Tag: art

Tiny Tuesday!

Recently I had reason to grab some of my Monster High dolls for photos. I MISS THEM. They used to be on shelves in the office, but post-Harvey, they are packed safely away. I need to bring them out more often for some playfulness.

First, I found this little cart when I was Christmas shopping and it perfectly illustrates why I shouldn’t shop. It has no function whatsoever but I wanted it for the dolls. So…


I posted it on Instagram and suggested people give me names for a young monster romance with this as its cover. Romantic comedy would be as good, though, if you’re more into movies than books.

I work with a man named Luis who I discovered is a gifted artist. When we talked about art, and he found out I like pen and inks, he made a gift of this to me. SO NICE!


(On Instagram if you want to check out more of his work: https://www.instagram.com/datboij0k3r/)

Little Dead Riding Wolf wants to move in NOW. Definitely beats a bin in the closet.

Apple Corps

I decided to reach into one of my two 45s cases, eyes closed, and pull a random record. Of course it ended up like this, and I don’t even have that many Beatles records.


Two great songs by George Harrison (“My Sweet Lord” and “Isn’t It a Pity”), the first of which landed him in a lawsuit (and because of which he later wrote “This Song”).

I’m in the middle of reading a Paul McCartney biography and I didn’t realize before that the Apple logo was absolutely a result of Sir Paul being introduced to the work of artist Rene Magritte in the 1960s. Art inspiring more art always makes me happy.

But it can be very hard to know what we absorb subconsciously–creative people are sponges and over years and years of hearing, reading, and seeing other creatives’ works, it can be hard to untangle what is homage, coincidental, and plagiarism/theft. I get frustrated a lot when I write and then I see a movie I’ve never seen that has features so much like what I’ve written–but my writing pre-dated the movie.

Tim always reminds me that there’s nothing new under the sun.

Yesterday

I saw the movie Yesterday and was immediately ready to go and see it again. Looking for likeminded local friends who will indulge me in same.

Meanwhile, this came in the mail to continue my Summer of Beatles.

I don’t have time to color right now, but at least I’ve narrowed my first choice down to these three:

I’m pretty sure I know which one I’ll go with and why.

To the curb!

Someone loaned me a book recently, a cozy mystery, and it was like the second in a very long series that I believe is still being published, so I guess it’s doing well, but…

The series is set somewhere the writer has possibly visited as a tourist but never lived. This is a dicey proposition if it’s a place that people know really well and the writer gets important details wrong.

However, I, too, have never lived there, so I didn’t catch most of the inaccuracies, but I read reviews, and OUCH!

The reason that I probably won’t read any others in the series has much more to do with I COULD NOT STAND the romantic interest of the amateur sleuth who is the center of the series. Through the entire book, I couldn’t wait until she kicked him to the curb. I couldn’t see any other outcome based on the way he was written.

And then–the couple at least pseudo-reconciled at the end, and readers were apparently supposed to be happy about this and think love won out. Nope. Dumb won out.

When I evaluate characters, one of my tests is, Would I be friends with her/him? I would be friends with a wide range of funny, smart, sensitive, moderately boring, aggravating, villainous, rakish, shallow, and certainly very-different-from-me characters. But I didn’t like her well enough to wait a few more books for her to dump that loser. I couldn’t understand what his appeal was to her on any level.

SO…won’t be investing any money or time in that series.

Speaking of curbs and reading, this is a new addition in the area of Houston’s Mini Murals. I actually saw the artist when he was painting it, but there isn’t parking near the busy intersection where it’s located, so I could never stop. Tom dropped me off and picked me up so I could shoot the finished mural.

1. Remember when literacy was important in the White House?

2. If I had been able to stop and meet the artist when he was painting, I’d have corrected what should be singular possessive apostrophes in the last photo. Also, the quotation is opened but not closed. Still, I like the softness of his colors, and I think he captured her well.

3. I donated that cozy mystery to a Little Free Library, so maybe someone else will read it, like it, and buy the whole series.