Zabava painting and sketches
An ACEO watercolour painting (2.5 x 3.5″) of a freckled, red haired young woman with hints of Russian/ Slavic costuming.
Artist of the week – Rosalba Carriera
Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757) was as artist from Venice, primarily known for her miniatures and her pastel portraits. She was one of the most famous women artists in Italy during the Rococo period, being recognised by places such as the Academy of St. Luke in Rome and the French Royal Academy (even though they’d put a ban on admitting any more women at the time). She is said to been the first artist to paint on ivory instead of velum for miniatures, and she inspired the use of pastels as a proper ‘painting’ medium (as opposed to limiting it to sketching and studies).
More sketches
Final two sketches for the weekend – an icy warrior woman, and a sword maiden in flowing robes.
Sketchfest November 2012
Embrace the devil (well a rather devilish looking guy), a female necromancer, a fairy heading off to fairyland and a wild wolf woman. Sketches done during Sketchfest November 2012
Women in IT and computing – a female geek’s perspective
Some of you may know that I work in the IT (Information Technology) industry in my day job (computing/ programming) and that I’m fairly passionate about women studies. That being said, people would probably box me in the ‘nerd’ or ‘girl geek’ category easily – and that truly doesn’t bother me. I’m happy to wear that badge of honour. I’m a computer programmer, I paint fantasy and sci-fi imagery, I love the whole genre in fact (read, watch and play), I’m involved in medieval recreation, I game (though rather badly) and I even wrote an animation assignment at uni on Anime (back in 1997, way before Anime became the ‘in’ thing).
Anyway, it got me to thinking about ‘girl geeks’, in particular women in IT, and why we seem to be rare (and often at odds with the stereotypes). It also got me thinking about how I ended up in a male dominated industry which hasn’t really changed in numbers, in fact I think I see less girls coming into IT these days than when I was just beginning my career.
