Tatto For You

Forsooth, the Branden Rose is a real soul, you can go see her activities get all Tumblr -ed over at Europa of Naimes , where she and other bright-souled Sundergirdians keep the energy of the Half-Continent roiling. I go there to remind myself that the Half-Continent is not just me in a room on my own in front of a blank screen. Thank you, Branden Rose, thank you.

A couple of posts ago Elinor Blackwood (Ashira) was asking for me to divulge the process that goes into making my coloured images, so I shall now oblige. So, I start with the line drawing on paper (yes, a real piece of paper!) done with a sepia pencil for no other reason than I like the feel of the media and the brown looks nice. Some folk have mistakenly thought these charcoal drawings, but they are not, just coloured pencil. Having scanned the image in at 600 dpi, in Photoshop I then make a layer on MULITIPLY setting, onto which with the PENCIL tool I draw/paint/whatever it is you do in the digital context, areas of flat colour corresponding with the lines of the original drawing. Usually making a copy of this FLAT COLOUR layer – as I call it (turning off the original flat layer, thus preserving the original should anything go awry) I then mould the copied flat colour layer with the BURN tool, working in shadows and form as appropriate. Finally over the line drawing and the moulde...

About a million years ago, Ben Bryddia asked some questions and it is high time I say - HIGH TIME! - that they were answered. I shall reproduce much of his comment enclosing said enquiries here for context. "Do you have an index for all those notebooks? If so, how is it set up? Yeah, it's a strange question, but I'm curious what form of note organization you've found most helpful..." Ooh how I wish I indexed my notebooks, bit they are merely a repository for collecting thoughts as they come to me. 36 notebooks in I am starting to find it difficult to find older ideas, though it can be an adventure to go hunting for some half remembered notion I KNOW I wrote back in NB 32 or was it NB 31...? It can also drive me a little nuts trawling through every page when I just want to get on with what I am currently focused on. I am very much a scatty-headed creative type, and though there is a quite complex system of symbols to show what each note is, there is no indexing...

Steve Caires of Engrish.com sent me this today: http://www.kirainet.com/english/hemorrhoids-%E7%97%94/ From Hector Garcia's A Geek in Japan : "At first glance, it seems like a kid with a supercool sweater with a Japanese character. The problem is that the character 痔 means “hemorrhoid” in Japanese. Probably the designer confused the character 侍 , which means “samurai” and is pronounced “ji”, with the character 痔 that means “hemorrhoid” and is also pronounced “ji”… Both characters are graphically very similar but the meaning is totally different!"

Dr. Victor Mair from University of Pennsylvania sent me a link to a recent posting in the Language Log: The Chinese on banner for "Bodies... The Exhibition" does not say "discover your body", rather "discover your honorable corpse." [More]

My father has forwarded me this news story about hilarious mistranslated signs used by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line . It appears Royal Caribbean Cruise Line did not verify the Chinese translation's accuracy and blindly trusted Google Translate. Luckily paper signs can be reprinted, unlike tattoos. Corned Beef Hash => "salted beef jumbled signal" Ham and Bamboo Shoot Salad => "clumsy actor and bamboo's salad" Garden Greens => "[botanical] garden became green color" Chicken and Mushroom tart => "timid and rapidly grown prostitute(s)" Regular Milk => "policy milk" Half & Half => "secondary butter blended mixture" Green Split Pea Soup => "green separation pea soup" English Bacon => "English [language] cultivate root" * Update: several readers have informed me that 培根 is an acceptable transliteration for "bacon" in Taiwan. However, the sign is still incorrect for u...

Hello hello, hello! Still here, still kicking about, avoiding the blank page and all that. A favourite truism of mine (heard as a sample on Ride's "Going Blank Again") goes, "even a stuffed clock tells the right time twice a day." So in that spirit I am blogging again after an extended hiatus. First, I have an interview for your perusal over at fellow author, Greg Mitchell's page. A caution for those of a less religious bent that one of the answers gets pretty religious, so bare with me. Well, I have some questions to answer, I will have a crack at one: The glorious Justine H . asks: "... How exactly did you come up with the idea for leers? Are leers able to fall in love?And where on the Half-Continent did you come up with such an epicly amazing character as Sebastipole (and his amazingly epic name?!)?!?!" Well, I think it came first with seeing something that made me think it would be "cool" to put a large box right on someone's ...