GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Drawings

  • working (five pack 26+DRC+aphorisms)

    A motley collection of pieces I’ve shared on social media. Since I’ve spent more time on books and less time online, there’s only a few left…unless things switch up again. We’ll see.

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    Whenever I get a new tool, I start with the (super creative) word test. In this case, it was a big fat hake brush, which has raw feel perfect for some assignments.

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    I taped two Pentel brushpens together to make this Laugh.

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    I call my cursive “brush cursive” since I primarily use a Pentel brushpen for this hand. But really, this was cemented last summer with the use of the ruling pen like this Tension. There is a beautiful rush in using this ruling pen—now I need to learn how to use it slowly.

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    white space is OK

    I have a hard time letting myself use white space, it’s one of my great shortcomings as a designer.

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    Last October I was playing with both gothicized italics and testing a cover for a NATO alphabet zine at the same time. I don’t know about the cover, but this script has become a rabbit hole that I’m still chasing. It’s been my default hand (along with brush cursive) whenever I whip out a piece.

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    We celebrated the 4th of July by visiting a local park where folks go wild with illegal fireworks. They were going full speed when we arrived at sunset and were still shooting with gusto when we left an hour later.

    It was so visceral that no one noticed the fireworks show from the casino a couple of blocks away. I can still smell the gunpowder. We’re gonna bring earplugs next time.next time.

    Cya next time!

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    PS—Riding a Bicycle

    I was walking a group home campus for disabled clients. We’re putting up a fence they can enter and exit their houses without supervision by the nurses.

    A couple of clients rode by on bicycles (with their nurses). The joy on their faces were infectious, only dampened by the barren dreariness of our facilities.

    We don’t treat our wards nearly well enough, and yet they persevere. We need their strength in these times.

    —November 2021

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    PPS—Some aphorisms on managing a career

    If the company doesn’t promote you in a couple of years, then that’s your position for the long haul.

    But be careful about being promoted, they’ll get their pound of flesh for that extra status and money. (Double check an opportunity in terms hourly wage and stress.)

    An architect is paid in experience and money*. (Make sure the balance is good for long term growth.)

    You start a career getting good at technical stuff, then spend the second half dealing with humans.

    40 hours a week keeps you from being fired. If you wanna climb, then you gotta invest more time (inside or outside the company).

    Don’t just stay cause you’re comfortably miserable.

    DON’T FUCK WITH HAPPY.

    Be nice. It’s a small world.

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    * I’ve been toying with the other side of the equation. As an employee, you offer time multiplied by skill, which results in this equation

    Money + Experience = Time * Skill

    This isn’t as memorable as the original aphorism, but it’s a start.

    —August 2022

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    PPPS—Practice

    —August 2025

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    PPPPS—Practice

    —November 2025

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  • mike

    I was hesitant about returning to pencil so soon after kilo, but mike wanted to be sharp.

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    Two months ago, a family of Hawaiians moved into the neighborhood—dad, mom, two sisters, six and three, and the little brother.

    They quickly joined the kids playing in our cul-de-sac.

    After school ended, mom and the kids went home for three weeks. The day before they left, the three year old girl started calling me “Uncle Mike”.

    The neighborhood kids tried to correct her, “It’s Mister Justus!” but she persisted.

    Soon after, we went on our own vacation and got home yesterday. That afternoon, we came out to play on the street. The dad was sitting in his garage.

    “Where’s the little ones?”

    “They’re not coming back.”

    —June 2026

  • ruling pens (five pack 25+four on writing)

    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.

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

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    Jumping with Roman Capitals and popups

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

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

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    Cya next time!

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    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

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    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.)

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    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.

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    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.)

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    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.

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    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

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    PPPPPS—Practice & Practice

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    —August 2025

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  • lima

    I adore writing each of these letters in cursive—L, i, m, a.

    But this piece wanted to be rough after trying some elegant versions.

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    paper slinkies

    months ago, we saw slinkies at walmart
    but we have too many toys

    recently he got into origami
    (pulling up videos on youtube and asking me fold a piece or two)

    this weekend he remembered,
    we looked some videos, found a simple one

    pulled out the paper cutter,
    sliced up old papers

    contractor sign-in sheets,
    completed kenken puzzles,
    general conditions of a contract,
    registration instructions for the new school year

    slice slice, glue,
    fold, fold, fold, glue,
    fold fold fold….

    the 1 inch square worked OK,
    but was more a string than a slinky

    Again!
    2 inch square

    a lot more paper,
    a few more folds.

    not metal
    not round,
    still a slinky.

    Took a few tries,
    it walked down the stairs.

    By golly!
    well, once out of ten.

    — May 2025

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  • A pragmatic prevarication

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    Early this year, an acquaintance asked me to graph this line from a patient who had passed. “She and her family were just lovely, and she was an intelligent woman and quite particular with her verbiage. There was a phrase that she used to say all the time and we (the hospice team) loved it”.

    A pragmatic prevarication with a propensity for oratorical soneration which is too pleonastic to be expeditiously assimilated

    Since privacy laws don’t apply past death, I was allowed to share this lovely line. As with all pieces, I tried a few different scripts, and a lovely text like this wanted italics with some flourishes. And as always, it’s a bit nerve-wracking as you get to the end, but that’s also the thrill of longer quotes.

    Living in Vegas, I regularly use the slot machine analogy for calligraphy. Gamblers are addicted by the notion that a loss is “almost winning”. It’s the same while making these pieces. I’m rarely satisfied with a piece, so I keep trying until I run out of steam and move on to the next project. But in retrospect, I’m usually quite happy with the result.

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    Since I was so busy at work, I was happy to tackle the project, but I didn’t ask for money—only for the time to do it right. After a long wait I sent these variants out and was reimbursed way more than the cost of shipping. I guess this makes this my first paid commission!

    After my daughter was born, I discovered the On Taking Pictures podcast. Bill and Jeffery had a Google+ online community, where I met Tanya while tackling the weekly assignments. She’s a great photographer with over a decade of daily projects, it’s well worth checking out her IG and website.

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  • kilo

    I had a lot of fun with a pencil for graphing a graffiti style versal. The pencil lets me fly around with light lines to find the right shapes, but I can still erase or crank up the density and line weights to sculpt the shape to my liking.

    Either way, it’s less stressful than ink…and with my architecture sketching background, I willing to live with the unfinished look.

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    My father-in-law lost his battle with pancreatic cancer last week. He fought for three seasons until finding his rest in the early morning.

    That day, I stayed at home with the kids while my wife and her mom made arrangements. They played on their computers while I listened to podcasts while working on a jigsaw puzzle that had been sprawled across the playroom mat for a month.

    When she came home, we took a walk around the neighborhood school. The boy then played with our neighbors. They wanted to stroll around the school too.

    So we did.

    — May 2026

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  • Jabberwocky

    Last month, we watched the girl play Door #2 at the middle school.
    A small bit, accentuated with clearing table of the mad tea party.
    Like all the parents in the theater, my heart was on that stage for three nights.

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    Jabberwocky

    ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
          Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
    All mimsy were the borogoves,
          And the mome raths outgrabe.

    “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
          The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
    Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
          The frumious Bandersnatch!”

    He took his vorpal sword in hand;
          Long time the manxome foe he sought—
    So rested he by the Tumtum tree
          And stood awhile in thought.

    And, as in uffish thought he stood,
          The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
    Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
          And burbled as it came!

    One, two! One, two! And through and through
          The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
    He left it dead, and with its head
          He went galumphing back.

    “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
          Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
    O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
          He chortled in his joy.

    ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
          Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
    All mimsy were the borogoves,
          And the mome raths outgrabe.

    Lewis Carroll

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    Almost thirty years ago, I bought this bottle of ink by Rotring. It traveled around across the country, architecting in Berkeley, Houston, and Vegas. This poem finally finished it off.

    After I cleaned the bottle, the boy refilled it with a random ink wash for his “science” experiment.

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  • juliet

    This feels properly swoopy with a nice plum accent for this lovely word.

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    He started wobbly, paused constantly, tumbled a couple of times, but in an hour he was peddling down the straight away and making wide looping turns!

    between bike sessions we went to the playground.
    he’s always passive on the swings,
    but not today, riding next to his sister.

    I gave a good push
    he extended his legs and exclaimed “sun”
    and he folded them back, saying “bank”

    — sun — bank
    — sun — bank
    — sun — bank
    — sun — bank
    — sun — bank

    higher and higher!
    he was finally swinging himself
    with a mantra all his own.

    — December 2023

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  • Three from Robert Frost

    I found a children’s book of Robert Frost and graphed a few short poems. Each of these fit on a single sheet, though the crop was expanded in the computer and colors were tweaked.

    “Questioning Faces” and “The Rose Family” are both public domain, but “The Secret Sits” remains under copyright (1936).

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    Questioning Faces

    The winter owl banked just in time to pass
    And save herself from breaking window glass.
    And her wings straining suddenly aspread
    Caught color from the last of evening red
    In a display of underdown and quill
    To glassed-in children at the window sill.

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    The Rose Family

    The rose is a rose,
    And was always a rose.
    But the theory now goes
    That the apple’s a rose,
    And the pear is, and so’s
    The plum, I suppose.
    The dear only knows
    What will next prove a rose.
    You, of course, are a rose –
    But were always a rose.

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    The Secret Sits

    We dance round in a ring and suppose,
    But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

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    For this session, I started with the Secret, using the 6.0mm Pilot Parallel with a 12mm x-height. I then dropped to 3.8mm for the Rose and then dropping to 2.4mm for Questioning, both using a 6mm x-height.

    I’m fond of the huge contrast between thick and thin strokes with the bigger nib, but of course I need bigger paper if I was to do anything longer than an epigram.

    I am really enjoying this kick of scribing the works of great poets. If I was solely focused on composing poems, these long hand case studies would be more effective without the distraction of calligraphy, but it’s better to do a suboptimal fun exercise than doing nothing.

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  • india

    Along with my current gothic scripty kick and the standby pointed brush cursive, this chunky wide brush has been consistently satisfying, especially when pushed to the extreme.

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    He taped a red jar cap to the wall and pressed the button each time he headed out to school.

    The boy tripped and bumped his head over the baby-gate.
    Installed three years ago, when he was a toddler.

    Stayed to keep him sleepwalking down.
    Now it’s just in the way.

    Was in the way.
    The hallway feels brand new!

    —November 2023

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