Thinking Inside and Outside The Box Newsletter 015, May 3, 2025
INSIDE THIS LOCALLY SOURCED, ORGANIC, NON-DIATONIC, SELF-CENSORED NEWSLETTER
First Thursday Photo Essay
Giant soap bubbles
Urban sketching
Gouache paintings
Further work in visual journaling
Additional ideas to organize your commonplace book, and other notebooks
Board games played
CD’s I’ve been listening to
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FIRST THURSDAY PHOTO ESSAY
There is a street festival not far from me which features art, music, food, and loads of interesting people the first Thursday of each month. May 1 kicked off this year’s celebration. My photo essay is here.
GIANT SOAP BUBBLES
Here is a video of some people in a local park making giant soap bubbles. You might recall this video from a few months ago which featured some smaller bubbles. I guess that soap bubble season is here.
SOME URBAN SKETCHING
I’m considering making this a semi regular feature. Here are some recent examples
GOUACHE PAINTING
Gouache is an art medium similar to watercolor, but with some important differences. I’ve been trying to learn how to tame this beast. See more examples in my blog post.
VISUAL JOURNALING
I’ve combined two different ideas. Idea 1 is a daily entry based on Lynda Barry’s seven minute journal. Idea 2 is a book to capture drawings, sketches, collage, and other ideas in a a format that Austin Kleon calls a diary. I’ve been at this now for about a month and I’m digging the process. I have both ideas in one notebook.
See an example, and perhaps start your own by reading this post.
KEEPING YOUR NOTEBOOK ORGANIZED
In the past few months I’ve extolled the benefits of a CommonPlace book and also provided some guidance on indexing in order to make it easier to find stuff in your common place book.
We can take these ideas to the next level by organizing our notes as we take them, in what I call “emergent note taking”. This is really a Master’s Class in analog note taking. The process does not have to be restricted to commonplace books, but rather to any type of notes that you might take for work, school, or your own purposes.
You can learn more here.
BOARD GAMES PLAYED
Rogue Angels
Frosthaven
Ark Nova
Nemesis
CD’s I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO
Herbie Hancock-Headhunters
Traffic-John Barleycorn Must Die
The Incredible String Band-The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, The 5000 Spirits, The Layers of The Onion
The Cole Porter Songbook
The Rolling Stones-December’s Children
Pat Dinizio-This is Pat Dinizio
Nat King Cole-At the Sands Hotel
The Youngbloods-Get Together/Elephant Mountain