Geordie lads Little Comets' new album is out in a couple of days, and the pre-release album art looks fantastic. From drum covers to merch and hand-drawn lyric sheets to animated typography, the band have always had a really tight aesthetic, and these latest images are no disappointment:

I'm already jealous that some of you will get to read these for the first time.

P.S. Both Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close have been made into films. I've seen the former and really recommend it but haven't seen the latter. Any opinions, anyone?

I'm here today to admit to my extreme addiction to listening to songs on repeat. I've heard its a common side effect of listening to fine music and I understand that I'm far from the only one with this condition. In order to help partially relieve the suffering of fellow addict's flatmates and to delay the necessity of widespread musical interventions, I would like to highlight the effectiveness of various youtube musical session channels such as The Amazing Sessions, Black Cab Sessions, Backstage Sessions, They Shoot Music, La Blogotheque (A Take Away Show) etc. etc. The immediate result is a fresh version of that favourite song. However, long term effects caused by clicking on the next session can also sometimes materialize as an almost permanent solution to the repeat addiction: a continual and exciting expansion of the addict's musical taste leads to a boundless variety of favourite songs and consequently not enough time to listen to it three or four times in a row without having to move directly on to the next. 

..and other such nuggets of wisdom from cat-Camus and first ever winner of the Internet Cat Video Film Festival, Henri (http://www.youtube.com/user/HenriLeChatNoir)

When pondering what to do for this week’s blog, I flicked through the exhibition page of our lovely Blake Society website, craving inspiration.  And needless to say, I was impressed. And then I was a little depressed. The most I’ve been able to contribute to this array of art is some slightly edited holiday pictures, which can only deemed interesting by their content (Nepal) rather than any artistic skill on my part (aka none). The closest things to a painting or collage that I can produce are the intricate scribblings that are found all over my notes. 

Which gave me an idea. 

So quickly abandoning my first pile of essay pre-reading, I went off to procrastinate by finding my previous procrastinations. Pulling out my ring binder of Part IA,  I began to flick through, phone-camera poised and ready to capture any moments of creative distraction that were possibly Blake-worthy.

As a geographer, colouring pencil jokes aside, diagrams and drawings are often quite useful in our discipline and my physical notes were a lot less fraught with mustachioed men or squirrels probably because I was supposed to be drawing. However occasionally, as the doodles below demonstrate, I often go beyond the call of duty and any relation to work is just a badly used excuse.

The majority of my doodles however, appear in my human geography essay notes and the surprising intricacy of some did make me question the level of work I did last year. The scariest of all were the complex geometric designs that I discovered on sheets entitled 'Supervision Notes'. Oops.

Checking with that oracle of all - Wikipedia - to see their definition of doodles, they described them as...
         'an unfocused drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied'.
...and goes on to describe their frequent presence in school notebooks and margins. Popular doodles include geometric shapes and patterns, landscapes, fictional beings and cartoon versions of teachers (like my striking resemblance to our Methods lecturer Dr Watson*).

Further research into the doodle (instead of the much more depressing global food crises I was supposed to be researching) revealed a surprising nature to this seemingly pointless pastime, but that would be far too much for me to include in one blog post, so you will just have to wait in anticipation for this post's follow-up (aka I want to show you more of my drawings!!!). So keep your eyes peeled for the next installment where I am forced to question my alleged feminism, discuss the deep psychologies of doodling and show pictures of pretty flowers what I did draw.

Georgina Phillips

*No seriously that's her name. I'm not joking. It'll suck if she becomes a Professor. Unless she marries someone called Green. Or Dumbledore.

The Blake Society is proud and excited to present the talented and dashing Orlando Seale. Orlando will be visiting us on Saturday 20th October to give an acting workshop.

You can see his impressive biography here:
http://tinyurl.com/9tlexcw

his impressive face here:
http://tinyurl.com/9ywgz36

his guest appearance in the IT Crowd here:
http://tinyurl.com/6cegabc


his musical endeavors here:
http://tinyurl.com/8mxelvl

aaaaaand, you can vote for the workshop you'd like him to give here (so long as you do it before midnight tonight!):
http://tinyurl.com/9qatzm3


Tickets for the workshop - costing just £4 for Blake members! - will go on release tomorrow, so keep your eyes glued to Hermes and Facebook (just for a change...)

Cutie animation from the first children's book Quentin published, in 1968. Something to whet your appetites for the Lent term...