Wallpaper with Tentacles

As far as I am aware, no-one visits this blog apart from me.  Therefore, it will have come as a surprise to absolutely nobody at all that (as of June 2017) I changed the look of the blog when I decided that it should have more of a RPG slant (plus selected PC games).

As part of that redesign I considered altering the header to include the background picture of the charming investigator used for the Achtung! Cthulhu investigator's guide. However, in the end I decided to rotate various RPG related pictures I like in the header, so the investigor can rest here until it's her turn to be featured again.

In addition, I changed the blog's wallpaper from just boring black to a repeating pattern (see below, if you can).

Any colour you like, as long as it's brown

I quite like the pattern idea that actually looks like antique wallpaper, which is what my wargaming blog uses.  The intention of that, with its pale brown background and Casper David Friedrich header, was to go for more of what I regard as a sort of mid-nineteenth century 'Turgenev' effect (I'll explain it one day).

However, for Eclectic Infinities I thought that something darker and more Mythos oriented would be appropriate.  A couple of googled wallpaper tiles were therefore considered, as follows:

Too squiggly

Too 'arts and crafty'

Too beige-y

Too paisley, though encouragingly protozoan

However, in the end I plumped for the obvious one, a repeating tile of greenish cephalopods, reminiscent of you-know-who.

Too... actually, no, I may be on to something here

Nevertheless, it wasn't exactly what I wanted, so I stuck it in GIMP (which is free, open source and really good).  The first thing to do was to make the tile a bit more like something that had been badly printed, so basically I put it through the standard 'photocopy' filter setting.  This produced a black and white image like an old Xerox copy.

I then altered the colour scale so it was more of a dark brown, which is usually what happens to the pigments in Victorian wallpapers after a century or so of inexorable oxidation (at least the ones I've encountered in Edinburgh tenements); not to mention the slow mouldering away perhaps caused by unspeakable horrors lurking insidiously behind the wainscoting...  Perfect.

Bullet Bouncing

When I originally set up this blog (in 2011) it was to muse on all of the things that I was interested in that didn't fall under the remit of wargaming.  That covers a lot of ground as there all kinds of things I do, or would like to be doing, or used to do, or should be doing, or have some vague memory of doing, that I could write about.

However, what I have found over the years with blogging is that having a narrow(ish) focus for a blog usually works best (hence my separate wargaming blog), both as the blogger and for readers, who generally come to a blog with certain expectations and don't want to see random posts about electronic music, French nineteenth century poets, guitars, science fiction, travels in Central Asia, Scottish politics or non-historical wargaming (horrors!).

Consequently, I've decided to 'relaunch' this blog (like anyone would notice) but use it to report (slightly) more specifically on my desultory activities with regard to role palying games, board games and computer games.  Mainly, because, apart from historical wargaming (and Scottish politics), they are the other things that are keeping me distracted at work and home as I slide into my twilight years.

Nevertheless!  Onwards and upwards, and for no particular reason at all other than it is slightly amusing (and I like the old fashioned classic DC artwork) here's Wonder Woman to get us going.

Achtung! Cthulhu #1

I've not much time for role playing games and I think in the last 35 years I've been involved in two AD&D adventures and one Call of Cthulhu game.  Achtung! Cthulhu, however, has piqued my interest, as it combines WW2, Cthulhu (of course) and some excellent graphics.  Plus the female on the cover of the Investigator's Guide reminds me of someone...

 

More pictures in a later post (probably).  Truely inspiring in terms of graphical technique and the whole 1930s/1940s pulp type adventure setting for Cthulhu.  Even the fonts are interesting. (I should point out that at that the time of writing I don't own the game, so I've no idea how it plays, although as with most RPGs it depends more on the players than on the rules).

Oh and by the way, I know it's over 18 months since I last posted here but now that the Scottish Referendum is over (at least until the next one comes along) I've got time on my hands.

Art by Mary Maclean

When I was at Glasgow University (1982-1986) I had friends from a number of other institutions, including the Glasgow School of Art.  This was through a set of roundabout connections because I was a member of the Edinburgh Youth Orhcestra (EYO) (plus the National Windband of Scotland (NWoS), the Lothian Schools Orchestra (LSO), the Edinburgh Secondary Schools Orchestra (ESSO) and the Caritas Orchestra (I was busy in those days)) and therefore met a lot of people from other schools in Edinburgh who have turned up periodically thoughout my life since.

Of these, the pupils from the Rudolf Steiner school were often the most interesting and many of them ended up as music and art students in Glasgow when I was there. One of these was a 'cello player (Moria?) and her elder sister, Mary Maclean, who was studing fine arts (mainly painting I think) at the Glasgow School of Art, whom I first met at a party we held at our flat at 42 Bentinck Street.

I didn't drink much in those days (I think it was 1984) and was a sensible sort of chap (overall) and I remember being invited round to the flat they shared in Oban Drive in the West End for innocent past-times such as drinking tea, baking cakes, playing charades and generally having silly conversations.

I suppose I had lived in a relatively narrow, circumscribed and studious world until then (and for quite a while thereafter) and it was interesting to be introduced to things that I didn't really know anything about such as art, old Edith Piaf LPs, tinned lychees and the revelation that the Macleans' mother had allegedly been in the Hitler Youth before emigrating to Scotland.

Oban Drive is just round the corner from Fergus Drive where my good friend Kenny lived for a while thereafter (hello Kenny!) and I remember that they used to get letters from a friend in Morningside addressed to "Oh-ban-the-bomb Drive".

Anyway, I liked Mary's art and as she was a final year student by then she was selling some of her pictures and I gladly paid £40 for one of them.  It doesn't have a title, that I am aware of, but it is a large canvas (130 x 170cm) depicting two people sitting in a cafe in Amsterdam and is based on the pastel sketch above, which she let me have as a bonus.

It hangs proudly on the wall of my sitting room and although it is not the most beautiful painting in Scotland (or possibly even the most finished) it sits well against the warm yellow walls and brown furniture (chosen in a way to compliment the painting, not the other way around, as is often the case, these days) and looks interesting, often stimulates conversation, and is in fact the only painting I own - at the time I had thought to buy other pictures from Mary but I was worried what my mother would say about the reclining nude I was considering.

It's funny, I was writing this blog piece and found myself wondering where Mary had got to since I last saw her c.1984.  And, just this very minute, by the power of the internet, I have found her here.

A Little More Harmony

Here are a couple more Harmony images I produced just by doodling about.  Not sure where the ideas cames from... I think I might have been watching some Looney Tunes with James.

They're easy and fun to do and has helped generate a few ideas that can be further developed in MyPaint or GIMP.  Here's another one.

See these architects?  They think they're the only ones that can do this!

Goodbye Cruel World!

My son's primary school held an art show last week and as parents we were invited to view the work of our offspring and then perhaps pay for some (or all) of their works of art on display.  Being thrifty I was thinking "well, we'll get them back at the end of term anyway".... but that wasn't in the spirit of the thing.  Anyway, here's an example of what my son did (he's nine):

In preparation for the art show the children apparently enjoyed lessons on Dali, Munch, Monet and in this case Lichtenstein (I think).  My son chose to make this interesting image of a ninja leaping away from an explosion, which he initially entitled "Goodbye Cruel World", but then told me that he thought that "I Hate My Job!" might be better.

Personally, I thought that "I love my job!" would have been the best thing to call it, as what could be better than having an occupation dressing up like Lee van Cleef and blowing stuff up.

Lichen Photos

I'm a Zoologist by training and am currently involved in managing ecology projects.  Back when I was at school I had an interest in lichen and it's never really gone away.  I took some nice pictures of these interesting symbionts whilst I was on St Helena earlier in the year (there's one in an earlier post on this blog about 1541 banners) but here are some that I  found in Scotland and Northumbria over the summer (the latter place being in the north of England as opposed to north-Umbria (i.e. Italy), which sounds (and in fact is) much more exotic).

The picture above is from a hill (actually an extinct volcano - and it looks like one too) called North Berwick Law in East Lothian (to the east of Edinburgh).  The orange lichen is probably Xanthoria sp. or similar.  Not sure about the various grey ones.

This one was on a stone at Housesteads Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall.  You can see how the various lichens are pushing up against each other like a map of central Europe a river catchments or something. They do make nice abstract patterns I think and I will be using these and others in future graphical projects, even if it's just for making new labels for my home-brew.

Another 1541 Banner

It's been a hard week this week, although with the reward of a few work-related days in Bucharest (maybe) in December to look forward to my thoughts turn to pleasing colours and shapes.  Funny that.  One of these is an image I've used on the company website which I thought I'd share.

It has tone and direction and movement and a story perhaps and is calm and I like it.  Strange to think then that it is just a random collection of paint marks on a wall that when framed and photographed looks a bit like art!

Extreme Worlds

I'm trying to improve my drawing skills and having discovered and installed MyPaint, the GIMP painting addon-on GPS and also Google Sketchup, I think I'm pretty set up to do anything I like.  I had Blender installed for a while too but removed it as it was a bit complicated for me although I think it's an excellent open source programme that I'll reinstall again and get into one day.

Anyway, I quite like science fiction and all that CG sort of sci-fi stuff and this book by Frances Tsai has some great ideas and techniques for drawing all that sort of thing.....

It gives an overview of techniques and then actually takes you through the step by step process of creating those drawings, from figures, vehicles, interiors, scenes and landscapes.  Very useful indeed and to be honest it's the best drawing book I've got (and I've got a few).  His website is pretty interesting too...

MyPaint Sketch 2

After a rather long hiatus I've got back into playing about with MyPaint.  Part of the trouble was that my Wacom Bamboo tablet had been acting up for some reason.  It seems to work OK with GIMP GPS (a painting add-on for GIMP) but sometimes doesn't register properly with MyPaint.  Could be a MyPaint problem then, although this is forgivable considering that MyPaint is open-source and entirely free. 

Anyway, here's something I started, just to try out some watercolour brushes; actually they're some of the brushes that David Revoy made for MyPaint (v4, I think).  Importing new brush packages on MyPaint is really simple by the way and just involves pointing it at a zip file of brushes and it does the rest.

As for this sketch, like most of the things I do this is just a start and will be added to the stack of unfinished creative projects that are piled up about the place.  So many projects, so little time...

MyPaint Sketch 1

Just something I started with MyPaint.  I was experimenting with the various pencil brushes and wanted to practise a bit of figure drawing.

Harmony WIP

Via the MyPaint page I came across this limited but interesting web based graphics utility, Harmony.  I produced this in about 2 minutes.  The idea would be then to take this and work it up in GIMP, in some way..

  Just some concept design stuff I'm working on.  Not sure where it's going but it's fun finding out.

Yes, you're right. Those clouds do look like croissants but I'll soon sort that out.

Pretty Cool. Out.

1541 Banners

My partner has recently set up her own business and I've been working on her website in Drupal.  I'm not an expert in such things but I have had fun designing her site.

The simple website template we chose (Danland) has enabled us to emphasise the modern, intelligent and interesting approach that the company is taking.  One feature of Danland I liked was the slideshow type banner where we could select what images were shown; and one of the things I've been doing is tracking down, and/or trying to make, what I consider to be interesting images for the banner.

I was keen on orange as this gives a website impact (well, I think so - see the picture at the top of this blog) and of course orange complements blue.  The above banner was adapted from a royalty-free image I found on the web.  In contrast the following image is based on a photograph I took (copyright me!) whilst we were on the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena earlier this year (March/April 2011).

This shows two distinct species of lichen we found at the top of Flagstaff (a hill), at an elevation of about 650m.

If I can find out what species they are I'll let you know.  Or in fact if you know please feel free to comment on this post. That said, one of my colleagues recently discovered eleven species of lichen that were formerly unknown on St Helena, eight of which were previously undiscovered by science.  Now there's something to have on your website.