Life Around the Caesura

Hey friends, welcome to a bit of a different post this week on The Art of Caesura!





When I first set out to start this blog, one of the fundamental purposes was to encourage me (by holding me accountable to you) to re-engage in a lot of my hobbies that had fallen by the wayside. Before the blog I would paint maybe 10 minis per year - last year I painted over 60! Woooohooo, it worked!

Just as hobbies are a distraction from our other daily occupations, and just as a caesura is a break in a line of poetry or music, I have mostly tried to keep myself out of this blog. My purpose is not to have a lifestyle blog, and I want my art / hobbies / beer that I'm posting about to speak for themselves. 

But for today that's all going to change...

Long and Medium-term readers might be aware that I have had a smorgasbord of exciting and life-changing events occur over the past month or so, so today I'd like to give you a little peek behind the curtain.

"New" Car:

Well, new to us, and the first car I've ever bought! Her name's "Big Bertha" and she could swallow our other car (a Yaris - "Mags") in one gulp! I'm more of a bicycle man myself but the next two things on this list required a car. 


New House in New Town:

Ireland's beautiful Dingle Peninsula. This is where I live. I know, right!?


New Job:

My new work is just off the bottom left of this picture!


Stag Party:

I had my stag one week before the wedding so that all my friends travelling from North America could attend! We went to Winterfell and had a hilarious time!


WEDDING:

Dreams come true.

Honeymoon:

Over 30 degrees (Celsius) every day, crystal clear Adriatic swimming 10 of our 12 days there...Croatia was absolute paradise! Plus it had the advantage of continuing our Game of Thrones themed festivities with a place near Split where they filmed Marene, and Dubrovnik where they basically just had to change the flags to film King's Landing. 

New Changes:

I'm always looking to improve this blog and if you ever have suggestions to that end please do feel encouraged to post them in the comments section or privately message me. 

One small change that I've actually already started to implement is how I title my entries. Traditionally I like to have a "creative" title, (sometimes loosely) related to the topic of the day. These titles are fun, but make it a bit tricky to find a specific old post. If you were looking specifically for my Magnitized Megaboss on Mawkrusha post, you would have to know that that's what "Biggest is Bestest" refers to. Moving forward, I'm going to try to have a more descriptive component after the hook of the title, and if I get the chance I might even go back and update the old titles. 

Other exciting upcoming changes will hopefully make the blog (and photos herein) look more distinct and recognizable. I've spent the last little while creating a logo of sorts that I will placing on my photos and blog. I've wanted to do this for a while in hopes that it may lend a touch of class to my amateur miniature photography. 

I'll share a few of my thoughts in creating this logo:

1) Visually striking and easily recognizable.  
I knew I wanted to use black and white so as not to clash with colours of any miniature that I'm displaying. I also knew that I wanted to have a background (the black circle) rather than just floating text so that it wouldn't get "lost" if I put it on different coloured backgrounds.

2) Legible.
Caesura is an uncommon enough word, so I at least wanted people to be able to read it, if not pronounce it (Say-zhur-ah) - that ruled out some of the crazier fonts I was originally looking at. I settled on a "Bilbo Baggins" style font that I felt fulfilled the next requirement...

3) Tone in-keeping with fantasy / sci-fi themes.
The miniatures I paint are an eclectic bunch from ceramite-clad future-warriors, to barbarians in loincloths, I wanted a font that you could find on the cover of a pulp paperback from either genre. The lines in the background could like-wise be interpreted as shooting stars / jet streams in a Sci-fi environment or sword slashes in a fantasy one, but what they really represent are...

4) Incorporate the caesura "symbol".
I only found this out while we were on our honeymoon; a caesura isn't only a literary device, it's also used in music for the same purpose (a pause) where it's represented by the symbol: 

Mind-blowingly, if you flip these two lines vertically you'll recognize a symbol that we see on pretty much every media device in the world: the pause button - and this is where it came from! Anyway I wanted to work that symbol into my logo so that's what the lines in the background represent. 

So, after all that, here is the logo of The Art of Caesura!

And that's about it! That's the most "Life" I've shared in the year and a half I've been blogging. Let me know what you think, any comments on the logo / other suggestions for the blog?

Back to our regularly scheduled content next Friday on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr

Watching: Dunkirk - Christopher Nolan

Gaming: Thief (2014) - Edios Montreal

Next Week:

Barbarian's be breakin' bones...