Humble bundle has a Bob Ross painting bundle available

Humble Bundle has monthly book and game bundles; you pay what you want to get a set of ebooks on a theme or mobile games or computer games and the theme changes each month or so (it might be every two weeks).

I have bought many bundles of ebooks and one of phone games and one of computer games and been satisfied.

They currently have a pretty cool bundle of books and software to help you paint. I am not sure but I think the programs are Windows specific. In addition to Bob Ross ebooks on how to paint, there are a few programs -Corel Painter Essentials 6 and some addition stand out - and even some art-themed games. I will buy this bundle. The minimum price is $15 (US) so it seems like a good entry point if you are interested in learning or playing around.

Bob Ross is more popular now as a meme than he was as a late-night weirdo drawing his 'happy trees' that no one watched. Now he is cool.

TWIC: Seattle, comics, paddington, firefox, dreams

The art of Seattle. My friend M Heilman spent a fews days in Seattle and it seems she found the best art outside of the museum. Here are two of her images that I have shrunk greatly - follow the link for more and fullsize.

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Comics Writer Jason Arron
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Michael Bond, author of Paddington Bear stories, has passed away. I had some learning difficulties in elementary school and read Paddington with the therapist, Ruth Tinkiss, so many years ago.
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Is Firefox better than Chrome? Not all that creativity-related but consider it another PSA from Surprises Aplenty!
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Science and creative writing

Scientists may even beat creative writers at their own game due to a "killer work ethic" and the lack of a so-called publication angst, Irish writer and novelist Aifric Campbell wrote.
"It was the interdisciplinary challenge that intrigued me, but I’ll admit to being (skeptical) about the students’ writing potential. So I was delighted to be proved wrong: their writing is easily as good – and often better – than that of creative writing students I have taught elsewhere, including at the University of East Anglia. And my external assessors – also writers who teach and hold PhDs from UEA – agree," she said in an article posted on UK's The Guardian.

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A Distraction-free text editor.My favorite on the Mac is Ommwriter but the PC version has problems. An excerpt from the review:

Overview
Write!1 describes itself as a distraction-free text editor. It enters the market in an interesting way: the Mac offerings here are numerous, varied, and excellent. Offerings on Windows are fewer and further between, and in my experience of much lower quality. Distraction-free text editors outside the world of programming text editors barely exist at all on Linux, as far as I can tell.2 Write! is cross-platform, targeting all three of these. And that, as we’ll see, is the story of this particular app — for good and for ill.
The Good
First, the good: the app seems to perform relatively well. Text entry, even on a fairly large document, is smooth and quick. (I imported the text of this ~7200-word paper to test it and it didn’t stutter a bit.) Especially given the time I’m going to spend on the not-so-good below, I want to take a moment to applaud the developers for getting that right.

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Goldberg guide to writing Two of six points:

4. Remember that the blank page is nothing to be scared of. Remind yourself of this often. Every day, in fact. One day you might even believe it.
5. Write thousands of words of pretentious bilge. Fill a forest-worth of notebooks with future embarrassment. Fail again and again. At some point, fail better.

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Narrating dreams and other stories. A nearly five minute video that explains the problems and solutions to storytelling.

The reason other people's dreams are boring is because most people are bad at telling stories. This video from The School of Life offers suggestions on how to narrate your dreams (or tell any kind of story, factual or fictional) without boring your audience.
We naively assume that enthusiasm and authenticity can be enough...
This charming though ultimately lonely egocentricity can best be seen in children who are the worst storytellers... 

rules for successful storytelling
1 We must understand a story at least five times as well when its to be shared in company.
2 Keeping a story brief takes far more effort than letting it expand.
3 We need to simplify. The downfall of almost all anecdotes is an accumulation of incidental detail untethered to the logic of the story.
4 Factual events: dates, times, actions are always less interesting, though far easier to remember than feelings. Yet it is the feelings that invariably contain the kernel of what will intrique other people.

asdf

TWIC:sellar, watercolours, emojis, stop motion, art v politics, map making, elements of design

My internet friend Gord Sellar, who I have often described as a real writer, unlike myself, has the title story for Analog magazine!

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Dalibor Popović Mikša  describes his work with watercolours at Doodlewash. Miksa is Serbian and when I read this:

The light is probably the main theme of all my works. Considering that I prefer to paint in studio using photographs, instead of plein air painting, I developed the ability to recognize the right photography with expressed contrast of light and shadow.

I figured 'plein' was a spelling error and some sort of mis-translation of some Serbian word meaning 'open'.  I'm sure glad I googled that word and my apologies to Miksa. Plein Air Painting

...the creation of transportable paint tubes and the box easel—the precursor to the plein air easels of today—allowed artists the freedom to paint “en plein air,” which is the French expression for “in the open air.”

The article is interesting and I enjoyed his(?) work. Here is one such (as always, shrank significantly. To see full size, follow the link):

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Science Emojis.

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Tips for making stop motion clay or (I think) Lego videos. I haven't seen much of them yet but I think my son and I will enjoy them. More at: Guldies.
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I used to study maps for hours. As a wannabe writer, I often pour over maps thinking about where my characters are going. Here is a more accurate map.
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Sci Fi can help us survive Donald Trump.

Science fiction came into being in response to a new thing in human history: the understanding that not only was the world changing, but also that the rate of change was speeding up. That in a normal lifetime, you could expect to experience multiple episodes of rapid, disorienting change. Science fiction at its best has always been about examining and inhabiting those experiences when the world passes through a one-way door.

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Also, Art is not an Escape.

The more important matters for me, since the election, are those that offer reminders of human potential, rather than spotlighting the human propensity for stupidity. Engagement with art is not disengagement from politics, but the demolition of cynicism. Art that gives hope is the most powerful weapon against apathy, as cynicism only produces paralysis.

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Differences in patent data. At the Sci Am webpage you will find a whopping 1.2 mb image showing differences incollaboration. Here is a snip.

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I'm a sucker for Periodic Tables. Here is a version describing elements of instructional design.

 Follow the link for the full set of explanations. Here are a few of them.

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TWIC: Nano prep, art podcast, drawing

NaNoWriMo starts in less than a week.  I am really torn over this one. Last year, I completed the challenge but, again, did not finish a novel. It crossed 50,000 words but only pointed toward an ending. In December and beyond, I added around 10,000 more words but haven't touched it in more than a month. My plan was, starting November 2015, I will see if I can be a writer. And the only clear result was that I could not. I could write but I didn't follow through. And I did write a lot; I have many answers on Quora and they were well researched. But they weren't the intended forum for my writing.

This year's book has the working title, "Smash the Lion, Smash the Dragon, Smash the Bear" and should conclude my steampunk trilogy - neither of the other two books have endings. One reason I am starting a new book is that this will force me to consider what happened at the end of book two so I will have a clear image of what I need to write towards when I return to it.

This story will feature a typical British stuffed shirt, and I have latched onto Cardigan as my model.

Okay, Nano stuff online: Quora topic page.
Are there are any good writing prompts for Nano?
What else could you complete in a month?
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If women wrote men the way men wrote women.
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Productive Procrastination.

4. Jordan Tannahill asks, "What is the most ridiculous thing you found yourself doing out of distraction/procrastination instead of writing?"
Duolingo. Not that it's ridiculous to try to improve my French, but it's ridiculous how addictive those little highs are when you get through a round without a mistake...
5. Jalal Barzanji asks, "How many times do you revise your manuscript before you submit it for publishing?"

At least twice - and at least one more time before it gets published.

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More on productivity: The best habits of famous writers.
Regarding failure (Toni Morrison):

Pay very close attention to failure, rather than get depressed or unnerved or feel ashamed. As a writer, a failure is just information...I recognize failure, which is important; some people don’t – and fix it, because it is data, it is information, knowledge of what does not work. That’s why writers need rewriting and editing...What you do is you identify the procedure and what went wrong and then correct it. If you think of writing simply as information, you can get closer to success.

On big projects with distance completions dates -and Nano-relevant advice (John Steinbeck):

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

And some advice important to me (Neil Gaiman):

When people come to me and they say, “I want to be a writer, what should i do?” I say you have to write. And sometimes they say, “I’m already doing that, what else should i do?” And I say you have to finish things...You learn by finishing things.

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Arts and Culture podcasts on BBC.
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A prompt for artists, your child's drawings.
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lhlhjhl

TWIC: busy, publish student art, desire to write, art block,

I am currently a 'freelance' ESL instructor. What that means in reality is that I when I work, I get paid quite well per hour but I don't find (so far) many hours. Last week, I worked a lot. I also spent 10 hours in traffic (from two morning and two evenings of driving). I am not sure when the last TWIC was posted and I haven't kept track of new material to make this one. So, I am doing so now and I am not sure then this will be posted.  I should also post other stuff....Anyway, the good news for me is that if regular posting doesn't resume, it means I am working hard again. Indeed, this week, I have five days of work and some of those are very full days indeed.

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13 places to publish student writing and art.

These publications are the real deal — online and print periodicals that showcase work by student artists and writers, some as young as age five. Many are run by a staff that is partly or completely made up of students. Each one is beautifully designed and features high-quality work. Some even pay. If you know a student who aspires to become a serious writer or artist, encourage them to take the next step and start working toward publication.
What Students Should Know Before Submitting
Familiarize yourself with the publication first. Although most periodicals like to publish a wide range of voices and talents, you’ll still find that each one has a “feel” to it, an overall sensibility that all of its pieces fit into. Because preparing and submitting work is time-consuming, you’ll want to give yourself the best shot at getting your work accepted by submitting things that would be a good fit.

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This person on Quora wants to write. I think this episode of Prisoners of Gravity discusses that a writer needs to be driven to write, not merely think it cool. (end of part two of the video and beginning of part 3)
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Monica Heilman on how to break Art Block. I have seen some of her work on her blog and I like it. Last year she participated in Nanowrimo with me and man,can she write! I, uh don't know how good it is, but fast! In twenty minutes I would have 400-500 words and she 900. Anyway, among other things,she says:

3. BE MESSY.
This is where my own biases come into play. My art tends to be very detailed and tightly-controlled. Loose, abstract art is the bane of my existence. Okay not really. I just really struggle creating it. So for me, it helps to try letting loose because it’s so opposite to what I’m usually doing.
...
4. TRY DIFFERENT TIMES OF DAY.
By accident, I discovered that I really like doing art in the morning.

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Explore Bosch's Garden

Explore the Garden of Earthly Delights by Heronimus (or Jheronimus) Bosch.

I took the tour, where 15 parts of the painting were discussed, and also wandered around.

Besides the exploration of the art historical story of the painting we will give insight to the creative process of Jheronimus Bosch. In a web interface the visitor will be taken on an audio-visual journey, including sound, music, video and images to enrich the storytelling. The visitor of the interactive documentary will get a better understanding of what it was like to live in the Late Middle Ages, and for example of what importance religion was in daily life. The interactive documentary can be read like a book, one can come back after a visit and pick up the book again from the shelf to further explore.

Fascinating.
The background sounds change depending on where in the painting you are.
I could spend hours here, I think. The original painting was more than 2 by 3 metres and the small details are endless.

I wonder what kind of tree is displayed on the left. (Ah.  There was a clickable place that told me it is a 'Dragon Tree' and quite real although Bosch would never have seen one.) The birds in the painting are entirely recognizable, even if the mer-knight on the flying fish is probably not from life.
Wikipedia on the painting. Wikipedia on Bosch.

TWIC: Games and the KKK, writing, art, transmedia, teamwork, Rome

Humble Bundle is a website that offers bundles of digital media.  I have purchased phone and computer games, ebooks, music and recently, a Pathfinder RPG set.  The deals are pretty good but you have to make your mind up in a hurry; each bundle is offered for only two weeks and the link goes to one that has only five days remaining on the deal.

I think playing RPGs, and playing many types of games, is a way to flex your creative muscles.  Fantasy role-playing naturally requires quite a bit of imagination and an ability to use abstract - or fanciful - features to win or even survive.  However, any game requires players to think about the edges of the rules and how close they can come to them while remaining in the game.   Ah, what I'm doing right now is trying to tie my interest in role-playing games to the theme of this blog.  How am I doing?  I guess, in this vein, I could also point out that making such a game requires great creativity.

Anyway, it stands out in my mind for two reasons.  First, I just bought the set.  Second, on the same day, I also read an interesting article about KKK titles and D&D monsters.

You've no doubt heard of the "Grand Wizards" and "Grand Dragons," but what about the Great Titan and his six Furies; the Grand Giant and his four Goblins; the Grand Cyclops; the Ghouls; the Grand Council of Centaurs; the Lictor; the Nighthawks; the Invisible Empire and its enemy, the Alien World; the Fifteen Genii (who serve the Imperial Wizard); the Exalted Cyclops and his Twelve Terrors?

Okay, time to share my (lack of) ability with Microsoft Paint.  Dragon from here, mask apparently from here:

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An online Intro to  Transmedia course just finished.  It was given in Korean but the material had English subtitles.  I presume the material will remain available for at least a little while.  An excerpt from the first lecture:

3:02 The idea of different forms of media coexisting, transforming, and converging to create a new media environment has been around for some time, albeit in less complex and less common forms in the past: stories jotted down on paper and later being turned into a stage script, or a song recording at a concert becoming a track on a CD or LP and, later on, played over the air and heard by radio audiences at home. These are some common and conventional examples of transmedia phenomena.
...
4:42 In order to read, one might go to a library; to listen to music, one went to a music room. Life is much more convenient now with transmedia, to the extent that instead of sourcing differentmedia outlets, a single machine with multiple integrated functions has the ability to provide the user or consumer with all of the content that was once only available through “old” media. This is the key feature of transmedia. In addition, the user can actively participate in the creation of media content.

5:21 In the past, we had to embrace media content as it was in the form laid down by the artist or creator, but now, media proliferation and dissemination allow any individual to have more opportunities to be involved in the creative process to shape the media output. As a result of this possibility, the concepts of art and creative process have also taken on different definitions. Through this course, we will seek to understand the concept of transmedia storytelling, after which point we will apply this understanding to explore the concept’s role in the media industry of today.

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A handful of writing links listed together here:

Going from 2,000 to 10,000 words a day.

Side 1: Knowledge, or Know What You're Writing Before You Write It
... Unfortunately, this meant I wasted a lot of time rewriting and backtracking when the scene veered off course.
...
As soon as I realized this, I stopped. I closed my laptop and got out my pad of paper. Then, instead of trying to write the scene in the novel as I had been, I started scribbling a very short hand, truncated version the scene on the paper. I didn't describe anything, I didn't do transitions. I wasn't writing, I was simply noting down what I would write when the time came. It took me about five minutes and three pages of notebook paper to untangle my seemingly unfixable scene, the one that had just eaten three days of my life before I tried this new approach. Better still, after I'd worked everything out in shorthand I was able to dive back into the scene and finish it in record time. The words flew onto the screen, and at the end of that session I'd written 3000 words rather than 2000, most of them in that last hour and a half.
...
Side 2: Time
...
Several things were immediately clear. First, my productivity was at its highest when I was in a place other than my home. That is to say, a place without internet. The afternoons I wrote at the coffee shop with no wireless were twice as productive as the mornings I wrote at home. I also saw that, while butt in chair time is the root of all writing, not all butt in chair time is equal. For example, those days where I only got one hour to write I never managed more than five hundred words in that hour. By contrast, those days I got five hours of solid writing I was clearing close to 1500 words an hour. The numbers were clear: the longer I wrote, the faster I wrote (and I believe the better I wrote, certainly the writing got easier the longer I went). This corresponding rise of wordcount and writing hours only worked up to a point, though. There was a definite words per hour drop off around hour 7 when I was simply too brain fried to go on.
...

Side 3: Enthusiasm
.... I did know that I wanted those days to become the norm rather than the exception, so I went back to my records (which I now kept meticulously) to find out what made the 10k days different.

The answer was head-slappingly obvious. Those days I broke 10k were the days I was writing scenes I'd been dying to write since I planned the book. They were the candy bar scenes, the scenes I wrote all that other stuff to get to. By contrast, my slow days (days where I was struggling to break 5k) corresponded to the scenes I wasn't that crazy about.

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Stallone writes  with military devotion and scheduling.

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Make your writing awesome:

But the more I struggle to make this work, the more I think there’s one key thing that makes writing more excellent: Finding your own blind spots as an author, and trying to see into them.
This is something I found out while I was rewriting and editing and tenderizing my new novel, All the Birds in the Sky, which had massive huge blind spots in the middle of it, even in what I thought was the “final” draft. (And it probably still does, because you never really win the fight against your own blind spots.) But it’s also something I’ve found with every other creative writing project I’ve ever taken on. Just the same way you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s hard to see what you’re not seeing in a story—but it’s essential to try.

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The Art of Writing.  Talulah Lucy describes her work style when painting vs writing.  I've previously discussed on this blog how resistant to errors writing is- you can just delete a paragraph and rewrite it.  This isn't so easy in carving.  But you can plan ahead.  From Talulah Lucy:

For art I had this intense process:
1. Have idea
2. Work out the composition
3. Find some reference material
4. Sketch
5. Refine sketch
6. Begin building up the lights and the darks
7. Add layers of colour (known as scumbling in oil painting)
8. Add the final shadows and highlights
For writing my process was:
1. Write as well as possible

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Google on teamwork:

...in 2012, the company embarked on an initiative - code-named Project Aristotle - to study hundreds of Google's teams and figure out why some stumbled while others soared.

...

After looking at over a hundred groups for more than a year, Project Aristotle researchers concluded that understanding and influencing group norms [unwritten rules, for example encouraging small talk about family or whether interruptions were acceptable] were the keys to improving Google's teams.

...

The researchers finally a saw a link between two behaviors and good performance.  First, "equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking" - everyone talks nearly the same about in a day.

"But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined."
Second, Social sensitivity. "One of the easiest ways to gauge social sensitivity is to show someone photos of people's eyes and ask him or her to describe what the people are thinking or feeling."  People on good teams do better on this kind of test.
"There were other behaviors taht seemed important as well - like making sure teams had clear goals and creating a culture of dependability. But Google's data indicated that psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work."

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I don't know if this really fits into the blog's theme, either.  But it is cool.  Giga Photo is a company that takes thousands of pictures and stitches them together creating deeply zoomable images. Their Rome image is wonderful. The photos were taken from the Tower of Milizie.  I do plan to write some of my story in this location and the image shows a lot of ancient buildings, so maybe it is research.

Almost too late: Saha Gu's Sea Art exhibit closes this Sunday.

On the Dadaepo beach of Saha district in Busan, is the Sea Art Exhibit.  It started in Sept and closes this Sunday.  The dog and I had a lot of fun at it in today's beautiful weather.

The exhibits all featured some connection to the ocean, waves and things moving and temporary.

One exhibit was a pair of photos taken in Ontario, Canada.  One was taken in Fairy Lake, Huntsville near my home town and the lake I last did a polar bear swim in.

One artist, Yoko Ono, had a paper wish tree.  My photo:

Two more that I liked:

The dog loved running on the open beach.

TWIC: understanding art, painting and writing, rip el doctorow

E.L. Doctorow, author of "Ragtime," has died in New York at the age of 84: http://t.co/eEoA6aU44p pic.twitter.com/dIoi0qRWVf

— Iris Blasi (@IrisBlasi) July 22, 2015

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Confessions from the scammy underground world of Kindle e-books.

I'm a number 1 best-selling Kindle author... maybe it’s because I ripped off a free book that I found online, made up a middle-aged author from Ohio, and then played Amazon like a fuckin’ vintage banjo to become the #1 ranked book in not one, but two separate categories.

It's hard to maintain a consistent opinion on 'gaming' the rules.  One should use the rules to optimal effect.  For a competitive swimmer racing in backstroke, when the rules say you can kick underwater a maximum of fifteen metres from a wall, you aim for fourteen point nine, not seven.  That's entirely ethical.  On the other hand, in a relay where I was approaching the wall swimming butterfly for another swimmer to start, if my distance was off a little, I would slam my arms against the water to make the actual touch hard to see.  Did the final swimmer start a little early?  Hopefully the official would have trouble deciding.

The reporter in this article plagiarized a lot to this goes beyond simple gaming but there are more and less ethical examples out there.  Scott Sigler is a New York Times best-selling novelist and that is because he writes well and built up a loyal fanbase through podcasts; when his book was about to come out of Amazon, he asked all his readers/listeners to buy the book on the same day building a lot of localized buzz in the process. This seems fair.
William Demski, of the Intelligent Design think tank the Discovery Institute, also appears to have gamed the system and I don't find this so benign. His own coworkers were the main authors of 5 star reviews.
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I wonder if Monster Dress Up would be a good way to teach clothes and body parts to my ESL students.
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Understanding Art, a study of Large Bathers by Cezanne  Not my thing, exactly, but interesting none the less. It might be strange to connect an established master with the practice sheets of a beginner but I have been interested in Sam Sykes' novice drawings.  Sykes is a skilled writer and author of many books and has become interested in learning to draw. He has been putting his images on Twitter.

Drawing practice for today: More Gestures. Proportions got away from me, but I hope the intent of each pose is clear. pic.twitter.com/IvNC5mB4FB

— Sam Sykes (@SamSykesSwears) July 22, 2015

And today's art project: Noted avian authors, Woltoria Schwab and Wol Sykes. @veschwab pic.twitter.com/rsGD70B1XR

— Sam Sykes (@SamSykesSwears) July 14, 2015

I think that in some of the stories I am working on, I need to draw some maps and other pictures to better explain to myself what is happening and will happen next.

scientists, artists and drawing

In Scientific American, the need for scientists to be able to draw is discussed.

I have always found it easy to make the case that all artists are scientists. ...

Yet, it seems a longer stretch, somehow, to argue that all scientists are artists. At the very least, in my experience, scientists seem less willing to claim this alternate title. In fact, almost anyone who does not see her or himself as artistically inclined tends to be a little too quick to proclaim, “Oh, I’m not an artist. I can’t even draw a straight line!” With a sigh, I’ll avoid the temptation to digress into the utter irrelevance of straight lines and one’s ability to draw them. Instead, I’d like to posit the idea that, while we may not all identify as artists, scientists, of all people, really should be artists.

Slightly off-topic, I love the remark about drawing straight lines.  These days I am listening to Surviving Creativity, a podcast by web comics artists who also find this remark common and frustrating.  They would say, "use a ruler."

One of the toughest things for me to learn about science was the need to not merely see and understand a phenomenon but to describe it to others.  I was, and am, simply happy to see and enjoy the moment.  For such enjoyment, degrees are not given!

Computers basically allowed me to graduate with a science degree.  My handwriting was, and is, terrible and the ability to type and print easily meant that in 1990, I could graduate while in 1980, I would not have graduated.  For illegible scrawling, degrees are not given!

And now photography is similarly so much easier.  Do scientists need to draw now?

As biomedical imaging techniques continue to advance, those of us who specialize in the visualization of scientific information are often compelled to question the significance of our role. After all, if we can acquire fantastically thin slices of brain tissue, scan them with an electron beam, import the visual data into a computer, and use it to reconstruct a perfectly accurate three-dimensional digital model of brain cells and their connections, then why on earth would we bother with such a tedious and antiquated pursuit as drawing?

And the answer:

No matter how clearly we can see an object, there is something about the physical act of reproducing and interpreting it visually: in making marks, we infuse meaning into each element of the structure before us. Recently, I was asked to draw an animal cell in cross-section as part of an illustration series I was working on. It’s the sort of image any biologist has seen a thousand times in various renditions: a roughly spherical blob with a 90-degree wedge cut out reveals a sampling of organelles floating in cytoplasm.
While I count myself among those to whom this image is almost tediously familiar, I was shocked at how much difficulty I had in trying to draw the large organelle known as the endoplasmic reticulum (or the “ER,” to those in the know). Admittedly, it’s a complex structure composed of membranes folded into repeated convolutions. But still, I’m a fairly seasoned draftsperson with, I thought, a reasonably solid grasp of cell biology. Yet as I struggled through my pencil sketch, I realized that I had never really understood the physical structure of the ER.

In wood carving a heron, I finally understood the shape and proportions of the typical heron.  My first preparatory drawing gave the heron a horizontally framed body, similar to an ostrich while after further study, I saw that it is more diagonal.  I deeply understood similar detail about cheetahs after carving one for my son.

I've quoted a lot and don't want to paste more here, but do read the original.  As a counter argument to his point, the author looked at Ramon y Cajal and Camilo Golgi's contrasting drawings and conclusions.  The ways they emphasized what they thought was important resulted in different images.

Oh, and to the long-suffering Dr Cam Lewis, who worked so hard to teach me histology, Coral Reef ecology and Vertebrate and Invertebrate Zoology,  thank you.  I now see the value of drawing.

One Seventh of Shark Week

Presented for your enjoyment.  Some elementary school students will have the pleasure of deciding the order of these pictures.  However you slice it, it seems a long day for the intrepid but soft-hearted fisherman.

This represents the current limit of my drawing ability.  I wanted to add more detail but didn't think I could successfully.

Next time.

introductions to Korean Art

"There's something about Korean art that on the surface seems very simple, but its all about minimal aesthetic.  So there's nothing incredibly showy.  There's nothing over-the-top.  And the more you look at it, the more you appreciate its depth."


Introduction to Korean Art from The Korea Society on Vimeo.

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Introduction to Korean woodblock printing.
This video features Arirang's most annoying English voice-over narrator.  At 5:12, he mentions that the wood blocks are stored at "Hane-sa Monastery".  The correct pronunciation is "Hae - in - Sa" and "sa" means temple or monastery.


 
Introduction to Printing from The Korea Society on Vimeo.

Via Koreabridge

I need this to create.

Every few years, I get into podcasts.  During this current iteration of my listening, I am most enjoying Gore, Boars and Swords and We Have Concerns.  The latter one recently had an episode about a group of enthusiasts who long for the old, clicky IBM keyboards.
Well, the conversation of the two hosts started there, but went into people, and themselves specifically, that have superstitions and comfort zones when using equipment.
One speaker likes cheap notebooks because he was paralyzed with fear of writing something stupid in a $30 Moleskin notebook.

I myself enjoy using relatively cheap notebooks - mine come from a Korean private school and feature thick, strong cardboard covers and relatively thick paper.  I recently bought a set of disposable fountain pens.  My writing is still terrible but they are fun to use, glide super fast across paper and dry fast enough that my (left) hand doesn't smear the ink.

The episode, again, was about clicky keyboards and I really enjoy Ommwriter, which adds a clicky sound as you type.  I have long used Google Docs - now Drive - and preferred the old Wordpad to the newer versions.  Ommwriter is fullscreen and has almost no features aside from the clicky sounds and some white noise.  It is immersive and think I concentrate better when I use it.  I should say the Mac version of Ommwriter is better than the Windows version.

Ironically, when I get into a writing project, I sometimes want to listen to classical music -Janecek and Grieg normally -but actually like the discipline of sticking to Ommwriter only.

I have bought Scrivener and have started a few projects but so far it feels more fun to use than to create with if that makes any sense.
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Download lots of art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.