Dagmar's Den

My Salgant isn't alone anymore

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:55:51 GMT

For a long while I owned an orginal Tolkien elf exclusively, artwise at least: Salgant, Lord of the Harp, an elf from Gondolin.

http://www.elfwood.com/art/d/a/dagmarjung/salgant_k.jpg.html

In every Google picture search, my little portrait of him was the only one that appeared. In a fandom where every elf that was ever mentioned in Tolkien's works (and some that weren't) has multiple fanclubs, I always felt that was a rare privilege. The fact that Salgant is the only elf with canonically proven overweight has probably much more to do with his unpopularity than his doubtful morale. Being a traitor or villain has never stopped Maeglin or others from being fangirl dream material.

However, those days of exclusive ownership are over: here, at last, is Salgant #2 on the internet:

http://homepage2.nifty.com/waraizizou/cgi_sunclip/img/107.jpg

Although I'm not sure where his canonical pudgyness has gone. Either he has been living on a strict diet for years now, or Glorfindel has finally managed to cut off his sweatmeat supply, or (I tend to believe in this last theory) this is a picture of Salgant's long gone youth before he ever set on weight.

Happy Birthday Lenine!

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:12:08 GMT

I hope you have a wonderful day today! :-)
All the best to you!

Aunt 2007 - the License to Spoil

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:20:38 GMT

Since Oct.23, I'm officially aunt. My brother and his dear lady have a little baby son. Needless to say, there is great exitement and joy in my whole family right now.
Now I wish I'd live closer to my brother than 500 cilometres apart, so I could visit more often and be a part of my nephew's life rather than a rare event. Well, at least I look forward to spoil him rotten, as is an aunt's priviledge.

These last days, I spent a lot of time in book stores, toy shops and baby supply shops searching for suitable gifts for my nephew and his parents. Since they already have bought everything that is needed and useful like clothing and baby bed, I felt free to look for a little extra that hopefully even a newly born child can enjoy, like a book of lullabys for his parents to sing for him, or a book about baby massage, which again leaves the actual work for the parents, but it's the thought that counts.
Doing this, I wondered about the design for *all* baby related things, which is pastel colours combined with cute animals. I mean, it's not only on things destined for use *by+ babies, like soft toys, but also for things to be used by adults, like books about baby care. It seems as if new parents are supposed to develop a sudden babyish taste for pastels & cute animals as soon as their child is born. Must be a hormonal thing. Also, I notice that most books related to baby care related topics seem to think that new parents are pretty dumb.

Is everything okay with Claudio?

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 20:26:24 GMT

... aka Elvses aka A.Noldo? He used to post quite often, but I've heard nothing from him for a long while now. Did he move his blog from Livejournal to another site maybe?

To the Sea, to the Sea!

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 20:51:16 GMT

... the white gulls are crying...

I'm going off for vacation for the next twelve days. Internet access will be limited to a short visit the the local library everty now and then.

See you later!

Shelob the Silent Movie Star!

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:38:42 GMT

(this entry is dedicated to Maggie Honeybite, for obvious reasons)

At the Tolkien Thing two weeks ago, a contest was held. Years ago in their youth, someone made set of poseable dolls of the Fellowship, based on the old Bakshi film. You could take these dolls for one hour, set them into scenes, make photos and create a funny photo story.
This contest was held last year and when I saw the dolls then, very cute and naively made, I thought I d'have the perfect addition in my possession, a 'made in China' Halloween decoration giant spider. So I brought my charming 'Esmeralda' to this year's contest, safely hidden in a big plastic bag, because she stands as high as a Cocker Spaniel at the withers and can really frighten people. And now I am the proud owner of a veritable Queen of the Screen!

This is because one of the contesting groups didn't make just a photo story, but a veritable silent movie in stop-motion technique with subtitles, piano music track and just about everything! Esmeralda is the star in this masterpiece. The titles are in German, but the plot is as follows: After being hurt by the evil hobbits, poor Shelob ('Kankra' in German) crawls back to her lair and into her cosy bed. There she sleeps and dreams of sweet revenge. In her dream, she follows the hobbits and when they spot her, she throws herself on her back, long legs in the air, so they mistake her for a bush. Muahahaha!

Two minutes and 18 seconds of fun! Remember to turn the music on, there is a piano soundtrack in best silent movie fashion!

http://www.hannohirrim.de/videos/tt_2007_kankra.php

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Don't miss this Oscar-worthy masterpiece!

What Tolkien really thought about Fanfiction

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:43:10 GMT

I got myself a copy of Tolkien's 'Letters' at the Tolkien Thing. A fascinating read that gives a lot of background. Just this moment I stumbled over this one. Here's to you, fanficcers!

(The letter is from 12/12/1966 to publisher Allen & Unwin, about a proposed sequel to LotR, written by a fan.)

*****************
"Dear Mrs Hill,

I send you the inclosed impertinent contribution to my troubles. I suppose that since one cannot claim property in inventing proper names, that there is no legal obstacle to this young ass publishing his sequel, if he could find any publisher, either respectable or disreputable, who would accept such tripe.
I have merely informed him that I have forwarded his letter and samples to you. I think that a suitable letter from Allen & Unwin might be more effective than one from me. I once had a similar proposal, couched in the most obsequious terms, from a young woman, and when I replied in the negative, I recieved a most vituperative letter.

With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
J.R.R.Tolkien"
*******************************

I'm almost sure that Tolkien, well-mannered gentleman that he was,uses 'ass' in the meaning of 'donkey' here.
We can only be grateful that he never made it into the age of internet and saw himself confronted with hoardes of young and not so young women writing fanfiction about the asses of his protagonists (not donkeys). And Mary Sues, of course.

By the way, this nasty letter by a budding fanficcer must be also counted as the first Fandom Wank in Tolkien fandom history! Whee!

Ted Nasmith at Tolkien Thing

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:22:38 GMT

It's Tolkien Thing time again! Next weekend, the German branch of the Tolkien Society will meet in Diez in a castle - nowadays it's run as a youth hostel. After Alan Lee last year, this year's special guest is Ted Nasmith.

(Edit: Sorry I didn't cut this post! Didn't mean to clog your f-list.)

While I look forward to meet him, I'm not in a state of giddyness like last year. That is because of the 'big three' official illustrators of Tolkien's works - Howe, Lee and Nasmith - Nasmith is the one least close to my heart. His art fails to engage me as the others' do.

He is a brilliant artist, and I admire his skill, knowledge, devotion to canon and sheer artistic mastery in every aspect. I had a hard time to define of why exactly I don't like his work as well as other's, but a quote from his website helped me to get it clearer.

"The Hildebrandts’ three calendars in 1976, ’77, and ’78 particularly excited me to work seriously towards publication, since their work was realistic and detailed. However, I felt I had qualities in my own work that surpassed theirs, and their work helped me define a vision of my own style and interpretations, as did other more traditional illustrators and painters of the past century and a half. I would describe it as a style that echoes the luminist landscapes and Victorian neo-classical styles. I felt these would well complement the grandeur of The Lord of the Rings, and I’d always been attracted to this kind of art."

There are several interesting aspects in this quotation. First, the encouraging effect of someone else's mediocre work. As creative people, writers, artists or musicians, we are supposed to be inspired by the best of best in our field and learn from them. But while this is doubtless true and you need to know the masters, comparison with them can also discourage us greatly about our own humble efforts. "I can never hope to be that good" is a downright creavity killer. On the other hand, nothing is more motivating than the thought "I can do this just as well and better!" It will make you grab your pencil, brush, computer or guitar on the spot - even if it's not exactly true and you have still a lot to learn.

The second aspect is, I am not surprised about Nasmith's mention of and ambivalence about the brothers Hildebrandt. As he claims rightly, his work surpasses theirs in quality. But still, in style and intention I see more likeness between Nasmith and the Hildebrandts than in Nasmith and Howe and Lee.

Nasmith's style aims for grandeur, as he states himself, and while I agree this is compatible to Tolkien's works, especially to the Silmarillion, I am a little reserved about it. Because I feel there is also a great modesty about Tolkien that gets all too easily lost in too 'grand' illustrations. Alan Lee is the artist who captures this modesty best.
If Nasmith aims for grandeur, I'd say that Howe aims for drama and Lee aims for atmosphere as primary goals in their Tolkien illustrations. I prefer drama and atmosphere to grandeur every time.
(The brothers Hildebrandt aim for grandeur too, but they don't make it farther than theatrical staging, which leads to kitsch and unintended funnyness.)

Nasmith refers to luminist landscapes and Victorian neo-classical styles, and I can see this influence in his work. He puts much work and care on light and intricate detailing, in a masterful way. But this is another aspect of what puts me off his style. His light appears overly bright to me, bringing out every detail to stinging sharpness from foreground to farthest horizon, but killing the sense of mystery that gives depth to Tolkien's world.
In my opinion, the best paintings don't show each and everything, but leave some room for the viewer's eye and imagination to add the missing detail, to fill the gaps that are not really gaps. It's a bit hard to explain, but it's like the difference between a monologue and a dialogue.

Nasmith's characters... again, they rarely touch me on an emotional level, a fact that has nothing to do wether I find them close to my own imagination or no.
Even when Nasmith takes great efforts to achieve emotion, like in some scenes of the hobbit's journey through Mordor or Boromir threatening Frodo, they leave me quite cold. All I can see is the visible effort. Probably all too visible? Especially when grand and heroic characters are depicted, genuine life and expression turns into stage acting all too easily.
On the other hand, I greatly appreciate that Nasmith's hobbits are tough adults, not cute kiddies. In this anime infested post-film era, it's like a breath of fresh air to find hobbits that don't make the slightest effort to appear childish or pretty! :-)

Well, all I have said so far is an expression of my personal tastes, not a judgement of quality. From his website I take it that Nasmith is a very nice guy, not to mention a dyed-in-the-wool Tolkien fan - which he must be if he is willing to come from Canada to Germany just to spend a weekend at a youth hostel with 120 Tolkien fans!

Finally, I should mention that Ted Nasmith is also a musician. He has published his first CD with songs from LotR and we will have the pleasure to hear him at Tolkien Thing.

Ted Nasmiths website is: tednasmith.com

Happy Birthday Tehta!

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 21:51:45 GMT

This comes as a surprise, but I hope you had a wonderful day!
Here is a link that was brought to my attention recently, with some Tolkien illustrations. The last pic is a slightly Greek looking Glorfindel that you might like.

http://community.livejournal.com/ru_tolkien_art/18559.html

Hobbits - miniature and otherwise

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:01:47 GMT

My Visit to the LotR movies exhibition in Berlin has encouraged me to finally pick up the idea again to make some LotR miniature dolls. Or rather, the merchandising booth at the entrance did it, which sold, among other things, a wide range of figurines which I mostly found easy to resist buying.

While admiring perfection is wonderful, but also intimidating, mediocre quality always triggers that 'I can do that! And better!' button in me. Which doesn't mean that the result will be objectively better, but at least it will be more to my personal taste.
So I dug up my sculpting materials again and started on Frodo and Sam. And now, for the first time ever I begin to suspect that choosing the 1:12 size (doll's house size) wasn't the best idea I ever had. It's fine for houses and horses and elves and men, because you can still work detailed, but things don't get too big, so they don't eat up too much space in your room. Also, you have the advantage that lots of props in fitting size are available.
But on the down side - I find sculpting a hobbit head in 1:12 incredibly, eye-hurting fiddly. To give you an impression: Frodo's face from brow to chin is 10 millimeters long and 10 mm wide. One eye is 2 mm wide. I want not only to get eyes, mouth and nose roughly in the right places, but I want them to be individual traits that form a distinct personality. So you can imagine, a microscopic amount of modelling clay more or less on fine details like eyelids or lips can change the whole face visibly. I have done some children's heads before, but children's faces are softer and therefore easier to do and I wasn't as ambitious then with fine details. As it is, the difference in size betwen a 1:12 adult human and a 1:12 hobbit is the one step over the borderline from working comfortably to working cramped. I can only admire the sculptors of gaming miniatures like GamesWorkshop figures, who work in an even smaller size. I'm aware they use a different set of equipment than I do, but I am frequently amazed about the detail they achieve in their figure.

Rather than scanning the half finished doll's heads, which don't scan well, I'll give you one of the sketches I use for reference. It's Frodo smiling. The finished head will have a more serious expression, but I like this sketch to pieces, although the hair should be more curly. Unlike Glorfindel's in my other post, this smile is genuine. Odd how you sometimes achieve something easily with a ten minutes sketch and another time, two days of work won't get you there.

Talking of hobbits, where have they all disappeared? I was checking my folder of links to hobbit-themed websites, and at least half of the links were dead. Of the remaining rest, some have changed to actor fansites, which are of no interest to me.
I'm aware that the big wave after the movies has died down by now, but still I wonder, because it seems to me that in comparison, the elven side of the fandom is still more active. If someone can give me links to still active hobbit sites, with art or fanfiction, I would be ever so thankful.

Lord of the Rings Exhibition in Berlin.

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:40:01 GMT

Yesterday I made a trip to Berlin to see the exhibition of film props done for the LotR movies. Again I was overwhelmed by the endless devotion of all those artists, conceptual designers and craftspeople to get everything not just right, but perfect. I have several book about the making of LotR, but it's different to see the things in original.

Drawings and paintings by Alan Lee, John Howe and other artists, orginal costumes, scale models of creatures, buildings and settings, wax-Boromir in his funeral boat. Little films everywhere that would show special aspects about the making of the movies. Most were interesting, although I'm not surprised that Elijah Wood's resumée about Frodo's role in the story is that Frodo must learn about friendship and trust. Thank you, Mr Wood for your insightful words. I already suspected that you were not so much in years, but foremost mentally too young for the role.

What I found amusing was the way the exhibits were shown. In fact there was nothing out of the ordinary, and that's exactly what amused me. Weaponry, costumes and artifacts were shown in their glass cases, each with their little number, and below was a neat plate with the explanationatory text, just like in any museum. Only the text didn't read: "#1: Celtic dagger from aprox. 250 bC, materials: bronze, glass enamel, wood"; but instead: "#1:Elven dagger from the First Age, materials: bronze, glass enamel, wood".
I loved it.

I also was quietly delighted that I wasn't by far the only person above forty in the hall. I mean people who were obviously interested all by themselves, not merely dragged along by their teenage children. (With Easter holidays over, there weren't many kids around.) Seeing several people around sixty reminded me that the Tolkien's books have been around for some time, and hold interest for all age groups. I wish now I had asked some of the elder visitors how they first met with Tolkien, by book or film.

The exhibition was not quite as large as I had expected or hoped, and in 4 hours I had seen all of it. I was glad I had picked a workday, so it wasn't overcrowded and I could enjoy everything at my leisure. To see all the amazing artwork, costumes, weapons and scale models left me ecstatic, but also a little sad. First for the film itself: All the visuals are so stunningly perfect. If only I could say the same about the script.

Secondly, as a budding Tokien artist myself, I find the artwork and visuals for the films both encouraging and demotivating. Encouraging, because it's inspiring to see such brilliant work. All the creative ideas going into every item. The intricate detail in ornament, jewelry, costume design. The masterful craftsmanship in every single piece.
Discouraging, because everything has already been done, and better than I could ever hope to achieve. I had my sketch pad with me, but I didn't draw anything. Everything is amazing, but I can't use it for my own work.. The temptation is strong, but I don't want to copy. A lot of fanartists do just that; even if they don't go movieverse with their characters, they draw consciously or unconsciously from the films for their costumes and prop design, because it is all so damn convincing. In the wake of the films, few of us can imagine elves in anything other than an Art Noveaux outfit. All the design, from hobbit culture to dwarven ornament to orcish barbarism, is close to what I imagine when reading the books, only so much more detailed and fleshed out.
Costume design is not my forté, so even if I use books about costume history for reference, my characters will usually end up with a generic RPG outfit that can never compete with the perfection and richness in detail of the film design. (And yet not too rich: All the film costuming was done so well that the actors were never reduced to clothes-hangers for their own costumes.)
Of course, the movie design was done by the combined creative efforts of dozens of artists and craftspeople, so it would be illusionary to even try.

But enough of whining! A good look at the devotionalia booth outside the hall, with dozens of action figurines with faces that can give you the creeps (and I mean Aragorn and Legolas, not the cave troll) helped a great deal to reinstore my wounded self esteem. I love figurines of all sizes and am perfectly willing to spend money on them, but only if I like them and couldn't do them better myself. Which means that my LotR figurines collection is very limited so far, if I don't count the dozen cheap ones that came from surprise eggs.

Glorfindel & Ecthelion - Part II

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 05:29:58 GMT

I split up this post into two parts to make it more managable for modem users like me. On with the show!

6 xEcthelion:

#1
A ballpen sketch of Ecthelion that I did a year ago. While he looks younger than I see him in the stories, it's still my favourite starting point for new sketches, if only for lack of better ideas.

#2
A sketch with an assymetry problem, but there are aspects I like about this one, mostly the serious expression. Apart from that, a bit generic.

#3
Way too girly, but nice hair.

#4
For greatest possible contrast, here is Warrior!Ecthelion. I like this one, but the off eye is well, off.

#5
The companion piece to Glorfindel #6. Based on the ballpoint pen sketch #1, but the details are more defined now. Both these sketches of E & G are not meant to be artistically ambitious, they are plain front views and a bit 'done to death'. My goal here was to define the facial structures as clearly as I can, to use them as basic designs for further drawings that will hopefully have more live and expression in them.

#6
The same face from a different angle. Needs more work.

Ecthelion and Glorfindel - the story so far - Part I

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 05:10:33 GMT

I'm now going to fullfill my threat/ promise to unleash some half-baked sketches of Ecthelion and Glorfindel to the world at large, a promise that I made a week ago in Tehta's livejournal.

Anyone who is not interested in a dozen headstudies of elves would do better to skip the rest of this post. For the rst of you, on with the show!

Sadly, these elf characters don't easily cooperate. As I have whined about more than once, I find elves very hard to do. The ideal elf should combine striking beauty with unique personality, which in itself is a somewhat of a contradiction, as a look in any fashion catalogue will prove. Furthermore, a certain amount if androgynity is fine, but a male elf should never look girly, again a fine line to balance. Lastly, the ideal elf should look deciedly non-human, not like the guy next door with glued-on ears. I am aware that I fail utterly in this aspect.

I have been working for quite some time on Ecthelion and Glorfindel, mostly in honour of Tehta's stories about them. They are originally Tolkien's characters, but I try to portrait them the way Tehta fleshes them out.
I have never shown these sketches around or put one of them on my Elfwood page because I haven't yet reached my goal with them. They all have some good points, traits I can develop further but I am not fully happy with anyone of them. There is still a lot of work to do until they come out like I imagine them. By the way, I have a lot more sketches of E & G. For this gallery I picked only the creme de la creme, or in other words the least embarrassing ones. The others are even more off the mark or tend to be repetitive.

5 x Glorfindel:

#1
Glorfindel the warrior, a sketch from 4/06

#2
A depressed Glorfindel with short hair, done 10/06, as he appears in Tehta's story 'The Quick and the Dead'. I like the construction of his face here, although it is more generic than individual. A sketch to keep in mind for further use.

#3
A sketch I used as a starting point for a number of other drawings. I like the overall type and expression here, although the drawing itself suffers from serious assymetry issues and parts of it are not really defined, like the mouth and brows.

#4
Based on #3, this time from a different angle. Face is too narrow. This is what happens if I doodle along, working from detail to detail without doing a sound base construction of the whole skull first. Still, nice expression. Done 9/06

#5
Gawd, this guy looks camp. I think I overdid the wavy hair. My most recent try.
Edit: on second thoughts, I'm not entirely sure this is Glorfindel at all. It might be Hildor the Sleazy Elf.

And lastly - a very Happy belated Birtday to Claudio! I hope your muses cooperate better than mine.

Unusual Perspective of a Bird

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 00:41:38 GMT

Since LJ is traditionally *the* place to spam with photos of your pets, here is one of my ringneck doves:

I placed him on the scanner, and he was confused or patient enough to stay still for the scanning process. His name is 'Prinz', because he is such a paragon of doveish maskuline beauty. Well, maybe not at the moment, since he is moulting and his feathers are not in prime condition.

My Little (Graphite) Pony

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:36:35 GMT

This time I challenged myself to avoid all pencil lines and do the whole thing with only graphite powder and eraser, to get a more painterly than graphic effect.
Cuteness warning!

Fun with my new art toy

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 10:01:19 GMT

Recently I got my long-awaited graphit powder and started experimenting with it. It's fun, like going back to finger paints. Sadly, my kindergarden time was before finger paints were in vogue, so I missed that when I was a kid. Well, sometimes life gives you a second chance! :-)

You can apply the stuff with fingers or a brush or paper towels or whatever srtikes your fancy including the feet of your pets (my ringneck dove left some neat footprints on a paper when I wasn't looking) and remove again with a kneadable eraser. It gives nice soft hues.
I tried to work mostly with graphit powder and eraser and added as few lines as possible with graphite pencils.

Pic spam alert!

A dog:

A cow:

more cows:

and a bull:

Hobbit Pic for Christmas!

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 13:15:43 GMT

I surprised myself with starting this drawing on Thursday and getting it finished today in time for Christmas. Or at least almost finished, I will probably tweak some details a bit more.

'...And people will say: "Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring!" And they'll say: "Yes, that's one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn't he, dad?" "Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that's saying a lot!" '
'It's saying a lot too much,' said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart.

(JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings)

A happy Christmas, a blessed Chanukka, and wonderful Holidays to you all!

************************
Edit: I forgot to mention that this is not completely finished. Critical comments are welcome! Adding a little more background on all sides and working on the folds of the sleeves is already on my to-do list.

More Skulls!

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 20:17:15 GMT

As requested, and since there seem to be more perverted bone maniacs like me on my F-list, here are some more skulls from my collection. Note that the photos are not in scale to each other. On pig and fox, the jaws are fixed to the shulls with a rubber band.

First my newest aquisition: a male minipig, aged 4 years old. This was an opportunity I couldn't pass by, especially since it takes so much less room than a normal sized pig skull would.
The length of fang teeth is quite impressive, more so from above than from side view. Interesting detail: Because of the angle of the fangs, the jaw can only be moved in a slightly forward motion, not in a vertical motion.
I am fascinated by the differences between the short, dished skull of the modern domestic pig in contrast to the long skull of a wild boar.

A fox, a seagull and a mouse. The blurb under the fox is a piece of rubber eraser, put under the skull to stabilize it for scanning. The fox was probably not older than a year.

Edit: For comparison with the minipig, a skull of a wild boar is here:
http://www.faunistik.net/BSWT/MAMMALIA/UNGULATA/SUIDAE/IMAGES/sus.scrofa_schaedel01.gif

Horse and Hound Sketches and a Dog Skull

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 22:10:48 GMT

It's the Annual 'Pferd und Jagd' Fair (Horse and Hunt) in Hannover, and I use the oportunity to do some sketching. Here are the best of today's crop:

An Andalusian Stallion dozing:

Some quick studies of a Whippet in a soft basket:

In other news, I am now the proud owner of a dog skull!
You never know what you stumble upon on a fair. In this case, in the 'Hunting' section I met a man who had a variety of skulls for sale: crow, badger, roe deer, fox, two dogs and a miniature pig. I have long wanted to add a dog skull to my smallskull collection. Skulls and skeletons are a valuable help for learning the form of an animal. There are of course photos and drawings, but the actual three-dimensional real thing is best.
So far my own skull collection consists of various mice (killed by cats, cleaned by me), a blackbird (found in the garden, cleaned by ants) a cat, (upper skull only, most teeth missing, found in a forest) a fox (bought) and my pride and joy, a horse skull (also bought). And now a dog. It is a male Beagle. It's very interesting to compare it with my other canine, the fox.

It looks a little bit distorted because I just placed it on the scanner.
I think I need to go back tomorrow and buy the miniature pig, too.

Yes, I'm a geek.

LJ help, please?

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 19:10:49 GMT

Question:

How can I do this little thing with the head if I mention other LJ users?
I mean instead of just 'Dagmar' there appears this little head with 'dagmarjung' in fat font and if you click on it, you are on this users LJ. I couldn't find it in the FAQs.
Please help an LJ dummy!

What's up with FF.Net?

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 15:56:38 GMT

I can go to the 'personal profile' pages just fine, but not to the stories. I tried several authors, all with the same result. The story lists have dissapeared. Since weeks, it seems.
Tehta, I tried your author page on FFnet with the same result.

Does anybody know anything? Nothing is mentioned on FFnet mainpage.

Lately, I stumbled upon a direct link to a story on FFnet, that worked fine. (A HP fanfic)

Talking about Dreams

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 22:08:31 GMT

A friend told me once that people tend to have a recurring theme in their dreams. I don't know if that is true for all people, but have found that is certainly true for me. I don't speak of unusually exiting dreams, not to mention prophetic or life-changing dreams, just your common everynight dreams.

My personal recurring theme is that I am moving. In my dreams, I never stay in one place. I am driving by train, streetcar, bus, car, subway, or random fantastical vehicles, I walk through streets, buildings, supermarkets, underground stations, forests, cities, I am always on my way from somewhere to somewhere. Sometimes I am alone, sometimes I am with family members or other persons that belong to me, or I talk to people, but they are often vague. Like a dialogue in walking, when I see the person I talk to only from the corner of my eye, while my visual attention is the way and the landscape around me. Usually I remember best the *where* of my dream, and the sense of being on a way. The places are often detailed, ever-changing and often very surreal in hindsight. One oddity is that I sometimes find myself driving a car (I have no driver license and don't need or want one) but I can't remember ever riding a bycicle, which I do daily in RL and like it. If my dream self drives a car, I usually know that I have no driver license and no idea how to drive and should better avoid police control, but that doesn't stop me from hitting the highway.

How about you? Can you see a theme or pattern in your dreams?

And by the way, do you dream in colour or in greyscale? Someone told me once that he dreamt in greyscale, which struck me as odd, since real life happens in colour, and aren't our dreams made up from RL references?

Sketches of Cows

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 21:01:27 GMT

I spent last weekend in Stuttgart, the city where I spent my youth. My father and my brother still live there, and we had a party for my father's 70. birthday.
On Sunday my father and I visited the agricultural fair that is held every third year during the Canstatter Volksfest. The Volksfest is for Stuttgart what the Oktoberfest is for Munich. The agricultural fair is, among other things, a showcase of rare breeds, which I am very interested in. I took some photos, but they didn't come out in publishable quality (talk about photoshooting in a tent), and so you are spared another round of sheep pics. ;-)
But I also managed to draw some quick sketches of cows:

This is a 'Hinterwaelder' cow. They are a local and rare breed of the Black Forest and very well adapted to the harsh climate and poor pastures there. They are also the smallest cattle breed in Germany. They are also said to be direct descendants of the extinct Celtish cattle. The name translates as 'behind the forest'

And here are two heads of Vorderwaelder cows. They are closely related to Hinterwaelder cattle, but somewhat bigger, more influenced by other breeds and less adapted to extreme climate.

As you may have guessed, I am a big fan of animal shows and exhibitions. Horses, dogs, pigeons, ferrets, rats, llamas, chicken or fish - you name it, I am happy to visit.

Prehistoric Flies in Amber!

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 21:19:43 GMT

I polished the piece of amber with the flies inside and scanned it. Here are some photos which I hope you'll enjoy. First in natural size, then as much enlarged as my scanner could do so you can see the flies. They have the actual size of a fruitfly.

First, the upper side and underside of the amber drop:

The flies are best visible here: 3 flies:

From the other side only 2 flies are visible, due to the angle.

Sam's Garden and other picspam

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 21:16:58 GMT

You will be relieved to hear that trhis is the final installment of my travel photos.

A beautiful Garden in Sankt Peter Ording. I imagine it could be Sam's. Although Hobbits would maybe prefer flowers that grow not that high over their heads.

Solarfall, if you are interested to use these pics for reference purposes, I can scan and email them to you in a higher resolution. Also I have some more pics of this garden from other angles.

I imagine we can expect Glorfindel riding along this path any moment now.

Left to itself, nature close to the North Sea would look like this.

sea-longing...