I'm still travelling. I'll be back in a week. See you then.

• A guide to museum women. A must read. (identitiytheory)
• Giving Damien Hirst a hard time. (The Times) (The Telegraph)

• F. Scott Fitzgerald's tax returns. (The American Scholar)
• Was chess master Bobby Fisher a genius or an idiot? (CSI)

Burning Maple Leaves to Heat Sake
woodblock print c. 1766

Suzuki Harunoba 1724-1770. Art Institute of Chicago.

Act Seven
woodblock print 1801-2

Kitagawa Utamaro 1756-1806: from the series Treasury of the Royal Retainers. Art Institute of Chicago.

Asakura Rice Field During the Cock Festival at the Otori Shrine
woodblock print 1857

Ando Hiroshige 1797-1858: from One Hundred Views of Edo 1857. Art Institute of Chicago.

• Beauty and the bento box, and the question of Japanese aesthetics. (The New York Times)
• The photography of British photographer Jane Brown. (The Guardian)
• Irving Penn photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in London. (The Guardian)

• Peter Paul Rubens the diplomat. (The Wall Street Journal)
• The Somme. (The Atlantic)

Cloud Study
gouache
20.3 x 20.3 cm (8" x 8")

Wednesday I found myself on the top level of a car parkade staring at a bright sky with large clouds. The painting is the remembrance of one particular cloud.

Pregnant Model No. 2
ink and gouache
30.5 x 22.9 cm (12" x 9")

This is a reworking of yesterday's drawing. I've made a couple of changes: the left leg has been moved down to be more in line with the hip, and the eye has been darkened.

• Canadian collector Peter Silverman may have a new Leonardo. (CBC News)
• Lehman Brothers is auctioning off its' art collection, beginning November 1st in Philadelphia. (The Wall Street Journal) (via C-Monster)
• The fall of nuclear physics. (The New Atlantis)

Pregnant Model
ink and gouache
30.5 x 22.9 cm (12" x 9")

The model for this drawing was admirably still. Her unborn baby, however, was not. He, or she, could be seen bopping along with the music which was playing.

• McDonald's conquers the Louvre. (edward_ winkleman)
• George Washington, made in China. (ARTnews)

Cowboy Hat No. 2
ink and pastel
27.9 x 25.4 cm (11" x 10")

I'm not sure what inspired the delicate colouring. I guess pastels aren't called pastels for nothing.

• Winnipeg artist Andrew Valko has won the Kingston Prize for Portraiture present every year by the City of Kingston, Ontario. (CBC News)
• Current artistic repression in Russia. (ARTnews)
• Leon Trotsky and his like of self-deception. (Literary Review)
• A slideshow of art selected by the Obamas for the White House. (The New York Times)

Boy with Baseball Glove
ink
27.9 x 22.9 cm(11" x 9")

I've never been quite sure about this drawing. For one thing, that's an awfully big baseball glove.

• What kind of investment is art? (Reuters) (via C-Monster)
• Irving Penn died on Wednesday. (The New York Times)

• Alfred Brendel, poet. (The Times)
• The ghost of Thomas Hobbes. (The Nation)

Hands
ink and charcoal
27.9 x 20.3 cm (11" x 8")

This pose was made for a painting. The model's hair was dark and she was wearing black. The only colour was in her face and hands. It would have made for a dramatic painting. I might yet try to make something out of it.

• Nero had a rotating banquet hall. No surprise. (Yahoo!News) (via C-Monster)
• The French. (The Financial Times)
• A short history of Dazzle camouflage. (Wikipedia)

M. as a Gourd
ink and charcoal
20.3 x 27.9 cm (8" x 11")

The title is probably self-explanatory. In this drawing M.'s body looks like a ____ .

• House of Fire by Winnipeg artist Sarah Anne Johnson has been acquired by the Art Gallery of Ontario. (CBC News)
• Don't you wish that Knut Hamsun hadn't been such a nasty case? No? (The Wilson Quarterly)
• A villian in the collapse of AIG. (Vanity Fair)

Man with His Eyes Closed
graphite, charcoal, and pastel
30.5 x 27.9 cm (12" x 11")

This particular man was a young dancer, a tired young dancer.

• Who or what was Andy Warhol? Three new books on Andy Warhol. (The New York Review of Books)
• Jackson Pollock signatures hidden in Pollock's paintings. (ARTnews) (Smithsonian)

Pensive Model
ink and watercolour
30.5 x 45.7 cm (12" x 18")

The leg looks like it might have a hard time connecting with the body in this drawing. Please ignore this.