The Barbarienne
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thebarbarienne.bsky.social
The Barbarienne
@thebarbarienne.bsky.social
2.1K followers 480 following 22K posts
Book production queen. Occasional writer. Amateur jeweler. Spoonie. I post pictures of my cats and food. I love to RT art, but only if it has decent alt-text.

🦖TRANS RIGHTS OR I BITES 🦕
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thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Latest progress on #watercolor painting for my sister. I'll be cropping it tighter on the right when I matte and mount it.

One thing about progress photos is the big empty space just left of center at the bottom becomes super obvious. Gonna put a lot more leaves in there.
Watercolor of five purple irises in a realistic style with lots of buds and leaves.
December 7, 2025 at 3:27 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Phooey, I missed posting on my girls' 4th adoptaversary!

Four years and two days ago I brought home these two little goobers from @arookbird.bsky.social 's house.
Two black kittens, about 2.5 months old, cuddled together in a cat bed.
December 6, 2025 at 3:49 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Now with alt-text:
Saved by Stoppard Sir, In 1993 my wife and I went to see the first production of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard (obituary, Dec 1), and in the interval I experienced a Damascene conversion. As a clinical scientist I was trying to understand the enigma of the behaviour of breast cancer, the assumption being that it grew in a linear trajectory spitting off metastases on its way. In the first act of Arcadia, Thomasina asks her tutor, Septimus: "If there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose?" With that Stoppard explains chaos theory, which better explains the behaviour of breast cancer. At the point of diagnosis, the cancer must have already scattered cancer cells into the circulation that nest latent in distant organs. The consequence of that hypothesis was the birth of "adjuvant systemic chemotherapy", and rapidly we saw a striking fall of the curve that illustrated patients' survival. Stoppard never learnt how many lives he saved by writing Arcadia. Michael Baum Professor emeritus of surgery; visiting professor of medical humanities, UCL
December 2, 2025 at 4:04 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Me: How are there so many random hairs in my paint? I buy good brushes!

Iggy: I have no idea.

Ginny: That's so weird.
Two black cats sitting on a pile of boxes.
December 1, 2025 at 12:59 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Today's breakfast is Irish bacon (looks like country ham to American eyes), toasted leftover popovers, and Irish tea.

It's 2:20pm. That's breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, and luncheon all at once.
A plate piled with Irish bacon and two popovers cut in half. A giant mug of tea with milk in. Knife and fork. A little dish with butter and coarse salt.
November 30, 2025 at 7:23 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Current state of my sister's Christmas present (she's not on BS afaik). The colors are all over the place, particularly the greens, and you can't "edit" #watercolors very much. But then I started the iris blossom on the lower left and was like, "Wait, I can make this work."
Watercolor painting of purple irises with green leaves. Everything is half-painted, because that's how watercolor works.
November 28, 2025 at 9:23 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
You just died.

The 6th picture in your phone gallery is what killed you.

Toss up whether she tripped me down the stairs or smothered me in my sleep.
A black cat with a pink collar curled up in front of a heating vent. This is Iggy.
November 27, 2025 at 3:53 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
I'm getting the "Why are we not in bed?" glare.

#GinnyStaresAtMe
A black cat with a white patch on her chest and gold eyes. She's sitting on comic book boxes stacked in front of a bookshelf. She's staring straight into the camera (maybe a little past it. She was making eye contact with me). She looks a little less murderous than usual!
November 25, 2025 at 5:11 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
A video! Note: these were swatched on cellulose hot press and they still got this kind of granulation. Imagine them on cold press cotton?

#watercolor
November 23, 2025 at 4:57 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Advertising logo for Bachelor Chow, "now with flavor," a running joke on the TV show Futurama. It looks like a bowl of dog kibble.
November 22, 2025 at 8:45 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
And here, a video of them asleep. They're so cute!
November 18, 2025 at 2:22 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
I don't know if this is macro enough for #MacroMonday, but it's one of my favorite photos.

In the later autumn, bees are still asleep in the flowers after I'm already awake, because it's too cold for them to wake up. Though this photo might be of one awake and gathering pollen.

1/2
November 18, 2025 at 2:22 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Finished another painting! My #watercolor progress continues.

This is a remarkably colorful grackle, original photo by @glengrambo.bsky.social . Alas, mine does not look as grumpy as the real thing, maybe because he seems to be on LSD?
Photo of a male grackle, a common North American bird. They're generally brown, but the photo brought out its colors: purple and blue on the wing and tail, blue head, and main body shades of gold and brown. The bird is perched on a pine tree of some sort, with short green needles and some visible pine cones among them. The extreme foreground is out-of-focus pine; I assume this was taken with a long lens, tightly focused on the bird. The background is abstractedly blurred brown/gold/green of what I assume are more trees in the distant background. A watercolor painting of the grackle photo. The pine tree and cones are very sketchy/abstracted, and I tried a blurry bit in front that looks meh. The bird itself is even more colorful and bright than the original—I have no self control with color! The background is random whorls of yellow and gold and brown and a bit of green. It's very trippy psychedelic!
November 16, 2025 at 11:56 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Please forgive the weird outline on Iggy. The original photo is very dark and I had to fiddle with it to make them visible.
Two black cats curled up together on my blanket-covered legs.
November 13, 2025 at 2:53 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
She found a downstairs source of warms.
A black cat lying in front of a floor-level heating vent. The same black cat lying in front of the heating vent, but she's turned the opposite direction. These two photos were taken several hours apart.
November 12, 2025 at 3:30 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Look at these golden beauties!
Six absolutely ENORMOUS popovers. They're a pastry that looks like a very tall muffin/souffle that has grown up out of the pan and expanded into golden bready goodness. The interiors are airy and custardy and delicious.
November 10, 2025 at 8:53 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Not a real snail, and almost certainly not biologically accurate, but I was pretty pleased with this "medieval marginalia" I did on a letter for a friend.
A warrior bunny riding a snail. The nail is reddish with a gray skirt structure and a gray shell. The snail has eyes at the end of its little head stalk things, which I'm pretty sure isn't where snail eyes actually are, but it's just a fun little cartoon.
November 10, 2025 at 3:59 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
(Apologies for screenshotting to comment, but I don't think I'm misusing the move here)

I've been in the business for 31 years, and I'm sorry to say, this isn't new.

It's total buffoonery, in response to perverse incentives.

1/2
Preeti Chhibber @runwithskizzers.bsky.social one of my least favorite new publishing "truths" is that books only deserve consistent marketing & publicity if they are already doing well, it's the new "needs experience to get experience"
November 6, 2025 at 8:07 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
post from Aspiring Warrior Librarian I feel like a lot of Gen Z don't know that the ACA/Obamacare was the compromise. The Democrats wanted Medicare for All. The Republicans wanted Free Market Healthcare (aka poor people die). Obama took a plan initially conceived by the Heritage Foundation (those project 2025 fuckers) and implemented by Romney for Massachusetts to say "hey, you can have a little free market, but we gotta cover other people too". It was already a compromise. And the Republicans lost their shit and have proceeded to spend fifteen years crying about their own plan being rampant socialism and repeatedly trying to repeal it despite never actually having a back-up plan for healthcare, simply because they never really wanted compromise to begin with. The moment Obama got elected, they got into a meeting and vowed to tear down everything he tried to build no matter how much it agreed with their so-called values. Because racism, let's be honest, but also because any compromise they put forward is just a show. "Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man" isn't just a hypothetical. It's literally what happened when we tried to meet Republicans in the middle with healthcare.
November 6, 2025 at 3:56 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
I don't even have to get up.
A black cat curled up between my knees on the leg support area of my recliner.
November 3, 2025 at 2:54 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Now with alt text.
Beni (Kevin J. O'Connor) and Evy (Rachel Weisz) from The Mummy. Beni is labeled Al Techbros Beni: Not everyone has the time and resources to become an artist— Evy: So you admit that art takes labor and resources that Al companies are profiting off of without compensation, and you're just an unskilled fraud of an "artist" Beni: [stunned]
November 1, 2025 at 2:59 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
I can't let this go by without adding my darling Ginny and her spectacular RBF.
A small, black kitten outside a bathroom door, looking in. She looks like a feline Wednesday Addams, glaring up at the camera. The same cat, now an adult, crouching in a red and white laundry bag, peering over the edge. Her glare portends your death.
October 31, 2025 at 4:53 PM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Holy shit.

Though truth to tell, this does not improve my opinion of the Wordlebot.
Screenshot showing the Wordlebot ranked my "skill" on this game as 99 out of 99.
October 29, 2025 at 4:10 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
First animated crush without saying your age.
Jason from Battle of the Planets. He was the bad boy of the group.
October 29, 2025 at 3:54 AM
thebarbarienne.bsky.social
Vibes are off. Post cats being dramatic.
Two black cats lying in sunny patches on a red Persian-style carpet. The chiaroscuro + their expressions of "What do YOU want?" makes it all very dramatic.
October 23, 2025 at 3:21 AM