Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975)
Shostakovich’s contemporaries do not recall seeing him working, at least not in the traditional sense. The Russian composer was able to conceptualize a new work entirely in his head, and then write it down with extreme rapidity—if uninterrupted, he could average twenty or thirty pages of score a day, making virtually no corrections as he went.
But this feat was apparently preceded by hours or days of mental composition—during which he “appeared to be a man of great inner tensions,” the musicologist Alexei Ikonnikov observed, “with his continually moving, ‘speaking’ hands, which were never at rest.”
Shostakovich himself was afraid that perhaps he worked too fast. “I worry about the lightning speed with which I compose,” he confessed in a letter to a friend. Undoubtedly this is bad. One shouldn’t compose as quickly as I do. Composition is a serious process, and in the words of a ballerina friend of mine, “You can’t keep going at a gallop.” I compose with diabolical speed and can’t stop myself.… It is exhausting, rather unpleasant, and at the end of the day you lack any confidence in the result. But I can’t rid myself of the bad habit.
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
#dailyrituals #inktober #shostakovich @masoncurrey
"Like maggots in a dog's carcass, they fill me, my children..."
A cosmic being known as "The Sleeper", "The Ugly", but most often he is proudly called "The Father".
"Like maggots in a dog's carcass, they fill me, my children..."
A cosmic being known as "The Sleeper", "The Ugly", but most often he is proudly called "The Father".
I SWEAR I made him before I knew about Barbatos.
Anyway, The Father sleeps deep beneath Gotham and unwittingly poisons the city and its population with his toxic aura. He is known to his cult as the God of Madness and Chaos. He simply cannot control his influence on those around, which makes him a villain of a tragic fate. I figured his existence would be a good enough explanation for why Gotham is such a rotten piece of society, with very creative supervillains who loves to be so extra and why they not executed horribly for everything they've done. The cult of his worshippers is quite old and includes a huge number of people trying to keep him asleep, because if he wakes up and gets out of his prison, it will be the end of the city, and maybe not only the city...
I should point out: he's not actually a god, he's an alien, and he's not the embodiment of "chaos and madness" - he's a cosmic horror, most likely mentally ill and therefore his aura is toxic. He didn't create the villains or Batman, but his aura affected the environment in which they were created.
Primrose is the oldest, Daphne is the middle, and Dalena is the youngest. The outfits were found on Pinterest/Instagram. The background was hard to come up with. I referenced Martin Ivanov's Gotham City for the background. Their story is still in the works but I wanted to draw them anyway.
Don't mistake his kindness for weakness. But I guess that's what happens when your not vampire born and have to claw your way to your title. I have two more vampires that will be introduce sometime soon, and the two of them will make Sebastian life a living hell.
Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
On a late-night walk near Dublin harbor, Beckett found himself standing on the end of a pier in the midst of a winter storm. Amid the howling wind and churning water, he suddenly realized that the “dark he had struggled to keep under” in his life—and in his writing, which had until then failed to find an audience or meet his own aspirations—should, in fact, be the source of his creative inspiration.
“I shall always be depressed,” Beckett concluded, “but what comforts me is the realization that I can now accept this dark side as the commanding side of my personality. In accepting it, I will make it work for me.”
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
#dailyrituals #inktober #samuelbeckett @masoncurrey
Teddy Bear's Change of Seasons - Sophie's Christmas included!
Is beautifully written and illustrated, Teddy Bear’s Change of Seasons includes four charming stories, wonderfully rolled into one children’s novel.
Teddy Bear and his friends create magical ways to explore and learn about the snow-white, wonderful world they live in, which changes from summer to autumn and into an unforgettable Christmas.
Teddy’s journey of self-discovery through four seasons, Christmas included, begins in a magnificent old-growth forest, but Teddy is stuck inside a dark and lonely place.
His dreams look far away and out of reach, until Teddy rescues a small mouse, who is desperate for help.
From this one act of kindness, Teddy's life changes in ways he never imagined, bringing him close friends, a new loving family and the kind of challenges and adventures other teddies have never encountered before.
This is a dream of a book, the perfect snuggle-down bedtime story, accompanied by hot, sleepy cocoa.
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
“I get up at about eight, do physical exercises, then work without a break from nine till one,” Stravinsky told an interviewer in 1924. Generally, three hours of composition were the most he could manage in a day, although he would do less demanding tasks—writing letters, copying scores, practicing the piano—in the afternoon.
Unless he was touring, Stravinsky worked on his compositions daily, with or without inspiration, he said. He required solitude for the task, and always closed the windows of his studio before he began: “I have never been able to compose unless sure that no one could hear me.” If he felt blocked, the composer might execute a brief headstand, which, he said, “rests the head and clears the brain.”
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
