Even a 9×12 sheet can’t fit a 3″ brush without ligatures and a pile of failures.
At this point, it’s only remarkable when I’m satisfied after a few attempts.
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Years ago, we bought a toy bird for the girl that records and repeats short snippets. The boy is now well past her age then, but two fresh batteries and it squawks again.They’re upstairs, talking, singing. and laughing at distorted tweets.
In the other ear, Mama is on the phone, searching nutrition labels for high protein, high calorie foods to stem Grandpa’s weight loss.My mind searches for anything to thread these competing conversations across electronics, but I come up empty.
Having worked in small firms, I’ve always been the young guy. Even that time I went corporate, I ended up being the junior staff member on a major project.
That’s fine. I learn more from the experienced folks.
So it was a bit odd turning Owner and suddenly becoming an old guy. In the few cases where I’m younger, it was by a year or two, not decades.
Middle age is odd. They say architects don’t blossom till they are fifty. That was forever away, now just three years out.
I’ve gone through the stereotypical “now what” moment, but I’m also comfortably confident in my skills. There’s still plenty to explore, but I have much to share with the next generation.
Maybe this OPM letter was a my way to share some notes along this journey.
~
Some Links
Over the past few years I’ve fallen hard for calligraphy. It’s why this letter took a long hiatus. You can graph with the most simple of materials, but here are some things that stand out.
The Pilot Parallel was my introduction to calligraphy. As a lefty, I had long thought it impossible, but once I got my hands on one of these pens, I just had to try (with the help of YouTube). It’s an inexpensive pen with none of the hassle of dip pens. If you’re not sure what size to get, go big with the 6.0mm.
What to graph on? Anything will do, but normal printer paper will bleed, as will binder paper. The best value I found was acid-free sulfite paper from Blicks, which is usable on both sides.
If you get deeper into the hobby, then splurge with the Brody Neuenschwander Handwritmic Ruling pen. I also enjoy the Dreaming Dogs ruling pens (especially for alternative shapes), but the Handwritmic has the best build quality with a nib that can handle a variety of scripts.
LED light tables are super cheap now. Mine is just a non-name brand from Amazon. Print out guidelines on paper and now you won’t have to rule your sheets all the time.
And finally books, books and more books.
Any edition of the Speedball Textbook is a good start (I’ve got 12, 16, and 20-25).
I’m fond of Arthur Baker’s Foundational Calligraphy Manual because he elucidates a technique of twisting the nib, which feels really weird until it’s natural. At this point I’ve picked up all of his books.
A wild card, out-of-the-box gem is Scott Kim’s mind twisting Inversions.
And no list of books would be complete without grand matron Sheila Water’s epic Foundations of Calligraphy. I find this one intimidating—high standards are great, but for a hobby, fun comes first. But when you get serious, it’s a must-have.
At this pace, I’ll be a year behind, except that this new year has come with a new habit—less socialing, more zining. After I make a few zines, maybe I’ll get into the selling and distribution business.
Or may not.
Anyways, there will be less catching up of old Substack Notes.
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4/13/25
jump easy enter vector five galaxies between you and remembrance Georgia come back into life
In my current calligraphy practice, I’ve been focusing on the letters more than choosing words, hence my reliance on word lists.
These poetry hauls are fun opportunities to play with smaller scripts arranged on a page. I only have to pick five words to turn the given ten into a fifteen word poem.
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4/20/25
Celebrating Easter with the most destructive beast known to mankind.
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5/25/25
Celebrating my colleagues’ new lives. Yes, our team had babyx2 last summer!
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5/28/25
Gemini Annie has two many
An inside joke with an online buddy who worked with a pair of cute twins at her old job.
I’m not a fan of the astrological words, certainly not in the context of making 5WP’s. But I’m in a “collect them all” mood with all of the Inktober challenges.
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6/1/25
Vista, playing with folds inside folds.
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I just listened to a podcast with a business professor who teaches about power. It was grating, until they had a discussion about the price of power.
In so many words Jeffrey Pfeffer acknowledged—when you got power, power got you.
I’ve seen this dynamic over the years. It’s why I’ve been fairly unambitious in my career. I do good work and this has stumbled me upwards, but I’ve never pressed for the next promotion because there is no free lunch in corporations.
Cya next time!
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PS—Exploration Peak
We went to the park with the kids. After the playground got busy, we hiked up the trail to the picnic structures on top of the hill. When we got there, the girl noticed that the benches had initials carved all over them.
She asked why people would do this. I responded that people want to make their mark in this world, even if it means vandalizing our public property. Not particularly noble, but I get it.
While hiking down the hill I thought of Bernard Tschumi’s follies. Of course, those big red structures are another stratosphere of architectural sophistication compared to picnic canopies.
It made me nostalgic for college, with memories of famous architects. Gods in our eyes; just men making their mark in our world.
—October 2021
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PPS—The turtle sandbox
The kids rediscovered the sandbox. A big green plastic turtle with a couple feet/stools and some toys. It’s a bittersweet object. We got it long ago, before the boy was a concept in our world.
He’s now old enough to play with himself in this box. He appreciates the company, but he keeps himself contented moving sand around. Our daughter is still young enough to enjoy the moment, but lost patience after a while.
Kids are fickle, but that means they can also come back to rediscover old joys, while we adults live at a much higher gear, too bored to watch children pushing sand. I rationally understand this is a vanishingly short moment, but my brain craves the high octane sugar buried in the telephone computer.
In twenty years, I hope that I’ll remember the evening light, the sand in my feet, and the fading Vegas summer heat before the start of fall, not this aching addiction to a glowing screen.
I wanted to start this NATO alphabet series with something simple. I was also testing some new paper. Smooth is nice, but it highlights fingerprints. Once they are used up, I’ll focus on the sulfite paper, because it’s cheaper and can be used on both sides.
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Thanks to Hazel Burgess for suggesting that I try blind contour drawing. It’s a great exercise!
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And thanks to Jozsef Abranko for the nudge to use my gouache to paint (duh!)
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I had been constipated with drawing for two decades before generative AI became a thing in 2022. When computers can create perfection in seconds, imperfection is now proof of humanity.
Nothing like a digital existential challenge to get moving. I picked up the pen again, meditating on my right hand shaping the letters of the alphabet, morning after morning.That cycle was replaced in 2024 by calligraphy, but I always wanted to properly close out this practice that awoke my spirit after such a long hiatus.
I hope you enjoy these old sketches paired with new graphs and my new explorations in gouache.
Starting the New Year marching through pieces from eight months ago, then again, it’s fun to explore the (recent) past.
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4/1/2025
Looking back, I should made a lot more of these backlit photos on the light tablet. I remember when light tables were big pieces of furniture. Now they are thin cheap LED’s powered by a USB-C cable.
After making this piece, I realized that this prompt was likely inspired by the TV show Severance. So I made a popup based on that logo as well.
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4/5/2025
state dinner droned past six rain lust through parged age never duplicate time flowing away
I spent a month playing with fractur script. Normally I use a 6.0mm nib, so it’s fun to drop down to the 2.4mm and fit more than a few words on a page.
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4/7
A simple slice, with the sliver tucked into its original cut.
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4/10/2025
A literal take on the Lego form as I was studying the 3+1 (above) versus 2+2 (below) folds.
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4/18/2025
Tigers hunt in the tall grass.
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I’ve been on a good run of working ahead, so it’s been weird to write in the present tense when it isn’t Thanksgiving yet. Moving forward, I might drop this pretense until I’m back to being behind “schedule”.
Cya next time!
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PS—Journey to the West, CCTV, 1986
After I recounted the story of the jade rabbit from chapter 95, my daughter wanted to watch the story. The episode adapted the novel well, hitting the key points while abridging and eliding non-critical aspects. The producers spun the story with a moral exhorting Piggy to behave, but otherwise followed the original.
Indeed, they followed the spirit perfectly. The novel is itself an artful collection of folk tales, so this was a figuratively faithful translation into a new medium.
Unfortunately, the production shows its age. The pacing is a little stilted and the budget is much less than one expects with modern fare. I imagine two audiences for this show—rewatching for nostalgia and for nerds to analyze how the novel was adapted to the television medium.
I would fit the latter group, but having no fondness for live action TV, this series isn’t for me, definitely not for a 30 hour commitment.
After completing the novel, I watched the final episode of the show. I love how they stayed faithful to the original story while closing it in its campy, endearing way. I see why this show has been replayed on TV every since year since its original broadcast. I watched a trailer of a 2011 take on the novel and the old practical effects of the original are vastly more appealing than cheap, outdated CGI.
—October 2021
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PPS—Cowboy Bebop, Netflix, 2021
I don’t know how to remake a classic, except that this ain’t it. The production is of decent quality, though imperfect. John Cho is a little old. None of the actors hits their notes dead on.
This adaptation is trapped in the uncanny valley of recreating the past (episode 1) and creating its own identity (episode 2). The first episode missed the mark (a damn near impossible task), and the second episode proved it was going in a direction that I wasn’t interested in.
Vicious and Julia are barely characters in the original. He was (as the name implies) is a cruel force of nature. She’s mute lost object of desire. Making them human reduces their essence and costs us time in revisiting the main characters.
To be fair, I might have given this series one more episode but after disliking the second I crawled the internet, found mixed removed and moved on. Why spend 8 hours on a mediocre echo when I could just revisit the original masterpiece again?
—November 2021
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PPPS—World’s Most Extraordinary homes, Netflix, 2017-2018
My kids make little tent structures around the house so we thought they would enjoy checking out all these cool houses around the world.
Yup, it was pretty awesome!
Admittedly, when the revolution comes, these folks will be the first to fight the mob at their gates (unless their private security forces pushes the rabble towards easier targets).
Class envy aside, the rapport between the hosts was fun and the houses were luxurious. Unsurprisingly, we preferred the smaller (often architect owned) structures. Financial constraints made for tighter designs that just felt right.
The first season was sorted by geography (mountain, coast, etc.), while the second was by nation. Both were fun to watch and it’s a shame there aren’t any more seasons.
Before wandering into the world of pop up cards, here are five last 5WP’s…until we get back into poetry again!
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3/24 Inktober 52 (2024), week 13
battling samurai with a spork
I tried a few lineweights with this Spork. The simple clean version one felt most spork-y.
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3/28 Inktober 52 (2024), week 11
japanese racoons shapeshift with nuts
A reference to the brilliant Studio Ghibli movie Pom Poko, a fun commentary on fighting our inevitable exploitation of nature. An early scene showing the development of the rural land around Tokyo is one of the sharpest satires I’ve seen on film.
I can’t remember for sure, but with the spacing so perfect, I suspect it was tweaked in the box. Nothing crazy, just a nudge here or there.
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4/3 Inktober 52 (2024), week 8
astronaut riding a space donkey
An early experiment with inverting the background and playing with colors (using the Hue-Saturation filter). One day I should start experimenting in IRL with gauche on colored paper.
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4/4 Inktober 52 (2024), week 9
always add a red balloon
The version on blank sheets was fine, but ruled binder paper felt like a relevant background for something that references a red-balloon (and as always a little extra noise can make a huge difference).
This was a reference to the architectural rendering trope adding a child with a red balloon. It gives a pop of color in the sky and a sense of playfulness to an otherwise staid image.
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3/29 Inktober 52 (2025), week 13
a flock of folded rams
With this I detoured heavily into the world of pop-up cards. We bought Paul Jackson’sCut and Fold Techniques for Pop-Up Designs for the boy’s birthday, but I stole it as soon as I saw it. There would be a few more 5WP’s, but dealing with the third dimension and the constraints of the paper sucked all my creative energy for a while.
After summer, I returned to flat paper with the ruling pen but focused on a single word at a time. I’d like to return to poetry and pop-ups (and maybe both at the same time!), but struggling with a word itself is challenge enough for now.
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As we head into this season of year end summaries, it’s interesting to think that this post covers the first half of 2025 with my “standard” 5WP format, practicing with a brushpen on ruled binder paper, and folded pop-up cards.
The second half of the year (assuming no surprises after I draft this in late October) was dominated by the ruling pen, a month off due to illness, embracing a focus on just one word at a time, and finally pushing out some old blog drafts.
I wonder what the new year will bring? All I know is that I don’t.
It’s gentle, but dang if your arms don’t get tired! And it’s easy to crank it up if you’re feeling it.
For me, it is cultural tourism, exer-dancing with a group from the exotic orient. I guess it’s not totally foreign since I’m of Chinese descent. The music is familiar, even though I don’t understand the words to the songs. While the megalopolis Asian urban setting is strange, the faces are not.
I would prefer to hang out at the local Kung Fu gym for my exercise. But that time that has passed. I don’t have time to slip out to practice with kids who are a just a few years older than my children.
Unfortunately, Tai Chi by myself gets old after a while, but partaking in the kitschy music and oddly familiar foreign group movement with the family is a nice change of pace for a day’s exercise.
—May 2021
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PPS—Rubber Balloons
My daughter wanted helium balloons for her birthday, but we ordered a bag of regular balloons from Target.
She quickly got over her disappointment after my wife inflated a couple of them. Human air doesn’t float, but gravity makes for play. They spent a couple of hours batting them around the house. Up and down the stairs, over the dividing walls, in the bedrooms.
I hadn’t heard the boy laugh like this in a while. All over fifty cents of rubber.
It pained me to think of all the kids who can’t afford such a fleeting luxury. And I was reminded of a fellow father riding in the Vegas heat with a foil balloon for each of his kids.
—October 2021, soon after, they discovered the manual mattress pump. We had hours of fun inflating the balloons and letting them fly through the house.
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PPPS—Pac-Man
Our daughter is growing up fast. She was reading a book with snippets from American History and asked about “Pac-Man”.
We watched YouTube videos and played Scratch versions of this classic. I also explained the concept of “arcades” where people had to pay coins to play computer games, and how the value of a quarter has been debased over forty years.
This weekend I pulled out a “Pac-Man Connect and Play” that plugs into the TV. Even though they didn’t enjoy Pac-Man, the boy loved a driving game where you left oil spills to spin out the pursuer. She preferred a flying game shooting coins out of the air.
After TV time was up, we played Pac-Man in person, using deflated balloons for the smaller buttons and inflated balloons for the ones that made Pac-Man eat the ghosts.
Then we took another YouTube break for the The Go! Team’s Ms. Pac-Man music video. That led to watching more music videos, TV advertising, and discussed how TV used to be appointment viewing.
Basically, we covered the last half century of American culture in a weekend through a yellow lens.
