Thursday, May 14, 2009

Jack Vettriano Between Darkness and Dawn

Jack Vettriano Between Darkness and DawnJack Vettriano Betrayal No Turning Back 2001Jack Vettriano Betrayal First Kiss 2001
of music,' said Ridcully. 'My word!'
'What I'd like to try,' said Ponder, 'is getting the musicians to play in front of a lot of strings like this. Perhaps we could trap the music.'to stop it, not make more of it.'
'What exactly is wrong with it?' said Ponder.
`It's . . . well, can't you see?' said Ridcully. 'It makes people act funny. Wear funny clothes. Be rude. Not do what they're told. I can't do a thing with them. It's not right. Besides . . . remember Mr Hong.'
'It's certainly very unusual,' said Ponder. 'Can we get some more? For study purposes? Archchancellor?'
Ridcully shrugged. ' We follow the Dean,' he said.
'Good grief,' breathed Buddy, in the huge echoing emptiness. 'No wonder they 'What for?' said Ridcully. ' What on Disc for?''Well . . . if you could get music in boxes you wouldn't need musicians any more.'Ridcully hesitated. There was a lot to be said for the idea. A world without musicians had a certain appeal. They were a scruffy bunch, in his experience. Quite unhygienic.He shook his head, reluctantly.`Not this sort of music,' he said. `We want

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Jack Vettriano The Tourist Trap

Jack Vettriano The Tourist TrapJack Vettriano The TemptressJack Vettriano The Star Cafe
'It's, it's, it's a guitar, Archchancellor,' said the Dean, walking hurriedly backwards as Ridcully approached. 'I just bought it.'
'I can see that, I can the major seventh as a passing tone?' said the Dean.
The Archchancellor peered at the open page.
'But this says "Lesson One: Fairy Footsteps",' he said.
'Um, um, um, I was getting a bit impatient,' said the Dean.
'You've never been musical, Dean,' said Ridcully. 'It's one of your good points. Why the sudden interest ‑ what have you got on your feet?'hear that, what was it you were tryin' to do?''I was practising, er, riffs,' said the Dean. He waved a badly printed woodcut defensively in Ridcully's face.The Archchancellor grabbed it.'"Blert Wheedown's Guitar Primer",' he read. ' "Play your Way to Succefs in Three Easy Lefsons and Eighteen Hard Lefsons". Well? I've nothin' against guitars, pleasant airs, a‑spying young maidens one morning in May and so on, but that wasn't playin'. That was just noise. I mean, what was it supposed to be?''A lick based on an E pentatonic scale using

Monday, May 11, 2009

Edgar Degas After the Bath

Edgar Degas After the BathFrida Kahlo The FrameFrida Kahlo Self Portrait with NecklaceFrida Kahlo Self Portrait with Monkeys
ornate frame around it, with a skulls‑and‑bones motif.
She pushed the like rock and it certainly wasn't wood. It made no sound when Susan walked on it. It was simply surface, in the purely geometrical sense.
The carpet had a skull‑and‑bones pattern.
It was also black. Everything was black, or a shade of grey. Here and there door open.This room could have housed a small town.A small area of carpet occupied the middle dis­tance, no more than a hectare in size. It took Susan several minutes to reach the edge.It was a room within a room. There was a large, heavy‑looking desk on a raised dais, with a leather swivel chair behind it. There was a large model of the Discworld, on a sort of ornament made of four elephants standing on the shell of a turtle. There were several bookshelves, the large volumes piled in the haphazard fashion of people who're far too busy using the books ever to arrange them properly. There was even a window, hanging in the air a few feet above the ground.But there were no walls. There was nothing between the edge of the carpet and the walls of the greater room except floor, and even that was far too precise a word for it. It didn't look

Francisco de Goya Clothed Maja

Francisco de Goya Clothed MajaEdgar Degas The RehearsalEdgar Degas The Bellelli FamilyEdgar Degas At the Races
Soul Cake Tuesday Duck didn't apparently have any kind of a home. Nor did Old Man Trouble or the Sandman, as far as she knew.
She walked around the house, which wasn't much larger than a cottage. Definitely. Whoever lived here had no taste at all.at it another way.
She tried to walk towards the nearest one, and gave up after a few wildly teetering steps. Finally she managed to reach it by taking aim and then shutting her eyes.
The door was at one and the same time about nor­mal human size and immensely She found the front door. It was black, with a knocker in the shape of an omega.Susan reached for it, but the door opened by itself.And the hall stretched away in front of her, far bigger than the outside of the house could possibly contain. She could distantly make out a stairway wide enough for the tap‑dancing finale in a musical.There was something else wrong with the per­spective. There clearly was a wall a long way off but, at the same time, it looked as though it was painted in the air a mere fifteen feet or so away. It was as if distance was optional.There was a large clock against one wall. Its slow tick filled the immense space.There's a room, she thought. I remember the room of whispers.Doors lined the hall at wide intervals. Or short intervals, if you looked

Friday, May 8, 2009

John Constable Flatford Mill

John Constable Flatford MillJohn William Waterhouse The Magic CircleJohn William Waterhouse PandoraJohn William Waterhouse Lamia
because you like Logic and Maths and don't like Language and History?'
Miss Butts concentrated. There was no way the child could have left the room. If she really stressed her mind, she could catch a . It was always raining in Llamedos. Rain was the country's main export. It had rain mines.
Imp the bard sat under the evergreen, more out of habit than any real hope that it would keep the rain off. Water just dribbled through the spiky leaves and formed rivulets down the twigs, so that it was really a sort of rain concentrator. Occasional lumps of rain would splat on to his head.
He was eighteen, extremely talented and, currently, not at ease with his life.suggestion of a voice saying, 'Don't know, Miss Butts.''Susan, it is really most upsetting when–’Miss Butts paused. She looked around the study, and then glanced at a note pinned to the papers in front of her. She appeared to read it, looked puzzled for a moment, and then rolled it up and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. She picked up a pen and, after staring into space for a moment, turned her attention to the school accounts.Susan waited politely for a while, and then got up and left as quietly as possible.Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice.It was raining in the small, mountainous country of Llamedos

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Paul Cezanne A Modern Olympia

Paul Cezanne A Modern OlympiaLaurie Maitland Autumn SongWilliam Bouguereau YvonneWilliam Bouguereau Le Jour
Gaspode, crunching it up in his dreadful teeth. 'I'm brilliant. Brilliant.'
'You'd better pray Big Fido doesn't find out,' said Angua.
'Nah. He won'tAngua bounded up the stairs, and clawed open the nearest door.
It was Carrot's bedroom. The smell of him, a kind of golden-pink colour, filled it from edge to edge.
There was a drawing of a dwarf mine carefully pinned to one wall. Another held a large sheet of cheap paper on which had been drawn, in careful pencil line, with many crossings-out and smudges, a map touch me. I worry him. I've got the Power.' He scratched an ear vigorously. 'Look, you don't have to go back in there, we could go and—''No.'Story of my life,' said Gaspode. 'There's Gaspode. Give him a kick.'I thought you had this big happy family to go back to.' said Angua, as she pushed open the door.'Eh? Oh, yes. Right,' said Gaspode hurriedly. 'Yes. But I like my, sort of, independence. I could stroll back home like a shot, any time I wanted.'

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Nicolas De Stael Fiesole 1953

Nicolas De Stael Fiesole 1953Nicolas De Stael Cap Gris-NezNicolas De Stael AgrigenteNicolas De Stael Agrigente 1953
a temple,' he said, and his voice boomed away into the distance.
'Writing here on wall,' said Detritus.
Cuddy peered at the letters hacked deeply into the stone.
' "VIA CLOACA",' slime.
' "Cirone IV me fabricat",' he read aloud. 'He was one of the early kings, wasn't he? Hey . . . do you know what that means?'
'No-one's been down here since yesterday,' said Detritus.
'No! This place . . . this place is more than two thousand years old. We're he said. 'Hmm. Well, now . . . via is an old word for street or way. Cloaca means . . .'He peered into the gloom.'This is a sewer,' he said.'What that?''It's like . . . well, where do trolls dump their . . . rubbish?' said Cuddy.'In street,' said Detritus. 'Hygienic.' 'This is . . . an underground street just for . . . well, for crap,' said Cuddy. 'I never knew Ankh-Morpork had them.''Maybe Ankh-Morpork didn't know Ankh-Morpork had them,' said Detritus.'Right. You're right. This place is old. We're in the bowels of the earth.''In Ankh-Morpork even the shit have a street to itself,' said Detritus, awe and wonder in his voice. 'Truly, this a land of opportunity.''Here's some more writing,' said Cuddy. He scraped away some