jeudi 24 février 2011

Three books and too many faces to count

New books again. I've been too busy to concentrate on anything else than my usual practice with books and faces... On the right is a nice story that reads easily but isn't half as funny as promised on the cover. I didn't believe them anyway. In the middle is an awesome story by french author Tonino Benaquista (that's a pleonasm because he only writes awesome stories). The kind of story that makes you smile for entire minutes in a waiting room in pure jubilation, the whole world around forgotten...



And on the left is an interesting book about dreams and their interpretation. The author mainly says that the purpose of dreams interpretation is prediction. He also says that you cannot interpret your own dreams because the interpretation would only become another dream. You must ask an interpret he calls an "onirocrite" (in french), and the dreams have to be told just out of bed, before breakfast.
I'm interested by the prediction part, but I think I'll leave the rest, because it doesn't seem very practical. Not every body can have his own onirocrite waiting beside the bed every night.

 And faces again. From magazine, daily papers, cook books, travel books...
My new exercise is to draw while watching my dvds. I try to draw the faces very fast, sometimes from memory, sometimes in several takes. For some (unknown to me) reason I really want to get good at that. I want to be able to "get" a face in just a few traits, like my favorite graphic novels illustrators and writers, Hugo Pratt and Joan Sfar.
I'm not posting the results, but I can tell you it's really a fun and efficient way to practise!