That meme

[sigune]

I'm doing my best to catch up on my flist and came across this meme a few times. So... Why not?

The problem with LJ: we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So ask me something you want to know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don't know about you.

Comments

[venturous1.livejournal.com]

how did your interest in drawing arise? what writers and artists inspired you as a child?

[sigune.livejournal.com]

As a child? I hadn't been expecting that XD. Thanks for the question - I had to think about it for a moment, but it's great fun.

As a child, I had three great inspirations: Ancient Egypt, Robin Hood and the legends of the Round Table (and the Middle Ages in general) :D. The first time I drew a comic, I was twelve and had just seen Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, which I adored. The comic a Mary Sue (Robin of Locksley's cousin), a Gary Stu, the Count of Flanders, a dog named Ramses (who was a kind of Egyptian god in disguise) and Morgan le Fay as the villain. As you can see, it's not so much writers that inspired me - rather, it was history/legend and then all things I could connect to it, whether they were novels or films or comics.

I devoured comics as a child (and still do :P), and when I think back to the point where I started to draw more than, or differently from, my friends and classmates, I always used comics as examples.

The first comics artist I started to copy was Lucien De Gieter, whose series Papyrus (http://www.egypteinedite.be/papyrus01.htm) I adored. It was about Ancient Egypt (my favourite period in history when I was ten) and the early De Gieter characters had huge eyes and cute faces. In terms of layout and storytelling I based myself on my favourite series, Suske & Wiske (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_and_Suzy). Shortly after, I discovered Wendy Pini's Elfquest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfquest) which became a major influence (again, large eyes and cute faces :P).

Outside of comics, I taught myself to draw at the hand of a book of fairytales illustrated by Edmund Dulac (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Dulac) - a result of my father starting to buy me classic fairytale books and forbidding me to read comics until I'd finished the fairytales :P. I also had a facsimile of an old Dutch retelling of Mallory's Arthur, illustrated by Arthur Rackham (and in which all the pictures got attached to the wrong stories somehow XD). I can safely say that Rackham taught me how to texture trees *g*.

[melusin-79.livejournal.com]

did you go to art school and if so, where?

[sigune.livejournal.com]

LOL! I'm flattered that you ask, because I remain convinced that it's quite obvious that I have never been near an art school. And though I am generally happy with the education I received at (regular) school, the art classes I got there were worthless. All we ever got to do was make collages. We were never really taught anything. So I'm utterly and entirely self-taught - and sporadically looking around for opportunities to pick up some classes someday, somehow, because I really miss that.

[todayiamadaisy]

Where did your interest in Oscar Wilde start?

[sigune.livejournal.com]

That is a serious question to which the answer is partly embarrassing. My first encounter with Wilde was via The Importance of Being Earnest, because (*blushes*) it was the shortest text on our sixth year reading list. When I was in secundary school, I hated the classics of literature and lived on a diet of fantasy. Wilde was also more appealing than the average author on our reading list because of his trials and sentence for 'gross indecency'.

But I only really started to, well, shamelessly fangirl Wilde when one day, while browsing in my father's copy of the Complete Works, I happened to spot an instance in which Wilde refers to himself as Celtic - that was in De Profundis. I was at that point quite besotted with everything Irish and Celtic, and Wilde seemed to fit in that picture. Shortly afterwards I was in Paris and visited his grave at Père Lachaise. When I told a friend at university about my trip, she borrowed me H. Montgomery Hyde's biography of Wilde, and that was the beginning of an everlasting love affair ;-)... I hope that by writing a doctoral thesis I have sort of made up for the sordid beginnings XD.

[missfloraposte.livejournal.com]

Is there any particular painting/drawing/illustration that particularly moves you or speaks to you?

[sigune.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I had to think about this for a long time. There are many artists and pictures that I admire, sometimes for very different reasons, but I couldn't immediately think of one that really moves me. I am one of those people who can sit and stare at one picture for as much as an hour - I did that with Botticelli's Birth of Venus once, so I guess you can say it moves me by its utter beauty. But I guess that the painting that touched me most of all is this 1889 self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gogh/self/gogh.self-orsay.jpg).

No reproduction I have ever seen does justice to the original, so it may not be evident to feel its power if you can't see the real thing. When I first saw this painting, I didn't like Van Gogh's art at all. Seeing this portrait suddenly made me feel as though I understood what his art is about. It is entirely possible that I am completely wrong about him - but I have certainly become a great Van Gogh admirer.

I don't think I have ever seen a self-portrait that is more dynamic than this one, even though all you see is a head and shoulders. The powerful lines, the flame-like beard, the tormented eyes and whirly background strike me as the perfect evocation of the artist's restlessness of mind. For me, Van Gogh was a man who was always haunted by all the pictures that he wouldn't have the time to paint. His detractors say that he painted too much, but I think they miss the point. When Van Gogh looked around, he was assaulted by ever-changing impressions, the beauty and power all of which he wanted to translate to canvas. Whenever the sun threw a different shadow, there was something else to see - and here was this poor artist with too little money to buy enough canvas (which is why he painted over his own work) and too short a life to paint all that was worth painting.

So this portrait turned Van Gogh into a hero for me. It has gone so far that I have fervently defended him against a professional sculptor I admire. He called Van Gogh worthless and claimed that Picasso was the ultimate artist. But whereas I have no doubt that Picasso was far superior in skill, his work does not speak to me at all, and I find Van Gogh far superior in passion :).

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

an easy question: do you have any siblings? And (a slightly harder one, perhaps) did you ever know anyone like Snape as you conceive of him? You can choose whichever you'd like to answer!

[sigune.livejournal.com]

I can do both :).

1) Yes, I have a sister three years younger than I.

2) No. I have thought about this for a while, but no. I had a biology teacher once with an enormous hooknose, so I know that 'my' Snape nose isn't far-fetched, but from there to saying that I know/knew a Snape-like character... That teacher was the sweetest guy. I guess the most Snape-like person that I know would be myself XD. And that's not really fair. I started imagining my version of Snape when I found I could identify myself with the boy we saw in the Worst Memory. But the similarities between the Snape I imagine and myself don't go much further than that. In fact, I am quite sure that if I had met a person like Snape, s/he would have scared me to death... Do you know one?

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about that, too - did I know anyone who was Snape-like? Well, a couple of family members very dear to me had/have sarcastic tongues - and also good and gentle hearts. That has influenced how I see the character, though, of course, I primarily identified with him myself, just as you did, in the SWM scene. But I don' t think I ever knew anyone who was actually Snape-like in the way Rowling would like us to see him - except perhaps a couple of professors. One taught property law, and would look around for anyone wearing bright colors to ask them questions. We all learned to wear drab colors to that class, and not stand out in any way - but a friend and I were talking, and agreed that this man was one of the better teachers in that school. He had a sharp tongue, and took, it seemed, malicious pleasure in catching us out, but he was also honest about his expectations, and he certainly wasn't a bully. That's influenced how I see the character, too. The professors I couldn't stand were the ones who (1) didn't bother to teach at all - I had a couple of those - or, worse (2) were genuinely abusive of their position in one way or another. And I just don't identify those people with Snape. But yes, I think I'd be scared of Snape in real life, and, as a child, I would have had a miserable time in his class. Maybe my 3d grade teacher, who didn't like me, would fit the bill?

Except that, like Marionros, I think Snape is actually a good teacher, with the capacities (had he bothered to develop them) to be an excellent one. But I would have suffered in his class, all the same. I can see that.