GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Things

  • contrasts (five pack 24+rubik’s cube+pens)

    Lately, I’ve been scribing old texts, but these posts are fun a reminder of last year’s explorations.

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    May 2025

    I really like the contrast of the bright italic hungry on the compressed Roman capital background.

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    August 2025

    The contrast between the cursive Bus and the gothicized italic Stop slammed together nicely, spiced by the ruling pen splatters.

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    May 2025

    Multiple SAD‘s went well with this pop-up design of multiple cuts.

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    July 2025

    I save the initial washes from my brushes and pens in containers, letting them slowly evaporate into a grey wash, which I used with a ruling pen here I enjoyed the cheeky contradiction of the words Slow Up against a rapid, sloppy cursive.

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    July 2025

    spun
    chaos
    thru
    woven
    silk

    This was my last 5WP of 2025, Funny how practices just slip away with a whimper, this was my last 5WP of 2025. After that, I played with big words with the ruling pen, watercolors, and gouache. Maybe I’ll come back to this format one day. Or maybe, like hard disks with spinning platters, I’ve done my last one.

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    Life and art moves fast. Cya next time!

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    PS—Rubik’s Cube

    I fell into a rathole last week, finally learning the Rubik’s Cube. Years ago, I was impressed with a table of kids effortlessly solving these cubes at the Rivera food court while lunching at a convention.

    Turns out that a learning the Rubik’s Cube is like acquiring any other skill in this modern world. Start with youtube. I could have gone shopping but I just found a short video and jumped in.

    The first couple tries took a while, an hour for the first and then forty minutes, constantly referencing the video. The next few came much faster even while referencing J Perm’s static website for edge cases.

    Even though it’s tough at first, there aren’t that many patterns to memorize, so I’m now I’m solving the cubes consistently in the 4 minute range, even less if everything lines up correctly.

    Apparently the “beginner’s method” can consistently garner 2-4 minute solves, so I’ve pretty much hit max speed.

    Do I practice to get as fast as possible using this method? Or do I blow it up to memorize more advanced techniques?

    Like every other hobby on the internet, it’s a total rathole. Thankfully I’m not particularly competitive. I’ll most likely just teach my family how to solve the cube and be done with it.

    —November 2021, and yes, I just stopped and forgot it all over the past four years.

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    PPS—Christmas Pens, Twenty Twenty-three

    For Christmas, I gave myself three (six) new pens.

    I bought the Enso Pilot Parallel Set, which includes four pens at 6.0mm, 3.8mm, 2.4mm, and 1.5mm.I screwed the Pilot Parallel 6.0mm nib into a Pilot Spare Sign pen body which makes for a great barrel filled setup.

    I also got the Duke 551. with the with Guanyu inscription—”忠義仁勇信” (loyalty, righteousness, benevolence, bravery, trustworthiness). Just yesterday I thinking I own enough ink to last for ages, but not with these pens!

    And finally, I got a Jinhao 80 with a Naginata Nib. It’s “just” a cheap Lamy 2000 knockoff but the nib is epic. It’s gonna supplant the Architect nib as my favorite variable nib.

    The Parallel 6.0mm is great. Everything you’d want from a 3.8mm but more! A totally different lettering experience on the page, and my recommendation for anyone starting to learn calligraphy.

    Little wooden guy approves!

    —December 2023

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    PPPS—Practice

    —June 2025

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  • bravo

    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.

    Life isn’t tidy.

    —16 November 2025

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  • OPM.66 Not Young

    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.
    • For good clear overview of scripts over history check out Julian Chazal’s Calligraphy a Complete Guide and David Harris’s Art of Calligraphy.
    • I also love Harris’s early book Calligraphy: Modern Masters, a survey of contemporary work around 1991.
    • 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.

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    Christmas Party at Amalgamated Wireless, Ashfield, New South Wales, 1937, Sam Hood

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    Goodbye

    Now it’s time to close out this project.

    If I was feeling frisky, I’d do a post mortem report of the OPM Letter with my four questions:

    1. Was the objective clear?
    2. What went wrong, how do we avoid it in the future?
    3. What went well, how do we keep it going?
    4. Did we miss any opportunities?

    But life isn’t always work, so I’ll let these questions linger. Instead, here is a parting gift, a collection of calligraphy, 100 Words on Design.

    Thanks again for reading this on-and-off newsletter.

    Please shoot me an email, I’d love to catch up.

    Cheers!
    Justus

  • One last (five pack seventeen+Jia Mu Si+Ballons+Pac Man)

    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.

    Cya next time!

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    PS—Jia Mu Si

    A few years ago my in-laws started practicing this group aerobic exercise.

    Last summer we started doing it ourselves.

    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.

    —October 2021

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    PPPPS—Practice

    3/25

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    PPPPPS—Practice

    3/30

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  • Mixing it up (five-pack twelve+Bissell Vaccum+Stainless Steel Pans)

    It’s a pain to track which goes with what…so I’m mixing up the Inktober 52 prompts with my own 5WP’s. Bon Appetit!

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    2/10 Inktober 52 (2022), week 51

    flickering
    victorians
    pacing
    gaslit
    verandas

    This was the last 5WP for an informal series on magic using Inktober prompts. I had a rough time composing this piece. When I was younger I would be disappointed the deflation that comes with the end of a project. Now I’m just used to it. On to the next!

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    2/11 Poetry Haul #3

    shoulders cry pleading
    seeking peace

    hibernation silo
    free body struggle

    frequently understatement ever
    vigilant rights

    You really can’t cross the same river twice. In early February, I had just come off of a month of pointed brush work. I don’t think I could do this right now. Even though I’m still practicing daily, I’ve lost the edge that comes with focusing on it solely every morning.

    To do this again, I’d have to relive January, like the Borges story where Pierre Menard creates a life to spontaneously re-create Don Quixote.

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    2/13 Inktober 52 (2024), week 28

    ratty
    rebels
    raided
    royal
    realms

    I save of all my scrap sheets. This was graphed on a test page for my team holiday cards. Of course, many attempts to work on such sheets also don’t turn out, so they just get blacker over time!

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    2/16 Inktober 52 (2025), week 7

    4
    triangles
    make a
    pyramid

    I love calligraphy due to its handcraft. But the final deliverable is always on a screen. So am I a digital artist?

    Maybe. Two months after the initial publication, I can’t remember the original ink color (turned out it was pink). The background was obviously an addition after the fact. And actually, this is version 2 because I had originally uploaded one where the script color opacity came out differently between the sky and sand backgrounds.

    So yes, this is absolutely a piece of digital art. But in this digital age, is everything digital art? Maybe that’s a meaningless distinction? Everything flits across a universe of flickering rectangles, while the “real” work sits inside an old cardboard Sun Chips box.

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    2/15 Poetry Haul #6

    vision notified
    no cold hope

    dismiss despair
    supply prove dream

    remarkably somewhere
    slam hot truth

    Like clockwork, I start publicly running the script of the month after two weeks of practice. After fourteen days, I’m comfortable with the muscle memory even if it hasn’t hit full smoothness.

    On the third week, it gets locks in, edging towards boredom. By week four I’m playing with variations on the script.

    By week six or seven I feel like I’ve already lost the script, or that it’s merged with the new script of that next month.

    It’s a slightly depressing cycle, but no skill is permanent.

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    If even knowledge is impermeant, I guess a cardboard box of papers ain’t a bad parting gift.

    Cya next time!

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    PS—Bissell Vacuum Cleaner

    We’ve tried a few vacuum cleaners over the years. We have a $400 Miele in the closet, and we’ve also spent similar sums on a couple of cordless Dysons.

    But our workhorse is an $18 Bissell. We’ve bought four of them. The first one died. The second for my mother-in-law and then we accidentally bought two more online when we were moving into our place. No matter, just keep one up and downstairs.

    It’s just a little handheld vacuum with a handle extension and a flat insert to let you push it along the floor.

    That’s the magic. So cheap you’re never scared to use it. Dirty kitchen. Suck it up. Laminate floors? Without brushes, this vacuum can’t ruin anything. No bags to track. Just dump it out and wash the filter.

    And no batteries! This thing runs forever. Light and nimble, well worth the hassle of occasionally swapping plugs when vacuuming a large area.

    The cheapest product came out to be the best one. At least the most regularly used everywhere, and is there a better definition of “best” for a household appliance?

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    PPS—Stainless Steel Baking Pans

    We bought an 8″x10″ baking pan, a few years ago. Small enough to fit a toaster oven. Works great. Flat plate of stainless steel with a slight rolled rim. Nice and shiny.

    And a second one last year, so we could swap back and forth, but we gave one to our in-laws.

    But I got cute with the third one. Intsead of reordering the exact same item, I got one that came with a little grill rack.

    It was so small!

    I double checked. The dimensions were super close, just off one inch in each direction: 7×9 versus 8×10.

    Do the math.

    63 square inches to 80 square inches. I bought something that was almost a quarter smaller than the original!

    What an embarrassing display of innumeracy. My mental math is great…if I use my brain.

    But the rack is nice. We’ve gotten good use out of it. No complaints.

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    PPPS—Practice

    2/12

    Around mid-February I realized that I would totally lose the straight brush if I didn’t practice it regularly. So I started filling the empty lines between the main scripts with cursive.

  • A couple from the boy (five-pack four+Magic Puzzle Company)

    Some 5WP’s from that came from here and out there.

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    12/15

    floor
    slug
    clapping
    his
    feet

    When we eat, the boy wanders around the house. I wrote this after watching him mop the floor with his back and clapping his feet in the middle of dinner. The girl has always been well behaved at meals so I’m gonna chalk it up to genetics.

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    12/13

    dreamland
    dusk
    seeking
    the
    girl

    An early morning poem after waking up from a dream.

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    12/16

    metal
    tail
    chubby
    sky
    shark

    Next to the airport is a big shopping center. I’m always tickled by the tail fins gliding in the background by as jets prepare for takeoff while I’m parking the car to pick up oranges.

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    12/31/2024

    poetry
    pokes
    thru
    imperfect
    precision

    It started with the phrase “poetry is precision” but it felt too pat and wasn’t five words.

    I have no business making pronouncements on the nature of poetry. If I keep this up maybe this will feel prescient. Or just cringe. Tomorrow’s problem!

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    1/2/2025

    do dreams teach you stuff?

    A couple of weeks ago, the boy walked up as I was typing on the computer and asked an innocent question.

    Unfortunately my first attempt had a mistake. But it’s prettier.

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    I’ve been focusing on using a straight brush for this month.

    I’m not using a “real” standalone brush, but Pentel refillable brush pen. The price fluctuates wildly, but I’ve gotten them at around $8 for a pen (with two black cartridges). I refill the empty cartridges with whatever color I want. I’ve got three at home and one at the office.

    We also picked up a straight brush from Blick for Christmas. Maybe I’ll pull it out and have something deep to say about straight brush calligraphy by the end of the month. Ha!

    Cya next time!

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    PS–Magic Puzzle Company

    In spite of my fatherly brainwashing, my kids just aren’t into boardgames.

    But they did go through a jigsaw puzzle phase. A couple of years ago I found a puzzle at Goodwill priced at $12.99, when I’ve never seen a puzzle go for more than $2.99.

    That price sparked my curiosity so I looked it up on Amazon. It had good reviews, the box felt sturdy, and the art was undeniably cute. I bought it for the girl’s birthday.

    Bingo!

    I bought another one for my son’s birthday (this time new).

    Bingo, again!

    These offerings by Magic Puzzle Company are spectacular. Thick pieces, intricate art, creative cuts, damn near magical. Heads and tails better than Ravensburger puzzles (which are already significantly better than other brands normally found in thrift shops).

    So I’m giving it the highest possible recommendation. In a world where I can keep buying used puzzles at the library and thrift stores for two bucks a pop, I’ve purchased the entire Magic Puzzle Company catalog at $23 a piece.

    To add a slight literary valence (and to avoid being a complete shill) I’ll also recommend that y’all check out George Perec’s Life a User’s Manual. I often think about the puzzle maker in that novel while playing these puzzles. It’s high time that I revisit that epic.

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    PPS—Heal

    1/3

    are you going to heal the sink?
    yes, we need to fix it next week.
    I like to say heal—it’s like a person.

    From a conversation last year with the boy soon after we moved into this house.

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  • Catching up December (five-pack three+Ties*2)

    With the holidays, I’ve fallen behind on these compilations. We’ll see if I catch up or if life will keep me busy so that production just falls off in this new year. It’s gonna be a busy year at work, without adding any burdens from a self-imposed hobby schedule.

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    12/7 Inktober 52, week 49

    krampus
    tracks
    you
    year
    round

    I tried to create claustrophobia with Krampus spying through the caps in the words. Turns out that half-hiding the four words along the top was more effective.

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    12/11 Inktober 52, week 35

    loft nest of cruel fairies

    Made a loft out of “loft”. Unfortunately, I’ve totally forgotten how I created that creepy effect with “fairies”, maybe with a ruling pen?

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    12/12 Inktober 52, week 34

    ride clouds with 72 transformations

    Another homage to the Great Sage Equal to Heaven. I used to believe that I didn’t have a favorite didn’t have a superhero. When the boy was old enough to get into the Sun Wukong cartoons, I realized I did had one all along, decades after my mom read these stories to me as a boy. Soon after, I read the Journey to the West and fell in love with that crazy monkey even more.

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    12/14 Inktober 52, week 33

    pink dreams in a stormtrooper

    pink stormtrooper in a dream

    Stormtrooper was the word, but it played out in two different ways.

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    12/19 Inktober 52, week 31

    It’s just one tiny bean

    “Stormtrooper” and “Bean” are both unapologetically inspired by this essay by Michele Banks about the work of Christopher Wool. It’s is well worth a read.

    The variations (among several more that aren’t published) show that there is a whole world of additional decisions that follow the initial concept. Details upon details, all the way down.

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    After all the decisions, there is the final execution. Which is always a thrill and terror.

    Every time I get frustrated at a piece, I re-center by reminding myself that it’s a huge privilege to work on these drawings. I should savor these multiple bites at this apple. Is there any better use of time than making art?

    Here’s to more 5WP’s in ’25.

    Cya next time!

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    PS–Ties

    Architects have a weird relationship with ties. We’re artsy professionals.

    Look at the photos of any architecture website—we don’t wear ties. I never wore one in private practice. We’ll rock a sports coats for big meetings and some architects make a statement with a bow tie. But no ties.

    But things were a bit more formal in the State. As the low guy on the totem pole, it’s best to be overdressed for government meetings. So I kept a coat in a car (with two ties, to match whatever shirt I might be wearing).

    How about meetings where I’m not the low guy? In such a case, I like to signal west-coast casualness to keep folks at ease, but I’m still a government official. Last year, I finally solved the conundrum. I can just wear the tie, without the coat! With a tie, I’m taking the meeting seriously, but not I’m not full of myself.

    A good example would be consultant selection interviews. I don’t want to outshine the interviewees, but I want to acknowledge that this is a big deal for them.

    If I know I’m going to wear a tie that day, I’ll wear a long sleeved shirt, but in a pinch, a short sleeved shirt with a tie has a nice 50’s vibe to it. But wait! There’s more—the badge lanyard. At the State our employee ID card was functionally useless. So I never wore it except for meetings in other State buildings. In such a case I’m signaling that I’m “one of you” (versus the outside consultants or contractors).

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    PPS-Airport Dress Update

    With airport security, the badge lanyard went from bonus to required. Even then, which lanyard? These things are all branded! Currently I’ve settled for a LAS lanyard that was passed out at an all-hands meeting. I’d prefer a thinner lighter lanyard, but until I splurge on a UC Berkeley lanyard, it’s best to rep for the employer.

    More complicated is how to dress. For most folks that’s not a problem. Almost all of the airport dresses pretty much as we did at the State. But my boss comes from the East Coast. He’s always well dressed. Invariably better dressed than the top directors of this place! It’s a balancing act. As his subordinate, I don’t want to underdress my boss, but it feels weird to be overdressed to his bosses.

    Currently my compromise is that while I’m in the office I dress as I’ve always done (button down and slacks). But whenever I hit the terminals I tuck the shirt in and wear a sports coat. If I’m in a big meeting, I’ll wear a tie. Definitely when I’m meeting the public or when elected officials, and I’m still figuring out how to play it out when it comes to our internal leadership.

    So to that end, I finally bought a couple ties. First time in decades! I got tired of the old hand-me-downs with bland patterns and got a pair of simple navy blue ties (representing the color the new Harry Reid logo). With a sports coat in the car and another in the cubicle, I’m always ready to look formal.

    Of course, I’m is totally overthinking things, nobody else is wasting brain space on such questions. But overthinking is what architects do. So Walmart is $20 richer, and I’m the proud owner of two blue strips of cloth.

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    PPS-Blick Paper Play

    For Christmas we bought a ream of sulfite paper from Blick. I took a moment to compare it against an existing ream that we already have. The texture is the same so the only difference is a very subtle beige tint on the Blick paper that might have been washed out in the post processing.

    Still, it’s always fun to play with all the tools on one sheet.

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  • Rhodia Reverse Book (80 sheets, dot grid, 8.3″x8.3″, 80g paper, wire bound)

    This summer I rediscovered fountain pens.

    A month later, I had to get better paper. Cheap steno pads are great for work, but they don’t show inks at their finest.

    Hedonic treadmill!

    Rhodia paper is great (as advertised!) Love the smooth buttery slide. The colors pop. They shade.

    Every morning I’d draw a hand in this book. (Whoa! Minus ten pages of doodles, that means I have about a hundred fifty hands in here!)

    I barely used the dots. If given a choice I’d go blank. (Then again, it was nice to have guides for the few times I played with calligraphy.)

    Absolutely love the square. I don’t have to compose a sketch for the rectangle. 1:1 simplifies the mind before pen strikes paper.

    But I’m not tossing out the other sketchbooks. I’m far too cheap to abandon unused paper.

    In the meantime, I hope Rhodia keeps making these Reverse Books. (I’ll be back.)
     

    It’s been a good year for my hand. With the new fountain pen habit, I’ve started a morning journal / sketching / calligraphy practice. And worked through several small notebooks (random product show gifts) at the dinner table. I’m slowly getting over my old hangups about sketching.

    Much as I hate to admit it, social media+consumerism sometimes hits the spot.
     

    Postscript — I restarted my Blick 5.5″ x8.5″ sketchbook with this note:

    Christmas 2023 Restarting a new-old notebook & drying up old pens. I wonder what will show up on these pages? What will be discerned in manipulating pen & ink on paper — privileges unthinkable to our ancestors of previous generations. When paper was a fucking trade secret. In a fraught time — we still owe the world our art. To much has been given — lets return this gift to the present (and maybe the future too.)

     

  • Five Pens

    If I had to start over, here are the pens I’d get in order.

    1. Pilot Kakuno, Extra Fine
    2. Pilot Parallel, 3.8mm
    3. FPR Muft, Ultraflex nib
    4. Sailor Fude De Mannen, 40 degrees
    5. FPR Muft, Architect Nib

    Notes:

    1. I love the smiley face on the nib. Just need to get a Kaweco Sport clip for my shirt pocket. The Kakuno beat out the Platinum Preppy because of cartridge compatibility with the Parallel if I was to take them both on the road. The Japanese Extra Fine nib takes the top slot because it’s perfect for everyday carry and sketching.
    2. The Parallel is in a Pilot Sign Pen Body and has been used as an eyedropper at home for months without leaks, but I’d use a cartridge if I was traveling (just to be safe).
    3. The FPR Muft had been perfect at home (love the clear eyedropper body) but leaked on the road. I’m curious about the Osprey Madison with a Zebra G nib, but worried about rust. If the road-ability is important I could just use the ultraflex in my FPR Guru (a piston filling pen that didn’t leak when we went on a trip in summer).
    4. The Fude is screwed in a Sailor Compass body. Even though it’s clear, it isn’t eyedropper convertible without epoxy to plug up the body. I like the 40 degree nib slightly better than the 55 degree nib but I’m exploring other Fude Pens, so this may change.
    5. This Architect nib lays a beautiful bold line that goes skinny on a dime. And yes, it’s great for architectural lettering.

  • Goodbye to Green

    At the start of 2023 I got back into using fountain pens after a long hiatus after finishing Berkeley. The ink in my bottle of Waterman Green had dried out so I revived it with water.

    A couple of weeks ago, I decided to focus on finishing this bottle so I took it out of the dark storage box and left it on the desk.

    Yesterday I realized there was a little white mold floating on the surface!

    I’m most likely too cheap for my own good, but I refilled up a couple eyedroppers that already had this green in their barrels and pulled out a brush to burn through the rest. As you can see, the green had morphed to an interesting dark teal.

    I suspect I got this bottle while still in high school, so it’s been with me for more than a quarter century. It’s now empty and washed.

    Given my morning pages and sketches, I suspect this old buddy will be all gone in a week.