Drawing, books, movie

I am nearly done with another horse-and-jockey drawing, similar to the last one. I am also making progress on my drawing of the YUM! Center (lest anyone think that I haven't been attempting to sell out, man.) I'm far enough along that I need to figure out what my next project is going to be. I have a few ideas, I just need to settle on something.

I've lately taken up the idea of working on two things at once, one big, the other small. The bigger ones (like the previous subjects of Farmington and Big Rock, and the YUM! Center currently) are longer-term, larger scale, and done with the intention of just looking more impressive. The smaller ones are ones I can pull out and put away again quickly and easily when I only have ten minutes at a time, or only a few square feet, to work.

I've been reading Nigel Rodgers' Roman Empire, and enjoying it a lot. I've found ancient history somewhat difficult to approach. Most books seem to either want to throw you off the deep end with contemporary, focused accounts that may or may not be very accurate and for which I have little knowledge framework to rely on for context; or they are a very dull sampling of a huge period of time and cultures with little or no attempt to give you a good sense of what life was like for any single person of the ancient world.

Roman Empire seems to bridge that gap pretty well. Comprised of fairly short articles, it gives overviews of many aspects of the Roman Empire, encompassing religion, politics, the economy, the military, clothing, etc. It pulls it all apart and then puts it all back together. It's very easy to flip through; I can read about a battle, encounter a term I don't understand, and then flip to the section on different military ranks for an explanation, then get sidetracked into an summary of some general's reforms in both military and politics. Basically put, the book is neither too smart nor too dumb for my level of knowledge.

Per the recommendation of three or four friends, I also started reading Storm Front by Jim Butcher. I'm not far into it, but so far it's entertaining. I'm told it's not the best of the series of books (about a wizard detective in Chicago).

With those same friends, last Friday night I watch the movie "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World," and I liked it a lot. It's hard to recommend to people, though, because it's such an odd movie. I was a third of the way through it before I started feeling like I was "getting" it. The movie is sort of like if "Wayne's World" cross-bred with a bunch of video games, and the offspring somehow ended up intelligent and attractive.

edit: I should have mentioned, that picture isn't a drawing, it's a facial scan.