank may not harbor the same doubt.

Blank ladles further darkness, grotesquerie, and bile over the proceedings throughout. Using non-linear, densely layering techniques pioneered in the ‘60s by French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard – whose ironic quote, “The day of the director is dead,” is seen on the film’s concluding title card, below Blank’s credit – the filmmaker atomizes the action, or comments on it, using a vocabulary of startling jump cuts, head-spinning juxtapositions, and dialog rendered as on-screen legends (“GET THOSE GOD DAMN CAMERAS OFF US”).

Thus, in one extraordinary sequence, footage of a wasted concertgoer being ejected from one of Russell’s gigs is intercut with shocking shots of a boa constrictor killing and devouring a baby chick. (The snake is the “pet” of artist Jim Franklin, who is seen elsewhere adorning the bottom of Russell’s swimming pool, after coolly collecting scorpions off its walls.) In another scene, a snippet of fiddler Johnny Gimble improvising a lively solo in the studio is abruptly interrupted by the screaming freakout of a bare-chested young man on a very bad acid trip in an unidentified hotel room.

Blank seems to imply that for all the tambourine shaking and Chautauqua-tent fervor of his sound, Russell makes music that only mimes the spiritual core of its sources. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a ragged jump cut from minister-musician Henderson playing at a Pentecostal church service to his group Blackgrass rocking the praise at one of Russell’s shows. The first performance, Blank suggests, is about true religion of the most devout order – the real thing, as it were -- while the second is no more than entertainment.

In the end, Blank says without a flinch, this music is about the dollars. At one point he trains his camera on a teenage hitchhiker outside one of Russell’s shows; with a guitar slung on his back and a cardboard sign reading, “Oklahoma City” in his hand, the deluded kid says, “I wanna make it in Hollywood like Leon does – make a million dollars playin’ gee-tah.” The most damning exchange in the entire picture comes when an acquaintance poses a question to Russell after his performance at a friend’s wedding. Russell repeats the question – “If I didn’t get paid for singing, wouldn’t I sing?” – and leaves it hanging in the air, unanswered.

One can easily understand why Russell and Cordell were mortified, even horrified, by Blank’s film and sat on it for four decades. A Poem is a Naked Person used the language of cinema to subvert the film’s intended purpose as a self-glorifying sales tool. Instead, it ended up being a probing and dialectical work that used Russell’s music much as Godard himself employed the Rolling Stones’ music (far less effectively or coherently) in his Sympathy For the Devil. As it often has over the course of time, great art – and Blank’s movie definitely qualifies as such – operates at cross-purposes to a patron’s wishes.

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trulycertain · 5 years ago

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Template from here.

My thoughts are: wow, you can really see where I started having tablet problems, but you can also see just how many experimental things are in here if you know me well. I didn't always pick the "best" stuff, more stuff that was new and taught me something, and often that was the stuff I most enjoyed and am happiest with.

01. “I’m going to try lineless sketchless painting from colour picking, to try and get values, because I never use colours.” 02. “Here’s a try at horror art and impressionistic weirdness.” 03. “Moody lighting and a difficult pose? Eh, why not.” 04. "I'm going to get to grips with markers and draw masks." 05. “Anatomy practice, and expression practice.” 06. "I'm going to try abstract palettes." 07. “Abstract colours, ambient light, trying to do a detail paint? OK. Sure. Um.” 08. Colour-picking to try and understand values and saturation. 09. A first attempt at charcoals, and landscapes, which I never do. 10. “Might as well try to get a difficult expression down.” (Did a lot of that in Inktober.) 11. “Charcoals and drawing animals. Both are new.” 12. “I’m going to try a cartoony style, and try and make a spiky ball that doesn’t really have a face as such emote. This should be... interesting.”

#tru draws #or at least bitches about it #artsummary2019 #it's that time of year again

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conceptualliteratureblog · 5 years ago

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Language Profiles: student agency & multilingualism

This post is relevant either to language A/B teachers or to educators looking at whole school literacy implementation ideas.

Thank you, Yi Shen (Sandy) for showing me the power of a language profile in our workshop in Hong Kong (Sha Tin College, September 2017)! This is something any of you can try with your teaching staff or your classrooms to make language a truly dynamic part of the learning process at your school and help people become aware of the power and challenges that come with personal language knowledge.

Some schools will already have a language profile for each student. Often, this only lists the home language(s) and level of English (or language of instruction) of the student. We can do more! Also, sometimes the level of English listed is from an application filled out by parents trying to impress the school. Find out where the information comes from to really understand what it means. Essentially, there are many ways to get more information that can help gain knowledge for the student’s personalised learning strategies, but likely the best person to create this portfolio is the student, at least in secondary schools.

In order to understand how this works for students, try to do it yourself:

Think back to your infant development and schooling: what is your language story? Where and when did you learn language(s)? What dialects do you speak? What slang do you know? Especially if you live away from where you grew up, this dynamic has probably changed over the years. Even if you only speak English, you have probably had exposure to different kinds of English and use a certain type with friends, family, and students. You probably also at one point learned a second language in school. What was this experience of language learning like for you? What excites you about (other) languages? What scares you? How does language give you power? How does it make you powerless?

There will probably be a wide range of responses to these questions from colleagues and students alike. Sharing your language story with a colleague or two can help you to express what language is for you and to have empathy for others who may find difficulty with language.

Try drawing a map of the language(s) you use today. With whom and for what purposes do you speak different languages, dialects, or slang? Maybe your register simply shifts; that is ok as well. Maybe you speak some languages for fun and others out of a need.

I was raised an anglophone. Hailing from Boston, I avoided the accent and local dialect due to the nature of the transplant and immigrant town of Lexington that I grew up in. My parents came from Minnesota and Texas, and each had lived in Boston since just after their university years. We had a blended American English at home.

My mom also studied French extensively at school, so when I started lessons at age 7 in our school system, the fit felt natural. Half of my mom’s family is French and with Québec not that far away, schools in the area at that time all taught French to students as a ‘second’ language. I took French all through grade school until the AP exam when I feel out of love with the language. Suddenly, I had teachers who just cared about correctness and memorisation rather than taking us to see the Impressionist exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts or teaching us how to make crepes. The joy was killed.

So at university, I took Spanish for a year. It was fun, but I wasn’t quite in love with it the same way. And then there were all those other courses on the syllabus and I wanted to double major…so…no language B study for a couple of years. But then, Latin the last year. I had wanted to take Latin as a first-year but my advisor said it was a dead language. What was the point? I found the grammatical structures a fun puzzle and our tiny class of five a fun classical oasis.

After college, I went straight into my MAT to earn a teaching degree. I hadn’t studied abroad like so many US students mostly because of sport with the plan to somehow do it later. My MAT programme allowed you to do your student teaching abroad, but you had to find the school. It was much of the reason I had chosen the program.

I had decided I wanted to give French a go again. After writing to many schools in Switzerland and France, I finally got a positive response from the Lycée International American Section director, just outside of Paris. Paris! What a dream. They wouldn’t pay me, of course, but I could work with several of their teachers and live with one of the school’s families in exchange for some babysitting and tutoring.

That year was bliss. But I could digress for ages about my love affair with Paris…back to the language! I had to take intensive French courses again as part of my visa. It was also a great way to meet people from other places. I had very good, slow, correct French, I was told time and again. But it was slow. Part of culture is how you speak, and the French, at least the Parisians, don’t like to speak slowly. I was given the advice to just spit it out and not worry about my mistakes. So I did that, time and again, until I felt comfortable in French. I felt like a different part of my personality came out in French.

Fast forward three years: I had moved back to the states and then to Italy. My French proved very useful in learning Italian and the locals were even more encouraging about just trying the language out. Within a few months, I was comfortably having conversations. Sadly, a lot of that is lost now after more than a decade without much exposure, but I think I could reclaim it in a month or so if given the opportunity.

Similarly, when I moved to Hong Kong, I took Mandarin Chinese lessons. But though I loved it, I found it difficult to practice the language in a place that is mostly Cantonese and English. Cantonese was trickier to learn and ‘not as useful’ once you move away. I never knew how long I would stay…if I had known it would be eight years, I probably would have learned right away. In any case, learning some Chinese helped me to at least understand what it’s about and is something I would go back to as well with a longer stay in the mainland or again in Hong Kong.

I kept up the French, though, with long, frequent stays in France, lots of films, and a long-term French beau along the way. Now, I have friends with whom I speak French in Vienna, I read in French when I can, and I have that dream of living there….

But most of my life is still lived in English. I’ve learned some German living in Vienna. I took a class and did some self study. But there’s always that time factor, and I decided to have a baby and do some writing instead. Maybe I’ll go back to it. Let’s see how things shape up in a year or two. The little I’ve learned is certainly helpful and shows a sort of respect in trying, I think. When I travel I also like to learn a few phrases for this reason. We who speak English are privileged to have the ‘international language’ at our fingertips. But we are only denying ourselves if we limit the other languages we can learn.

Now I also have a baby boy who is learning language every day. We speak American and British English at home. We try not to swear around him. I sometimes speak with him in French. He will attend a mostly German speaking nursery school soon. It makes more me aware of how and why we learn these languages.

That’s my language story in brief. I’m sure you can find links with geography, emotions, work, and more to understand even more where it all comes from. I have students with much more dynamic backgrounds. Some speak three languages at home with their parents, a different one at school (English), take a foreign language, and speak in some kind of multilingual slang with their friends. When students go through their language journeys, their stories, they find ways to use language for learning. They acquire agency. In asking teachers to also go through the process, they can connect with the student’s learning as they make reflections on their own journeys, connected also to emotion, place, people…the list goes on. These associations help us understand the way we use languages as well as our motivations or fears connected to language.

One of my students studying three language A at school (English, German, Italian) for a trilingual diploma (wow!) conducted her Extended Essay research on the topic of multilingualism and cognition. She narrowed it to bilingualism since little research has been done beyond this, even though, as she noted, many people speak more than two languages. She always felt her languages were a hindrance, which really shocked me. Most of the recent research I had read showed the cognitive power of having more than one language. This is why so many people try to get their kids in immersion programs if there is only one language at home. She was aware of this, but sometimes felt like words escaped her or she couldn’t understand something she read. She realised that even though she reads a lot, the time is divided among these three languages. Her vocabulary development could be limited in that way. Research supported this, but this was the only area she found to be a hindrance. The way she uses language can be more creative and the development of her brain allows for code switching that goes beyond language and into experiences.

Are any of you doing research in this area? I would be interested to hear about any current work with multilingual speakers and happy to post a link to your published work on my blog.

#multilingualism #languageprofile #translanguaging #studentagency #codesign #ibdp #ibmyp #ibpyp #language #literacy

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sleepykalena · 6 years ago

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hi, really like your stuff i've asked myself what makes an artwork stand out to you and is there something you particularly enjoy seeing in rebelcaptain fanart (tropes, style, headcanons, etc.) and how much of it do you incooperate into your own art?

Oh wow, this ask was a nice surprise, thank you so much, anon!

what makes an art piece stand out to me:

short answer: “good composition”

long answer: There is never really just ONE thing that stands out to me as being “good artwork”. Since there are so many styles, there’s something to appreciate in all of them. Oftentimes i’ll even consider the age/stage in life that the artist is in, as well. Just off the top of my head, artwork stands out to me when:

The use of color really lends to the impact of the visual (e.g. monochrome but with an accent of another color to draw my eye, really bold colors, colors not commonly shown in something you see irl but it somehow just works, etc.)

The staging of the art piece is really dynamic (i.e. my eye travels in a certain way to make me appreciate everything about it). sometimes art will make my eyes travel in a circle, others will use a sort-of “dutch angle” and things are diagonal, some are made in such a way that their body language stands out, and so on.

There’s an obvious message to the art piece, and i have to stop and look at it as a result. artists DO have things to say about life and the world around them, and sometimes they make it really subtle, or sometimes they make it really overt. I’ve spent the past week in DC and i’m paying special attention to the propaganda pieces created during major war-related events in the US.

The art piece has a really interesting stroke quality or line quality to them. One of the first things I added to my Art Inspo folder was a series of paintings of the three boys who made the Marauder’s Map (let’s not bring Wormtail into this LOL), during their teenage years, in a modern AU, but done in such a way that they’re blurry. When you look at them up close you see these broad brush strokes and the image is kinda clear, but not really. There arent’ a lot of fine details to them. It’s when you take a couple steps back from your computer that you see that the image has more of a fuzzy, almost impressionist quality to them. I loved that so much that i immediately saved them and started my Art Inspo folder based on just that.

I know the artist, at least a little bit of them, and they’ve done something that’s either a huge improvement of what I remember their art looking like, or they’ve tried a new technique. This is why I make it a point to support as many fandom artists here as possible- some are just dabbling in art and I want to go out of my way to help encourage them to keep drawing. Some have been doing art for a long time but have made changes/improvements to their composition, color choice, posing choices, etc. since I’ve gotten to know them and their work. Some have chosen to finally draw different angles of faces and bodies (yes, this is a callout to one of the artists, you know who you are- fight me lol)

favorite tropes/style/headcanons in rebelcaptain fanart:

I think it’s safe to say that i’ll never say no to #HeightDifference, fluff, and “Jyn wearing Cassian’s parka” tropes for rebelcaptain art.

But much like with fic, i can be totally sold on fanart if the artist can sell me on the message/story/style/headcanon. It’s hard to say I have a favorite style when it relies more on the artist’s ability to sell me on what they’re depicting. I never in a million years thought I’d ever be on board with watching Cassian go undercover as a theme park suit character, and yet one of the fandom artists did that and sold me so much on it that I made a version of my own. Did I ever think I’d draw rebelcaptain in onesies? Fuck no, and yet someone out there sold the concept to me so well that i just dropped my shit and did a little doodle to get it out of my system. Funny how fandom works.

Some tropes are just really hard to depict, though! One of my favorite tropes is “working together as equals”/”being badass in their own right”, and I think i’ve only seen one fanart that really best depicts that.

If the art is funny, or maybe badass, or just super emotional, or has a really nifty way of coloring or presenting the line work, or has an expression that i think is appealing, then I throw it in my queue and leave a comment on it, no questions asked.

That being said, I never reblog things out of obligation. I reblog things if I like them, and I try to make sure I give a stated reason as to why I like it, particularly if it’s visual content.

incorporating tropes/headcanons into my own rebelcaptain fanart:

I’mma let you in on a secret here: about half my most popular fanart aren’t even tropes I particularly care for LOL

Cute is apparently what I’m known for, so my smol!rogues got the most notes, even if I don’t particularly care for fluffy kid!fics. The next most popular ones were the forehead kisses, which, at the very least, taps in to the #HeightDifference trope, which I love to no end. But after that, it’s just...difficult. I have a lot of scrapped ideas and WIPs just because I lack the ability to even draw them or see them to completion. Most of my headcanons are actually relatively serious, if i’m honest; but i’m not known for that on an artistic level, and cutesy drawings are the easiest for me to draw, so I have to put myself in a different headspace whenever I bust out the pencil.

I have one “serious”-looking rebelcaptain (ish) drawing that’s a WIP (pin-up Jyn wearing nothing but Cassian’s parka), and that’s probably the closest it gets to me making fanart that actually lines up with a headcanon I have, but other than that, I’ve sort of resigned to this idea that I write angst and emotionally heavy stories, and then draw cute fluffy things to sort of ease the edge of my writing. it is what it is.

thanks for the ask, anon! really loved finding this in my inbox

#ask sleepy #Anonymous #making art #favorite tropes #thanks for asking me though #it's a really good question

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