Here is a cartoon that I think best expresses my relationship with my friend Marcus:
You may note that I have turned him into a cartoon character, but that's not all. We have given him the full portrait treatment here today! He will be a muppet and Dr. Seuss illustrations as well.
And so with that here are some portraits of Marcus, including a few discussions related to yesterday's post:
I went out for dinner with my friend Marcus the other night. This is something we do a few times a year, though after I am living in France it may happen less frequently. Presumably if we do manage to continue to do so in the future the meals will be better.
Naturally I took pictures of Marcus so that I can make various cartoons and portraits of him (more on that in another post). Curiously Marcus had a request. He wanted me to make a version of cartoon me in The Scholomance.
Somehow I did not manage to get why he wanted a cartoon of me in The Scholomance. He wasn't keeping that a secret or anything. I think I just somehow neglected to ask. My mind had immediately gone spinning off into the curious project.
For those of you who have missed it, The Scholomance is a fantasy trilogy by Naomi Novik. It's the best one since Lord of the Rings, as far as I'm concerned at least. The books mainly take place in a kind of grim, magic High School without teachers. This is a horrible, monster infested place made of grimy metal and set hanging into a void of nothingness. It is terribly dangerous, deadly even, but safer than the outside world which is fantastically deadly for adolescent magical youth. The school is a bleak, dangerous, desperate place that nevertheless is a little world that gives these kids a chance to make it to adulthood.
This rough description is not the main thing for me to tell you just why this trilogy is such a masterpiece. Surely I have done that already in clerkmanifesto a couple times in the past. This sketch is merely to give you the setting of the following pictures into which I have cast myself.
Ideally you would read The Scholomance Trilogy first, then check out my pictures. But you can probably also take them as they are if you want.
As to Marcus's request, assuming he's out there?
Here you are.
With a show coming up of my library fiction photography, I decided that I'd better finish off the last co-workers I managed to get to both choose their spirit animal and endure a dozen or so pictures being taken of them in odd poses.
Today we have pictures of two regular volunteers- Pat and Claire. Then there is Joel, who is a very part time page at my library, and who I tend to see once a month or so. Finally Marcus, mentioned occasionally on clerkmanifesto, is the manager of another branch now. We went out to eat a month ago and we meant for me to photograph him for the project. Alas that we forgot to do so even after talking all about his daemon! But this morning I remembered I had some old pictures on him for some long past project involving mirroring, and so I was able to unite him with his chosen moose.
