Never Was a Cornflake Girl

I've never considered myself an artist outside of the writing mediums, but I've always enjoyed sketching and painting. I'm painting more and more and really enjoy it. I did a watercolor inspired by my dear friend Tina a couple nights ago:





My apologies, the picture quality sucks (I didn't use lighting very well). I'm not good with drawing people so the portrait is underwhelming, but I like the overall painting. "Cornflake Girl" is a terrific song by Tori Amos that stirs me every time. The lyrics implemented in the painting are "She's putin' on her string bean love" and "And the man with the golden gun thinks he knows so much."

I have a summer reading list that I'm making slow progress on. I'm currently reading "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy (or лио толстой) and "The Naked and the Dead" by Norman Mailer. Both are war novels-- the first dealing with the Napoleonic Wars and the second with WWII. "W&P" is an epic, tracing characters' lives through a decade of war (amounting to about 1500 pages). However, Tolstoy's focus is on emotion and imagery rather than plot--and I like it. Drenched plots bore me, which is why I have a hard time with journey or "quest" books like Tolkien's stuff or "A Passage to India" (uuuuuuggggghhhh that book.) However, I'm struggling with "The Naked and the Dead." It's just not drawing me in; the imagery is pretty dull--all you get of the characters are their hair color and age (maybe that's the point?). I'm going to give it a few more chapters but if continues to draw on I'll move to the next on my list.

I entered a poetry contest hosted by the UA's Poetry Center. I didn't win anything, but my poetry teacher Sarah Kortemeier and David's poetry teacher Sean Rys both did and I'm very happy about that. Sarah is fantastic with rhythm, evident here: http://poetrycenter.arizona.edu/enewsletter/september2009/enews0909_solar.shtml

I'll post more of my writing tomorrow or Sunday. Until then, au revoir!