#Amaryllis belladonna

[bluebelly-sun-serpentine]

At the point, August 22nd 2024

Naked ladies are toxic. At night they open to their full extent, waiting to be pollinated by hawk moths and carpenter bees.

[snototter]

Jersey lilies (Amaryllis belladonna) in Silvermine Nature Reserve, South Africa

by Bernard Dupont

[ranatsume]

8.24.24

pink naked ladies (amaryllis belladonna)

[charlesreeza]

My front garden at its late summer peak - August 27, 2023

[thebotanicalarcade]

Lily-like mystery flower

1948

Lily-like mystery flower which bloomed from a leafless plant at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Paxton, 277 E. 12th Ave.

Photo dated Aug. 3, 1948.

Ohio -- Columbus.

[thebotanicalarcade]

pastel and charcoal on paper

1980

MICHAEL MAZUR - AMARYLLIS-CALLA LILY I

[dailylifeofkodak]

“Dont mind me, just chillin with some naked ladies” 😎

[angelsintheforest]

[ask-sibverse]

The next chapter of Flowers In Bloom (floralverse fic) is now up!

Summary: Belladonna needs help, and protection. So he goes to find someone.

Preview:

It was hard, doing his job. Not maintaining the balance. While that was technically his duty, he didn't particularly ever care about that. The extreme negativity of the multiverse was a testament to that. No, his "job" was "showing people the truth."

Bringing out the negativity they hid, amplifying it to the point it could no longer be hidden. Proving to his brother, to everyone, how horrible people truly were. Especially to his brother.

His "work" had already forever altered their multiverse. Due to his and his brother's fights, all monsters now sprouted flowers all over their bodies. They even existed in new AUs, when they rarely appeared. It was an intrinsic part of the multiverse now.

It didn't impact his job, though. Now his corruption changed their flowers to his new namesake, and Daisy changed it back.

But his job was difficult... He wanted to show people their true natures. But their true natures were often violent. Many times that violence turned on him.

Belladonna rarely fought back though. He had no LV, had never killed, and despite what most people thought, he had no desire to. His corruption would make an excellent weapon, sure, but it always felt wrong even feeling it in his body, let alone using it, so his tentacles usually remained limp behind him. He used his floral magic instead, but only when he had to.

Still... It was unlikely the violent nature of mortals would change, and getting injured so often was irritating. He needed to look into other methods of handling things. A bodyguard, perhaps? It would also be useful when Ink, Error, or Daisy fought him (or all three). But where to find one? Not one of the many Underfells or Flowerfells, their Sanses and Papyri would be too difficult to work with. And there wasn't a lot of variety in the multiverse.

Then... He found it. Something different. Something New.

[rwbyazre]

Do you have designs of Team AZRE's families?

That I do! We'll start with Adam first of course:

Since Cerise is the wilted rose to Adam's Beast, I wanted to keep a lot of Adam's own design in hers. Obviously, her pink is a softer version of Adam's true red, with the green shirt underneath being a nice complimentary colour that matches her green eyes.

I wanted to design her to have a very motherly and civilian look, so she's pretty much wrapped up with the loose "anime mom" hairstyle. Her hair is also the more pinkish-red than true red, which Adam still has, but her eyes are green rather than blue so that Adam didn't just inherit everything from her.

I also gave her cow ears, I just think they look cute! The tag on her right with the SDC is common practice in Mantle's mines, but not anywhere else in Remnant. Not every Faunus has them, and they were far more common when Cerise was a younger girl, but Faunus trapped working for the SDC are often given tags so that they can easily be tracked.

Fun fact, Alon was originally called Chairo, Japanese for Brown, before I decided to go more for a Filipino inspiration to offset how I constantly go to Japanese for characters. I also made it that the parents are mostly opposites in their colour schemes, I just think it makes them look better together while still having something in common.

Alon is the Sarangay in Phillipine mythology, so I obviously went with a water/blue design to offset with Cerise' pink theme. The blue and white together also serve the water/water foam thing while the white helps to offset parts of his limps, such as his arms and feet, from the darker blues. His bull background is shown more with the bull shaped buttons on his jacket, and with the one earring to tie him to the Sarangay specifically.

His hair texture and horns are what Adam inherited, but also the eye shape and blue eyes. Really, Adam took Cerise' colours and emblem, but he really does look a lot like his father, just lighter skinned.

For a look into how his first draft looked like, here's an edit of him from about three years ago:

Oof.

Now Ghira is still Bagheera, but I did change some of his design to better fit both his allusion and where he lives. 

I never liked his canon outfit, especially with the fur, so I got rid of that and gave him more Indian-inspired clothing. He still has the same colouring, which is what Blake also uses, and you can really see that Blake takes after Ghira a lot compared to Hajimu. He uses the flower pattern on his shirt that Hajimu uses on her bolero, just so his black shirt looks a bit more interesting than just a standard shirt. 

The shawl over his shoulder also helped to add more of his purple, since his colour comes from his surname; Belladonna. He has the yellow decoration as a complimentary colour for his purple, and to match his yellow eyes. I also gave him ears to go with his claws, just because of how Faunus genetics work with Blake having ears too. 

Also, the arm sling is something he wears constantly after he was shot by humans while still in the White Fang. Some of the scars from that wound is visible under the wide collar. 

Hajimu very much takes after Kali’s canon design, just with a few colour changes. As her name means blue-black in Japanese, the gold was swapped out for blue to match her eyes, along with the purple sash to tie her to her husband. Ghira has a blue wrist sash, but it’s on the arm that’s covered by his shawl. 

Her hair was also changed from black to silverish grey to mimic a wolf’s fur, same with her giant ears being specifically wolf ears. Since she’s Raksha in the White Fang and the okami-okuri for her personal allusion, she takes a lot of wolf imagery. 

Her eyes are now blue instead of gold, as well. Really, I just wanted to make sure both Ghira and Hajimu didn’t look the same, and that while Blake clearly takes after Ghira, she still has some of Hajimu’s features.

Xanthe is obviously where Argenta and Zanthus get their Greek inspiration and allusions from, so he really was designed with Zanthus in mind, barring differences of course. He’s noticeably lighter skinned and has green eyes rather than the slit pupils, but Zanthus does use his colouring more with the golds and reds. He’s also the Lion faunus like his kids, rather than the wild cat Faunus that Sable is. 

His scars are from the Faunus Rights Revolution that he fought in, and he is missing his left hand, which he covers with his cape. His cape isn’t what inspired Zanthus’ though, as he uses the more typical back cape like Qrow and Ruby. 

 Fun fact; her original colouring was blue because I thought it was purple, and now I know.

Also, she went through a pretty different clothes design than her original outfit, which is what’s described in her debut chapter. I designed her right at the beginning of AZRE, when my designing skills weren’t that great, so I redid her while doing these full bodies for the AZRE cast. 

Now her colour scheme reflects her actual name; Sigal, which means violet rather than Sable, the name forced on her. The purple is used with a very pale cream, almost white, and I went with Jordan inspired clothing because Jordan is where the Midians were thought to originate from with some research, and because she was always meant to be MENA like Zanthus and Argenta. 

You can obviously see where Zanthus gets his skin tone, eyes, but also his hair is meant to mimic Sable’s hairtype; a more fluffier version to Xanthe’s. Her emblem is also now visible, and honestly I just like the colouring of this outfit far more.

For comparision, her OG outfit:

Cringe. 

Similar to Sable, Argenta actually had gone through a rehaul of her design, but I did keep the colouring the same. Really, I wanted to personalise it more than the OG showed, and really feed into the heart of stone aspect that I wanted for Argenta’s design. She also has visible scars now because i like characters with scars, and I changed the bandana colour from light blue to orange for Qiu and for a pop of something contrasting. 

She also one of the few Faunus with animal ears to actually style her hair to show that she doesn’t have human ears. A lot of other Faunus actually style their hair to hide away this trait. 

This was her original outfit. Not something I hate, but very plain and lacking compared to what she wears now. 

Qiu is the last of Zanthus’ family outside of his own kids in the sequel, but he’s the adoptive son of Argenta and so is Zanthus’ nephew, and that plotpoint is actually a part of Argenta’s story and character growth. I wanted to do a red panda Faunus as well, so he was perfect for using that in his design. 

Obviously with the tail and ears, but the black stripes on his face are actually another traits of his. Since his name means Autumn, I obviously went with that theme in his look and his colour scheme, which implements some of Argenta in due to how close they are. He’s honestly one of my favourite designs despite being pretty straightforward, and it’s just so cute. 

Since Hisui is the Kashima God to Ruri’s Namazu, I wanted to keep the water theme with him, hence the wave patterns on his sleeves and kimono. He’s also where Ruri gets the catfish heritage from, though Hisui differs slightly in that his ears aren’t completely fins, which helped him avoid the whole becoming deaf part that his daughter struggles with. 

He has the scales still, and the gills are hidden away by his beard. I also styled his mustache to looks like the catfish whiskers. Besides that, he takes a very fuedal Japan daiymo look to his outfit since he is very rich, but still keeps the waves to tie back to his humble fisherman roots. 

The Kashima family really hasn’t differed from the OG drafts I had when I first created them. Everything is really the same except the added checkered Obi, and the sakura patterns on her kimono. Since she’s themed around the pearl, I used more pinks/purples/whites in her design to reflect the typical colours of the pearl.

As she’s the Maneki-Neko, she’s a calico cat and is based around money, having a more rich style clothing to match her background. The hair decorations are very common for wealthy women in Northern Mistral, but none are as extravagent as the Empress who started the whole trend. 

It’s very pretty, but a pain to draw all those little details.

Seigyoku is very much the same design as she started with, save for the addition of a few details. She has added thigh belts for her fans, her belt now has sakura patterns on them, and her emblem is now on her chest. It’s a latern to allude to the laterns that Bakenekos are attracted to in Japanese mythology.

And since her allusion is the Bakeneko, she inherited the cat traits from Shinju to follow with this choice. She obviously looks very similar to Shinju, compared to Ruri taking after Hisui, but neither of them have lilac/green hair. In universe reason? They got it from their grandmother. Out of universe reason? I designed the parents after and the blue hair clashed with their set colour palletes.

Now, Eirian has legit the biggest family out of her team, and I believe the whole cast, so her section is obviously gonna be longer. 

Very much Eirian Snr. I could’ve added more of Clementine to Eirian’s design to counter just how similar she is to Icheku, but I ended up not doing that since I wanted to reflect how close Eirian and Icheku are compared to the absence Clementine has both in life and death in Eirian’s life. 

But I did give Icheku a contrasting colour pallete and obviously visible Faunus traits. He uses white, browns and oranges against Eirian’s whites, blacks and blues. But he obviously wears more Zulu style clothing, and the silver bracelets that Eirian does. His necklace is also there from when he turned eighteen, but the necklaces are unique in that they reflect the colours of the wearer.

Specifically, their eye colour and the complimentary colour; which is why Icheku’s are purple and yellow while Eirian’s are red and green, they both have different eye colours. You also can’t see on this, but Icheku actually has rectangle pupils rather than the typical round. 

No one make fun of how similar Clementine looks to Yang. My friends do that enough. 

There wasn’t much in the notes for designing Clementine. Really all there was down were “GingerTM” and “CelticTM”, and that was what I went off on. She has Scottish and Irish influences, and her mother/sisters are more Irish, but I have her father as the Scottish one where she got her last name from. And since she has orange hair, I could use that orange as an accent and a connection to Icheku.

The rest is just different shades of blue, and white for the ivory parts in her corset. The silver bracelet is obviously Icheku’s, since marriage involves giving a part of yourself to your spouse, and vice versa. It’s why Eirian wears a yellow hair tie and Yang wears one of her bracelets. Her emblem is also the Triquetra, which is the Celtic symbol that has connections to spirituality and family.

And she has face scars because I like them. 

Another fun factTM: I can’t spell Muerinn’s name properly. Her name is actually  MUIREANN but my dyslexic ass misread it as Muerinn. She’s one of Clementine’s younger sisters that she left in Atlas when she went to Haven Academy. 

But anyway, her allusion is Anne Bonney because I wanted a pirate character for the pirate colony south of Vacuo. With both her names connecting to the sea and dark, her colour scheme is very oceanic, with the different shades of blue, white and silver. The orange is meant to be like a complimentary colour to her blue, and to connect her to Clementine, so it’s the colour of her sash and one of the pendants she wears.

Another of my favourite designs, I should draw her without the jacket sometime. 

Aisling is Muireann’s twin, so she’s Eirian’s maternal aunt. She also shares the Celtic inspiration that the rest of Clementine’s side of the family does, with the wide shaped sleeves, skirt and corset, and cape, but I added some eye imagry to tie into her allusion of Babd; who is connected to foretelling of battles and deaths.

Which is also why she has Clementine’s Triquetra as part of her emblem, and also wears orange in connection to her deceased sister, like Muireann. She’s also blind, which is why her red eyes are milky in colour compared to Muireann/Clementine/Eirian.

Last of Clementine’s shown family is Roisinn, her mother and Eirian’s maternal grandmother. She’s very much designed after the old women I see constantly in my real life, and her long skirt was great for adding the extra detail; including the roses where she got her name, her tree of life emblem, and the broken Triquetra to symbolise her broken relationship with Clementine.

She originally had black hair which the twins get, but her eyes are pink rather than red, as they all get their red eyes from their deceased father.  

You can’t see under her sweater much, but she also wears a back brace, since she has a bad back from her work in the SDC mines. 

Safou is the only living relative on Icheku’s side, and has actually been alluded to in the story, but she’s very much separated from her son and granddaughter. 

While her last name was taken by Eirian, I designed her to have the more Zulu inspired clothing like Icheku, but she has the ewe ears compared to horns that Icheku got from his father. Her ears are actually inherited by Eirian, but they’re recessive so she doesn’t show them. 

The giant scar on her right arm came from a Dust explosion, as she originally was from Vacuo but was taken to Menagerie to work in the mines set up there by Atlas. She remained in Menagerie after it’s reclaimation.

Jacob is Muireann’s lover and can be seen as Eirian’s uncle, with the two having adopted Sage, but yeah his allusion is Mary Read and they’re another pirate like Muireann. Nothing much to say about his design since I never really had a set look for him before, but I do remember really wanting him to wear  the thigh high boots so there we go. 

His name was originally Bluebelle before he fell in with the pirates, so that’s also why he has blue, plus it connects him to Muireann. 

Finally, Sage rounds it off for the families. 

He’s been repurposed from canon RWBY, since he’s now in the pirate crew ran by Muireann, so his design is slightly different. I shortened his giant white coat and added a few decorations, and I might redesign him again in the future since I’m not 100% on this look, but it’ll do for now. 

[oh-sunny-sun]

― 残り火 ―

昨日,午後5時58分を回った頃にて.

まだ彼岸花がありました.

2024年10月2日 水曜日

― Embers ―

It was around 5:58 p.m. yesterday.

Higan-bana was still blooming.

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

[sinceileftyoublog]

Mary Halvorson Album Review: Cloudward

(Nonesuch)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Jazz guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson doesn't demand attention--as a listener, you give it to her anyway. Her latest album Cloudward features eight new compositions from the Amaryllis sextet, the same group featured on her excellent dual 2022 releases Amaryllis and Belladonna. Largely written in 2022 and inspired by post-pandemic optimism, the album title refers to flying on planes, an aspect of pre-pandemic life that returned despite our world never again being the same. Indeed, you could say the songs recall various stages of flight, from ascent and descent to coasting and turbulence, but in a broader sense, they simply show off Halvorson's incredible ability to foster something organic.

For much of Cloudward, Halvorson retreats into the background. Opener "The Gate" features Patricia Brennan's vibraphones in unison with the horn section, Nick Dunston's bass and Tomas Fujiwara's drums sneaking behind. Halvorson's trademark wiry playing peeps out from underground but doesn't assert itself to distract from Fujiwara's immaculate tempo changes or Jacob Garchik's trombone. Similarly, when Halvorson enters on "Collapsing Mouth", it's minimal and subtle, making room for Brennan panning around the horn section, and the rhythm section. Halvorson simply creeps on "Unscrolling", a song whose title I like to think pays tribute to the plane as the last place many of us can't or don't want to access the Internet. Its gongs and rippling cymbals contrast both the gorgeous brass harmonies and Dunston's moaning bowed bass, an exercise in deep listening if there ever was one. And then there's the Laurie Anderson-featuring "Incarnadine", a song that plays with your perception to the point you want to go even further down its rabbit hole. Atonal strings sound like they're being sucked out of the air and spit into another dimension; you're not sure whether the horn-like sounds are from effects or the featured players themselves, the entire track an alluring mystery.

Even on the tracks where Halvorson places her guitar front and center, she creates an atmosphere for all of the instruments to play off of each other. "The Tower" starts with prickly, echoing picking that turns chaotic and spidery--similar to Dunston's bass on "Unscrolling"--and eventually slows down to let vibes through the door along with Fujiwara's washy brushwork and the horn section. As the song builds, it sounds like the instruments are ricocheting off of each other. When it slows, it's delightfully woozy and harmonic. By the end, you realize Halvorson's beginning, alternating between abstraction and tactility, had set the stage for the rest of the song. On "Desiderata", the space between her guitar rhythms and Fujiwara's drums creates a funky sway, Brennan's vibes the first lead instrument. Halvorson crawls along horn lines before unleashing a crunchy, effects-laden solo, her one time to shred. On closer "Ultramarine", her playing emulates Dunston's upright bass solo to the point where it creates a pseudo blues vamp. Later, her bends emphasize the woozy quality of the horns, making space for Adam O'Farrill's trumpet solo. The song exemplifies the ultimate paradox of Cloudward in general: As players enter, the songs feel no less spacious, and no less empty as players leave. Halvorson creates a sort of static motion, like you're suspended in air while tunneling through space and time, on a plane in the sky.

[fated-normal-767]

oh my fucking god. I just discovered something about a name I gave an oc that now makes EVEN MORE SENSE. So I need to pretend I thought of this and didn’t just realise it.

[ranatsume]

8.24.24

pink naked ladies (amaryllis belladonna)

[nonesuchrecords]

The 71st DownBeat Critics Poll results are in, and among the winners are three Nonesuch artists and MacArthur fellows: Mary Halvorson for Jazz Album of the Year for her Nonesuch debut albums, Amaryllis and Belladonna, and Guitarist of the Year; Cécile McLorin Salvant for Female Vocalist of the Year; and Rhiannon Giddens in the Beyond Artist or Group field! You can read more here.

[thebotanicalarcade]

n446_w1150 by Biodiversity Heritage Library Via Flickr: Beautiful flowers and how to grow them Edinburgh,T.C. & E.C. Jack, ltd.,1922. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/21984653