Category: Artifacts

I wasn’t going to Inktober this year, but then I thought it might be fun to use the sumi ink I bought three years ago. So I had my gimmick—real ink.

,

This concept came easily, with the “a” in the shape of an apple. Brush cursive is always an old standby as a reasonable default.

,

I tried using a rustic roman hand for Relic but it didn’t look good at all, so I came back to brush cursive for this piece as well.

,

I not happy with my metal nib cursive, but stretching out the distance between the letters gave miniature some room to breathe. Even so, I appreciate the nice comments on the Gettysburg Address a couple of months ago.

Pointed nib cursive is on the list for a long term practice effort, along with black letter.

,

Cramming letters together is another go-to move, as with this Cactus.

,

Same here, but in this case, I “zoomed out” to make the smack feel small.

,

By the way, I’m also back on Instagram this year. I stopped using IG because I was appalled by some of Meta’s general suckitude. But that’s where the Inktober energy is, so I’ve made a deal with the devil, with a slight justification that I’ve included a link to my blog with each post.

Cya next time!

,

PS—Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman, 1985

Whoo! Neil Postman takes a flamethrower to popular culture of the mid 80’s, before things really went downhill! It highlights how we got to there and discusses the trainwreck of that time.

That era now seems like a golden age as the devolution of our society has accelerated and his critiques have turned out to be prophetic.

I can quibble that he professes an idyllic vision of a rational past (American has always been a rowdy place), but his main thesis is undeniable. Our form of communication frames our body politic.

Unfortunately, we’ve gone from the logical structure of books, to the short cuts of television, to the completely spasmatic flail of the internet. Postman traces the transition from the age of typography to the age of showmanship, as we have settled into Aldus Huxley’s self distracted Brave New World.

Postman marveled that a former actor (by way of the governorship of California) became president. 2016 gave us a reality TV star (without any pit stop of public service) as our chief executive. The trajectory isn’t good.

Postman is light on concrete suggestions, but the final chapter suggests the main thing is to go meta. A medium always affects the message so one needs to actively press against its framing of our mental state.

As with many things in life, structural problems are indeed a dire issue, but the only actionable advice is to work on yourself.

Hopefully an aggregate of mindful persons will ultimately make a difference in our democracy.

—November 2021

or maybe not.

,

PPS—Cookbooks and curation

A newsletter by Chris Boutte asked why people still use cookbooks.

I agree that cookbooks are unnecessary in the age of the ubiquitous internet. I can find multiple versions of any recipe faster than it takes to pull a cookbook of the shelf, flip through the index, and dig through to the correct page.

So why are they still popular?

I don’t buy a cookbook, but an author. Instead of KissTheChef04 on allrecipies, this is a human who has staked their reputation on this recipe. That’s why I keep Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything—I trust him to give me a simple, reliable recipe for everything I might cook.

Curation also comes focused around specific subject such as Sandor Ellix Katz’s magisterial The Art of Fermentation or Chad Robertson’s Tartine 3. Note the “three”, the first Tartine is a fine explanation for baking bread, but they is a dozen such books. This third volume explores many ways to use whole grains in bread making; it encapsulates Chad’s unique voice.

I have to also admit that these books are picture books for adults. Instead of eating better, just buy a totem of healthy food. And travel to other lands to taste exotic cuisines with your eyes.

Unfortunately, the aspirational aspect of cookbooks is the vast majority of my purchases. As someone whose great weakness is buying cheap used books, I’ve got maybe thirty or so volumes (such as Salt Fat Acid Heat) that line my bookshelf.

They collect dust, but they make me feel warm and fuzzy. I think that’s a win, even if it’s not gustable.

—January 2022

.

PPPS—Practice

—November 2025

.

Raw was done with a wide hake brush on 12×18 sulfite paper. I used a light grey muddy wash and pushed the color to blue in the computer.

,

I love how the rough ruling pen meets the sharp flat brush on Libra.

,

Jumping with Roman Capitals and popups

,

I often have trouble with the letter “S”. But the rest of Squeeze came out ok.

,

This Dragonfly was done on the big sheets (like “Raw” above). They’re a pain to scan!

,

Cya next time!

,

PS—The Writing Life, Annie Dillard, 1989

I listened to The Writing Life, after Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. It was a fortuitous mistake from conflating the authors’ names.

Dillard discusses the struggle of writing as a profession, “splitting wood by aiming for the chopping block”.

She doesn’t digress into the darkness of her soul, nor the mundane tasks of her profession, aside from the admonition to love a sentence.

It’s a great book on honing the craft. Focus on the work. Ignore the metrics. Do the art.

Her prose a breathtaking display of skill. Dillard is vivid while avoiding the sentimental. She’s a bit aphoristic, with short quips and anecdotes. Pairs great with Lamott, for self-help writing books.

—November 2021

,

PPS—Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Italo Calvino, 1985

I stayed in Berkeley for a couple of years after graduating and I attended a class taught by a classmate from my creative nonfiction seminar.

Finn is not an architect—he’s a real scholar.

I thought I was well read but quickly realized otherwise when I had no idea what the class was discussing. That’s also why it was so hard to read this book. Calvino flies around the world of literature while crafting these five lectures.

But after getting into the flow, I had a hard time putting it down. I’ve reread it twice in a row and listened to the audiobook as well.

He unearths aspirations in how to write and think. He explores subjects and their anti-subjects. It’s a curated cross section of a great writer’s worldview. So much to dig into. His ideas have not gone stale in the four decades after his death.

—February 2022 (If nothing else it spurred my play with 1 sentence stories for a few weeks.)

,

PPPS—Several Short Sentences About Writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg, 2013

This is now my favorite book on writing.

Strunk and White is overly prescriptive and a bit dated.

Stephen Pinker’s Sense of Style was informative but soulless.

Both Stephen King and Stephen Pressfield exhort an enormity of labor. Grindset!

Klinkenborg also demands action. But it’s tiny.

Write better sentences.

That’s it.

As an architect, I love this clarion call of high modernity.

What does the sentence want to be? Make it so.

Of course, It’s never as simple as it sounds.

,

After finishing the audiobook I immediately listened to it again, and borrowed the book from the library.

I suspect this book will be a classic in my library. I might be wrong. We’ll see by the time this thing posts.

—March 2022 (Four years later, I’ve soured a little bit on this book. But it’s not Klinkeborg’s fault, it’s LinkedIn—all those posts (even before the tsunami of AI sludge) are written in this style. Techbros and their algo’s ruin everything.)

,

PPPPS—Borges on Writing, 1971

I’ve been on a run about reading (or listening) about writing.

This was the most informal of the books.

As a master, Borges is be self deprecating, over a series of three Q&A Seminars (on prose, poetry, and translation) with Norman Thomas di Giovanni (his editor and translator).

It’s a masterclass in writing and holding definite opinions without taking hardline stances. Borges is charming, but there is no question who is the teacher and who is the student.

A must-read for any Borges fan and a great example in self confidence.

,

It’s also a fine introduction to the blind librarian if you haven’t read him yet. Though I would recommend Labryinths first (I presume one should rather read the work than him talking about it).

—April 2022

,

PPPPPS—Practice & Practice

,

—August 2025

.