I spent about five minutes playing around with this thing. Kind of fun. Very colorful. No apparent export tool đ
I spent about five minutes playing around with this thing. Kind of fun. Very colorful. No apparent export tool đ
One of the things I’ve been doing this past week is creating art, initially with Kyle& … nobody. I’d been working on some things for the Fedora project on and off, but nothing was really sticking until I started working with my kids.
My children are very good motivators with respect to artistic output because they’re constantly creating artworksâcomic books, sculptures, sketches, oral stories, small performances , and elaborate board games. It’s inspiring to watch them create without burden.
They have helped me come to a realization about myselfâI’m happier when I’m collaborating. It could be my background in theatre, my penchant for teaching, or my constant questioning of my own ideas (and appreciation of other voices to move forward). Collaboration is something I’ve always found valuable because it’s been a valuable part of of the art I’m most proud of.
So I’ve decided to call a new project into being. I’m calling it Kyle&. It will be a place (and, mentally, a namespace) where I will collaborate with different people to create something new. I’m hoping it’ll be interesting.
Perhaps these artworks will be accompanied by a brief interview with my collaborator? Maybe they will be available for patronage in one form or another? Perhaps there will be other interesting opportunities. I don’t exactly knowâit’s an experiment.
The first of these experiments is with my 5 year old and is called This Burning Heart. She had seen me share things with the internet before and wanted to do so herself. I suggested we work together to create something and this is what we ended up with. She’s proud to have shared something with the internet and I’m happy to have found a new outlet to excite the kids.
We’ve already done some things with my other kids (they were jealous). Will post about those later. Hope you enjoy This Burning Heart.
I’ve been working on a project. I believe it’s a good one.
I have arranged some asterisksâ
âand also borrowed and modified a lineâ
âthen I borrowed some cruft (dusted off from something pretty good, if a little old)â
âat the end of it all I have some words.
So really, its just a long-time project that began over two years ago that I think still has a place in the conversation about rights, dignity, and human values. I’m hoping to have this out by years’ end, but I’m also wanting to ensure that I’m not missing an opportunity to incorporate some other elements into the work from recent events.
Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
I contributed to the most recent Fedora Linux release’s wallpaper. It’s interesting to have seen it pop up everywhere I normally read about Linux as a featured image touting the new releases arrival.
At any rate, this is a squeak from me. It’s been a while since I’ve posted here (I was off playing with static site generators and custom Emacs scripts), but I’m quite happy to be back. I may migrate the writing I did elsewhere to this blog in time.
At the moment I’m working to add some portfolio content to this site. My 3×5 artwork series for a local coffee shop finally gave way to heavily manipulated photography series I’m currently in the middle of completing. This return to pixels from vectors is a long time coming. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Excited to share with you all.
Squeak! — A-Hem
This is a quick (and ridiculous!) version of a project I’m working on. The final version will be more subdued, but I couldn’t resist quickly creating an animated gif once the thought entered my mind. Thoughts?
I have wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo for close to a decadeâbasically ever since I heard about its existenceâbut I was overwhelmed with my graduate studies and other things (excuses, excuses). Well, I finished graduate school and rid myself of all excuses. Tonight I successfully completed my first NaNoWriMo. Donât ask to see the fruits of this labor just yet. Like most first drafts, it is in a pretty unfortunate state at the moment. That said, I’m really excited to have the raw material out of my head and on âpaperâ as much of what I plan to work on in the coming year will derive from this first draft in some way.
More to come.
Also, note my wonderful procrastination in all of its glory in the chart below.
I’ve been thinking about process lately. Okay, I’ve honestly been thinking about process for years. I’ve figured out pieces of my own process over the years through trial and error, reading about other processes, and dumb luck. What I’m most interested in now is how to increase the likelihood of using my own process to the extent that it is identified at the present moment.
It seems that the best way to improve the use of my own bestâat the momentâprocess will be removing the barriers that hinder continuing or discourage even starting. I’ve identified the primary barrier as the mess of a work area I’ve used through the birth of two children and a PhD[1. if you’re interested you can read my dissertation here]. It’s a tick above freezing in the winter and a constant mess. Home sweet home. The image above is a real shot of my desk without any pre-photo cleaning (promise). What is missing is the disarray around and beneath and before the desk. I grow anxious just walking into the space.
What is surprising is how much and how little work I’ve put into the arrangement seen above. The 2×4’s serve the dual-purpose of raising the monitor to eye-level and providing a handy space for the keyboard to reside when desk- space is at a premium. Unfortunately I rarely use that latter, pre-planned feature. The keyboard is central to my workflow even when using the Wacom tablet to create or edit pixels and vectors. The hard drive to the right of the under-used notebooks is meant for backups but mostly holds older copies of things I already have newer live copies of (or, worse still, holds unnecessary copies of copies).
It turns out that I’m a little afraid to even go through the work of cleaning off the hard drive for fear of getting lost in what has become a truly ubiquitous time-capsule of everything (instead of just what was deemed to be most important). Fear, in fact, motivates much of my trepidation approaching the cleaning of the desk and the surrounding areas. But fear of what?
Time is what I most fear losing. The reframe is simple: I lose time anyway. I wish just saying that you lose time anyway was more motivating. Alas, the human mind is not always rational. Such is life. I find it difficult to get certain things done for fear of losing the time spent getting them done. I might have done something more productive than the thing I’m confident would help most in the future. Again, brains are weird. My poor brain doesn’t want to lose time (that it will “lose” anyway).
I know this is imprudent. That’s the whole reason I’m writing about it. I’m spending unnecessary time on something less productive to fully explore how productive just doing things can be when you just start. And this is a key factor I’ve discovered over the years about myselfâ
I’m more productive when I’m less efficient.
This sounds either unbelievably stupid or oddly profound. I wish it was wrong. I wish that I could endlessly be driven by efficiency improvements iterated over a lifetime. No matterâthe slow way is the productive and efficient way for me. And slow involves some uncomfortable (for me) friendsâmainly paper.
I desperately want to like all digital technologies, but I like what I like despite all efforts so far. Paper is the main friend that I’m embarrassed to profit from greatly. Paperâdespite what I and many others thinkâis a technology. It’s hard to think of it as such since it’s not battery-powered. This lack of battery is a feature, not a bug. Recognizing the technology aspect of paper is an important reframe for me as it places paper on the same level as other more interesting and distracting technologies. And this is the core struggle because I’ve known forever that paper makes me more productive (while seemingly less efficient). I hate taking the non-digital step in an ultimately digital process. The problem is that if I don’t take the non-digital paper step I don’t get anything done.
Here’s a drawing I did on an index card a while ago.
Listen, I wish I was a better artist but I take that drawing and scan it.
Then I vectorize the image I’ve scanned.
And then I color it and place it back on an index-card-shaped white rectangle floating above the void.
That’s a process that I’m using now. I’m trying to own it as the process I use and not focus on the myriad ways I could get lost trying to improve the speed of the process. It’s like that xkcd comic about timeâis it worth it to automate?
For now my answer is no.
This is interesting. I’ll likely change the colors a bit. Here is a set with the colors looking somewhat metallic.
These images are vectors now. I’ll have to see if there’s anything else I’d like to do to mess about with them more. That said: the shape is still interesting.
Working on some new index card art. These are the raw images belowâink placed by fountain penâthat have yet to be digitally processed. I’ve been very interested in parallel lines recently. More to come certainly.
At some point I’ll work to explain the process behind these pieces, but the easy thing to say is that the process allows me to create something interesting from something bland:
At any rate: new sketches are looking interesting to me. Should be ready to share soon. Stay tuned.