C.M. Simpson's Blog, page 188

The Cinquain Challenge: Crapsey Form 1

Welcome back to my exploration of poetical forms. For the next few weeks, we’re going to be focussing on the cinquain.
A cinquain is a five-line poem that has a set number of syllables (or word types) per line. Sometimes the title of a cinquain acts as a sixth line.
The person who created the cinquain form was an American poet named Adelaide Crapsey who was inspired by the strict rules governing Japanese poetry forms. Many of her cinquains can be found in Verse, a collection of her work published in 1915.
The first type of cinquain we’ll look at has no name, so I’ve called it Crapsey Form 1, after its creator. This form has one syllable in the first line, two in the second, three in the third, four in the fourth and only one in the fifth.
Here’s an example, inspired by looking out my window at the park:
DogsWalkingPlaying ballWith their ownersFriends
And here’s another one.
GhostsScreamingSouls bereftOf all life’s joyWeep
Why don’t you give it a try? Try writing at least one cinquain in Crapsey Form 1 for each day of the week. They don’t take a lot of time, but they can be a bit tricky. Here’s one way you might want to approach them:
·         Decide on a topic.·         Think of words, phrases, feelings and ideas that relate to your topic and work out the order you want to express those things in.·         Work out how to express each idea in the right number of syllables for the line it’s on.·         Write your cinquain·         Check there are the right number of syllables on each line.·         Centre the poem on your page
Or you can just write them as you go, remembering to check your syllables and centre your poem at the end.
Enjoy!

Progress Report: Week 3, March 2014

This week, I realised I had to step up my study in order to do more than ‘okay’—well, gee, who’da thunk? As a result, my writing has suffered. I know, check out the word count, but remember I had a long weekend last week, so I got a whole day extra. When you look at it that way, it’s not so much extra. I also slept more than wrote on the bus, so I’m a bit behind in my daily flash fiction and poetry. On the upside, however, I finished of a 60,000 words novel, made progress on two anthologies *and* had a new idea I’m pretty excited about. I also passed three mini-tests, handed in a 500-word assignment and started prepping an in-class assessment. I’m starting to realize I’m not slack, just very, very busy. And that word count? It doesn’t include the words I use in bloggery, so I guess it’s not so shabby, after all.
 
Overview
New words produced: 10,093Old words revised: 0Works completed: 14 (1 assignment, 1 novel, and 12 shorter works for incorporation into 2 longer works)Works revised: 0Covers created: 0Works published: 0Works submitted: 0Competitions Entered: 1
Tier 1 Tasks
Annual 13: Added 708 wordsAnnual 14: Added 3,568 words
Tier 2 Tasks
RomNov14A—Country Rush: Added 5,317 words
Publishing Tasks
Created 11 blog posts (including this one) for this blog;Cross-posted 4 blog posts for my art and photography blog;Created 1 post for my art and photography blog;
New Arrivals
The following ideas arrived this week:
AdventureNov1A: about a lost expedition;Poem321—Sometimes, Hope Needs a Little Help: about hope and determination;Poem322—Partners to the End: about—what else—a dragon;Poem323—Early Morning Nightmares: about things that go bump… in the early morning;Poem324—Goulash: a poem that plays with words;Poem325—I Live: a poem about survival;Poem326—Do Not Deny Me: a poem about things that brighten a person’s life and are, therefore, precious to them;ShortStory234—Fires of the Undead: a piece of post-apocalyptic paranormal urban flash fiction to do with zombies;ShortStory235—Bluebirds, my Derriere: a piece of flash science fiction to do with industrial espionage;ShortStory236—Freedom for a Song: a piece of flash science fantasy fiction to do with bards and technology;ShortStory237—Mercy for the Slain: a piece of flash fantasy fiction to do with the undead;ShortStory238—An Absolute Delight: a piece of flash science fiction set in the universe of Tarkine’s Wrath;ShortStory239—The Lost Expedition: a piece of flash adventure fiction about scientific discovery and lost expeditions;

Country Rush Complete - Madeleine Torr

I laid the last word down on Country Rush - written as Madeleine Torr. Now, it's off for an edit before being released.

What's it about?

E-Book cover - Country Rush by Madeleine Torr

Country Rush is the first book in the Bookstore Romancesseries which centers around the characters who work in, or pass through, Highway's Book Emporium, a bookstore in a city very much like Melbourne.
When Taylor helps a tall, dark stranger hide from men pursuing him, she embroils herself in the seedier side of city life. With her mother watching over her seriously injured father in hospital, Taylor has dropped out of university to help pay the bills, taking on a second job to do so. The last thing she needs is a rapid exit from the city and a quick trip to the country, but that's exactly what her tall-dark-and-handsome insists on. With a nasty criminal element on their heels, the pair of them take a fast train and a slow bus out of town, before fleeing to a country property to try to work out how to escape their dilemma.
Country Rush is the first book in the Bookstore Romances series, and will be available from Smashwords, Amazon-Kindle, Kobo, AllRomanceEbooks and CreateSpace, as well as being distributed from Nook, Kobo, Barnes and Noble and iTunes.


Print-on-Demand cover - Country Rush by Madeleine Torr

Art Journal: Rosebuds Applying Green

Last week, while listening to downloaded lectures, I added more green to my rosebuds, using the techniques described on the 6th. I will be moving all how-to-dos for Gimp over to my art blog, and posting a summary of pics here on the Thursday of each week. This is what I achieved this week:

On Monday, March 3, after work:

And on Friday, March 7, after work:

What can I say? I need more practice, but I will get better... if I can make enough time to practice.

Australian Spiders: The Huntsman on the Window

Huntsman spiders are nocturnal... I think I forgot to mention that. Heaven knows where they go during the day, but they certainly come out at night. This one was hunting the insects drawn to the light escaping from our foyer.

Of course, I was startled at first.,


but then I worked up the courage to wind the focus in.


The spider was quite relaxed, which is more than I can say for myself. Still, one of the most interesting and beautiful creatures around.

Non-venomous, generally non-aggressive, the huntsman has distinctive banding on its legs and is insectivorous. It is quite a common sight around Australian households, and doesn't always stay outside, but it can be caught using a clear plastic container and lid or thick cardboard, provided you don't put your hand on the base of the container when doing so. Its eyesight is very good, and it can jump over a metre. Huntsman spiders will usually try to escape from humans, rather than attack.

Progress Report: Week 2, March 2014

I write on the bus during the week; it’s the only time I have. Each working day during the university semester sees me out of the house for 12-13 hours—thank goodness the rest of my family is home, or the dog would think she was abandoned. Either way, I don’t get a lot of time for writing during the week, and then I have homework and assignments on the weekend. I’m balancing things a lot better, now, but it’s still tight. Holidays soon, and then more will be done. Now, tell me why I’m studying again?Overview
New words produced: 4,464Old words revised: 0Works completed: 0Works revised: 0Covers created: 0Works published: 0Works submitted: 2Competitions Entered: 0
Tier 1 Tasks
Annual 13: Added 899 wordsAnnual 14: Added 3,565 words
Publishing Tasks
Created 5 blog posts for this blog
New ArrivalsThe following ideas arrived this week:
Poem312—An Alliance to the Stars: a science fiction poem about false love and going home;Poem313—Hero Worship: about not looking at your heroes too closely;Poem314—The Foulest of the Fair: Just because someone’s pretty, doesn’t make them nice.Poem315—The Bus Stop in Autumn: as per the title;Poem316—City Flock: about a flock of pigeons in the city;Poem317—The Origin of Shadows: Different kinds of shadows, have different origins;Poem318—The Bus Rolls Out: haiku about a bus;Poem319—Black Crows A-Hunting): more about crows in the city;Poem320—Bestial Beauty Denied: about someone with great looks, and a not so great personality.ShortStory224—When Pixies Dance the Storm Dance: a piece of flash paranormal urban fiction about pixies and unicorns and blowing stuff up;ShortStory225—Repatriation: a piece of flash paranormal urban fiction about pixies and unicorns and a homecoming with a difference;ShortStory226—Meet the Medilo Range: a piece of flash science fiction about the Medilo Ranges.ShortStory227—The Pixies of Hallowbranch Hill: a piece of flash paranormal urban fiction about pixies and the fey;ShortStory228—Koschade’s Treaty Stands: a piece of flash science-fantasy fiction about dragons, alliances and dangers on a colony world;ShortStory229—My Mother and Laome’s Vast: a piece of flash fantasy fiction about trolls, a swamp and a missing mother;ShortStory230—Shift and Return: a piece of flash science fiction with a touch of horror about an interdimensional war;ShortStory231—Outsider No More: a piece of flash speculative fiction about outsiders within families, inspired by Chinese culture;ShortStory232—Of Petunias and Pixies: a piece of flash paranormal urban fiction about a pixie-napping;ShortStory233—Sheiman’s Jungle: a piece of flash science fiction about change, those that embrace it, and those that don’t.

Poetry Development: Introducing the Cinquain

One of the projects I’m working on involves writing a lot of poetry—actually, several of the projects I’m working on involve writing a lot of poetry—so I thought I’d share some of the things I learnt about poetry along the way. This journey will be a regularly scheduled feature for Mondays. Join me if you dare.
When I started, I already wrote poetry—freeform, haiku, whatever rhyming form appealed to me, but nothing truly disciplined outside the haiku. I’d heard of cinquains, but had no idea what they were, so I went looking. Here’s what I found out:
A cinquain belongs to a group of poetical forms known as quintains. Quintains are poems that are five lines long, and some alternative types are listed below. This section focuses on cinquains, which tell a small story and are made up of both adjectives and verbs, feelings and a conclusion.
Cinquains were created by an American poet called Adelaide Crapsey, who was said to be inspired by the strict rules governing the Japanese poetry forms known as haiku and tanka. She included 28 cinquains in her 1915 collection, Verse.
Another poet, William Soutar also wrote cinquains, but he labeled them ‘epigrams’, although the epigram has a slightly different form.
While cinquains consist of only five lines, they have titles, which can act as a sixth line. Cinquains communicate mood or feeling using a strict structural form and physical imagery.
Another thing I discovered about cinquains is that they come in a number of different forms. Yes, there is more than one type of cinquain, who’da thought? So, instead of just one post on cinquains, I’ll do this quick introduction, and then a single post for each form. The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write one poem of that form each day of the week until I post the next one.
The different forms of cinquains are:
Crapsey Form 1: which has one syllable in the first line, two in the second, three in the third, four in the fourth, and only one in the fifth;Crapsey Form 2: which has two syllables in the first line, four in the second, six in the third, eight in the fourth and only two in the fifth;Reverse Cinquain: which reverses the line order;Mirror Cinquain: which is a two-verse cinquain, the first being either a Crapsey Form 1 or Form 2 verse and the second being a Reverse Cinquain;Butterfly Cinquain: consisting of two syllables in the first line, four in the second, six in the third, eight in the fourth, two in the fifth, eight in the sixth, six in the seventh, four in the eighth and two in the ninth line;Crown Cinquain: which is built from five cinquain verses;Garland Cinquain: which is a series of six cinquains, with the sixth verse being made up of lines from the verses that came before it.Didactic Cinquain Form 1: has no title, but has a single noun in the first line, which forms the title, two adjectives in the second, a three-word adjectival phrase in the third line, four words describing feelings in the fourth line, and a single word that is synonymous with the title-line noun’Didactic Cinquain Form 2: has a noun in the first line, two adjectives in the second line, three ‘-ing’ words in the third line, a phrase in the fourth line and a synonym for the title in the fourth.
Next week, we take a closer look at Crapsey Form 1. In the meantime, feel free to experiment.

Art Development: Applying Colour to Grey-Scale Sketch in Gimp

So, the grey-lead pictures on different backdrops were kind-of okay, but what if I wanted to have colours? I’d read somewhere that some artists used a grey-scale drawing to give them an idea of shade, so I decided to use my Rosebuds on Colorized Backdrop – Saturation 6 as a base.


Here’s what I did:
1.      Imported the image I wanted to use.2.      Saved it as Pink Rosebuds on Colorized Backdrop-Saturation 6.3.      I selected the brush icon (9th symbol down in the left column of the Toolbox dock)4.      I didn’t want a heavy mark, so I chose something that looked a bit fuzzy—the first blotchy symbol in the 9th row of the ‘Brushes’ dock.5.      I also wanted to be able to see the grey-scale through the painting I did, so I went to the Tool Options box and changed the Opacity slide bar to 43.96.      I didn’t want the brush to be too big, so I changed the size to 20.00.7.      I left the other options as they were. There will be time to discover what they do, later.8.      I then clicked on the colour box at the very bottom of the Toolbox, and chose a nice shade of pink (HTML: ce83c7)
At first I couldn’t see what I was doing, so I changed the Opacity up to 62.2. Still nothing seemed to happen. I happened to glance over at the Layers-Gradients dock and noticed that the Background layer was highlighted. Since I was trying to work on the Dropped Buffer layer, this seemed wrong, so I clicked on the Dropped Buffer layer and, hey Presto, I could now see the marks I was making.
TIP: Make sure the layer you want to paint is highlighted! (You more experienced Gimp artists can pick yourselves up from the floor and stop laughing, now, ‘kay?)
Once I had the ability to make marks on my drawing, I started out by tracing the darkest lines (still using the 62.2 Opacity and the fuzzy brush). This took awhile.
TIP: Make sure you stop and start, so that your line length does not get too long. If you make a mistake, you can hit Ctrl Z, but you lose the whole line and not just the bit you messed up. If you do shorter lines, you don’t lose as much when you make mistakes.
TIP: It’s also important to keep in mind which part of the drawing you need to be in the colour you are using, otherwise it’s hard to make suddenly pink leaves, green. It’s also heartbreaking to have to undo all the bits you’ve so carefully made the wrong colour.
After a bit, I realised that the outlining, while helpful wasn’t really enough, so I stopped and took another look at the picture. I’m a bit slow, so it was only then that I realized I should be changing the shades of pink I was using to correspond with the shades of grey I was seeing, and that this wasn’t done by colouring over the grey-scale with the same shade. Well, duh! At this point, I’m kind of thinking how much easier this is with coloured pencil or paint on paper, but I like the idea of not having to start over every time I screw up and can’t erase or paint over the picture effectively, so I decide to make the darker shades of grey a slightly darker shade of pink (HTML: c970c0). And then I work the darker bits in c669Bc. It’s not dark enough for the outlines and deepest shadow, so I use a bit of a25d9b, increase the opacity to 69.5. For the outlines, I decrease the brush size to 15.00. When it comes to the lightest part of the flower, I switch to a lighter shade of pink (HTML: e8a8e1) and start work with a slightly bigger brush (36.43).
TIP: The brush size can be changed using the slide bar as a slide bar, or by highlighting the numbers and typing in the brush size you want.
TIP: You should also check out if the brush size looks right for what you want to use if for. You can do this by moving the pointer over your picture and seeing where the brush outline sits. If it’s too large or small, you should adjust it until you’re happy with the area it covers.
In the meantime, I’ve spent about an hour on the pink, and I need to move onto another task for the day. Here’s what the picture looks like so far.


I’d say it needs a lot more refinement. Next week, we’ll move onto the green leaves and stems.

Australian Birds: Juvenile Crimson Rosella (Platycercus elegans)

We have a couple of fruit trees in our backyard. I'm still not sure what kind of fruit trees they are, but the crimson rosellas, galahs and sulphur-crested cockatoos really like them, along with a variety of wild doves, pigeons, and wattlebirds. Here are few shots of the rosellas. This one is a young one.

Whatever this is, it sure tastes good to these guys.


Even if it's a little chewy...

And that human is showing a bit too much interest.


Oh, wait! There's a really nice one over there.

Got it!


If you want to see more, here are a couple of 'live' links to YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijR6b_FD8KQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1updpuTMdvI

For some facts, you can try:

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Crimson-Rosella
http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Platycercus-elegans
http://www.oiseaux-birds.com/card-crimson-rosella.html
http://members.tip.net.au/~mos/cr_ros2.htm

Blogs that made me stop in February 2014

February was a very busy month - a month of change, even. I didn't get a lot of blogs read in February. I'll try to do better in March. In the meantime, these were the posts that caught my attention:

http://gillpolack.livejournal.com/125... Enjoy!