First Bumps
It's Sunday afternoon and I'm bribing myself to get this done. The bribe is a (still flat-packed) new IKEA desk to set up. Pretty grim.
Weird how I sometimes have to do that with things I enjoy. That's the theme for the last few weeks: getting over the first bumps.
Drawing
I've smashed out about a page a day of illustration, continuing the theme of doing things I hate then love. By 'love' I mean glimpses of the process and act of drawing, not its result.
Improvisation and experimentation are my weak spots. I can't help but want to plan an illustration, do it to plan, and then move on. It obviously never works out like that.
What I'm doing to keep the ball rolling/ink flowing:
- Not drawing from imagination
- Not focusing on human anatomy
- Drawing people on video calls
- Drawing things from NYTimes' Lens sections
- Starting with a blind contour drawing
Focusing on the how, not the what. Through self-sabotage.
Some technical things I've changed about in practice since last time:
- I'm starting drawings from the fills, edges, gaps, and joints (think nostrils, shadows, cheekbones, hair around the ear, etc)
- I'm drawing bigger and putting less on the page (as opposed to filling up the whole page, leaving no negative space)
Working
No code monkey this time around. Anti-Goodreads is a project I've thought about starting for ages that has now been drafted up.
One of our neighbours keeps leaving old magazines in the lift. I've been meaning to get (back?) into collage. Here's an experiment:
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My Fuji camera bit the dust a few weeks ago. Its replacement has gotten me back into shooting. Two snaps from yesterday:
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Reading
Just finished listening to The Outsider (★★★). It's an 18 hour semi-predicable slog that somehow still got me to double-check the locks at night.
I read So Good They Can't Ignore You (★★★★) about two months ago. Only just got around writing up notes for it last week. That spurred me to flick through Deep Work again, which is great timing given my distracted last few weeks. I'm committing to counting how many hours of 'deep work' I do each week and trying to top it the next.
Vibing
Night on Earth by Jerkcub for repeat listening. It's a great song but also mirrors my current state of 'first bump' mind: initial discomfort and awkwardness followed by hitting a stride (starting at about 3:20).
Snakes by El Michels Affair (and the rest of the album) for working to.
How to Fail: Matthew Syed to help with sucking it up.
Thinking
[Great creative minds] think like artists but work like accountants.
David Brooks