jegography

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This song! An essay in feminism. Glorious!

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Recent encounter with deer! Among bluebells.

Was diddling about taking photos of the flowers and heard a rustle, and there they were, so close, deering about. Was delighted :D

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Paddington musical on the way!! Exciting!

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Some thoughts on how illogical and hateful the anti-trans movement is, and a call for a bit of empathy for people who just want to live their lives how they feel comfortable

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“A woman should never leave her house without a bra” — A terribly oppressive statement. Does society really need to fear breasts so much as to impose an undergarment on all women? Of course not!

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Some thoughts on how near and far we might be from a reality where being naked is just another outfit choice.

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Life drawings, from another session back in March! A really fun short pose session, I really enjoyed the sheer number of poses (including some delightfully contorted ones) and drawings I got on this occasion.

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Finally getting caught up scanning my life drawing from this year. Here are some from a session back in March! I particularly like the longer poses here, which afforded me time to get enthusiastic with the texture and shadow!

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On 18 March, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research station on the east Antarctic plateau documented a remarkable event. They recorded the largest jump in temperature ever measured at a meteorological centre on Earth. According to their instruments, the region that day experienced a rise of 38.5C above its seasonal average: a world record. This startling leap – in the coldest place on the planet – left polar researchers struggling for words to describe it. “It is simply mind-boggling,” said Prof Michael Meredith, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey. “In sub-zero temperatures such a massive leap is tolerable but if we had a 40C rise in the UK now that would take temperatures for a spring day to over 50C – and that would be deadly for the population.”

We're truly screwed and most people barely even realise or care.

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Being naked with friends is the best - Some reflections on my experiences with naked friends. And ideas for nude socialising you can try!

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Shorter pose drawings (2-15 minutes) from a life drawing session back in January.

I wish I'd done a few more drawings on the same page for this session, as I always enjoy the sort of drawn collage this creates, as you can see especially nicely on the first page with multiple two-minute drawings.

It took me a long time to settle into this evening's drawing too, in particular I didn't seem to want to commit to the page early on, with very lightly drawn lines!

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I've finally updated my life drawing section on my website with a new page for my 2024 drawings, starting with drawings from sessions back in January.

The drawing group I've been attending the last year or so has switched to alternating between sessions with shorter poses and longer ones now. I generally prefer shorter, although the longer ones are only up to twenty-minutes anyway, which is still agreeable for me. So good to have some variety in the format!

I found both sessions in January quite challenging. I just couldn't seem to connect much with many of the poses, or get proportions quite right. I don't think the outcome is really awful, but few of them really resonate for me either.

This first set of images is from the first session, which was longer poses, ranging from five-minute warm-ups, to twenty-minutes for the last few poses. Within this session, I did actually prefer the longer poses, as it let me work out some of my struggles in capturing these images a little. The two orangey drawings where the model is lying down are definitely my favourites of the bunch.

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Saw Wonka, love Wonka. You should see and love Wonka too!

Saw Wonka today, and it may well enter my favourite films ever selection. It's got the humour energy and charm of the Paddington films, with songs and chocolate! It felt like it was made as if the target audience was specifically me! All the chocolate of course, and references to chocoholism, and the sheer joy and love of all things chocolate. The various chocolate-obsessed characters felt like they'd just picked out fragments of my mind! And then the curiosity of giraffes and flamingos (among my collective of favourite animals) being featured heavily. A fair bit of purple in it too (my favourite colour). Plus very funny, lovely songs. I loved it so much!

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I've been tinkering with my website again! I started this last year by creating pages for Nude in Nature and Nude Series, and have now fully divided up my remaining nude work into additional collections, which I think better represent the themes and formats of my various series.

The new collections are:

Location Nudes, for non-nature based location work based on "inhuman" spaces.

Domestic Nudes, for work featuring everyday home-based nudity.

Studio Nudes, for work created in the studio, which has typically been more experimental and/or conceptual.

Along with the previous collections, these now fully integrate my self-portraiture and work with other models, which I think better reflects how my concepts and interests have formed across my work. I have though retained the separate Self Portraits page, to collate all my self-portraiture, as I think that has its own story to tell about the evolution of my work.

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I've updated my Naked Reading 2023 page with two more self-portraits featuring novels I read in 2023 (still got a fair few to catch up on before completing the series for the year!)

Here are my mini reviews for each!

The World of Pooh. This omnibus edition includes both of the original A.A. Milne Pooh novels, Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, illustrated charmingly by E.H. Shepard. Both books are essentially a series of short stories, sharing the very funny, very sweet, and nature loving adventures and everyday ponderances and wonderings of an utterly delightful cast of characters. They're stories I knew well as a child, and probably adore even more as an adult. Perfection.

The Idiot Gods. This book is an astonishing tale of an orca who learns to speak to humans. In doing so he and we explore many facets of human nature; our beliefs, our culture, and most of all our willingness to destroy each other and the planet. It features world building on par with any great sci-fi, except the alien featured here is a familiar species already, shown to have a depth of culture and understanding of the world far beyond our own shallow interests. A truly fantastic book which should delight anyone with an interest in nature, linguistics, philosophy and more!

As ever I've also written more extensive thoughts on my book review blog:

The World of Pooh

The Idiot Gods

And as usual as a little bonus for my Patreon supporters, I have shared a few alternate takes of both of these self portraits on that platform too!

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Some of my latest life drawings (my last of 2023). See a few more on my latest blog, with thoughts on how tiredness impacted the results and satisfaction of this set of drawings.

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"What has changed after a decade being a vegan?", reflecting on how my attitudes, tastes, and life in general have changed in a little over ten years since becoming a vegan.