Happy Nevada Day / Halloween!
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I referenced “International Calligraphy Today”, book published for a 1980 exhibition. This rescue was inspired by Crous-Vidal.
I wholeheartedly recommend that book for anyone interested in this art. There is endless, amazing work on Instagram but the platform is built distraction, not study.
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This was inspired by Hans-Joachim Burgert. But I broke the script by tossing a small “o” instead of a full sized circle which gave that page a lovely texture between the vertical letters, big O’s, and slanted S’s.
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Inspired by Herman Killian, it took many tries to get the flimsy to feel right. It’s easy to fall back into architectural lettering, which was not the goal on this one.
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Italics with flourishes again. Also learning to utilize a slghtly dry brush for imperfect elegant strokes with this lady.
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hooray is the other 2-step piece along with panic. I wanted to do a bubbly graphic, but how do you render bubbles in black and white? I referenced old books of pen and ink work. This is obviously amateurish, but I don’t have the patience of the masters.
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While playing social media manager for this year’s Inktober, I played with a folded pen to finish off the prompt list 2018. Even though my 2016, 2017, and 2018 collections are not as polished as my real-time Inktober participations, I’m excited to finally scan those pieces that I’ve made over the past year.
Cya next time!
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PS—The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera, 1978,
The books is a “novel” of interconnected stories. There are seven chapters multiple intertwining threads and at least one overarching story. In other words, I should be in love with the formal play.
Unfortunately I’m also a prude.
It’s not that this book should be censored. It’s not all that explicit nor shocking. I just don’t enjoy the licentiousness. Even worse, I’m not inclined to dig beyond the salacious bits to plumb the deeper meaning of his message.
I’m certain there is an embedded critique of repressive the communist regime as well as the nagging frustration that we each carry in ourselves. There’s also a primal scream of trauma from being crushed and exiled by the totalitarian state, separated from all that is familiar. Sex stands in as the source and manifestation of the to many pathologies manifested by laughter and forgetting.
But those are all hazy notions. Someone else can plumb those depths.
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It also felt a bit male-gazey in a post #metoo world, but what would you expect from a 20th century male novelist? One day I’d like to read the four classic Chinese novels, however this book makes me think that I’ll never make it through A Dream of the Red Chamber.
—February 2022
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PPS—Holes, Louis Sachar, 1998
What makes a young adult novel?
I guess it’s the lack of ambiguity. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad. The worst gal is extra bad, and everyone ends up with their just deserts.
It’s still a fun read. The story is engaging, and the protagonist grows throughout the book. Having just read Kundera’s Book on Laughter and Forgetting, it was refreshing. I didn’t have to deal with complexities and my prudishness wasn’t triggered.
Holes helped me realize what I enjoy in literature. I don’t enjoy the naughty bits, but I love the formal play and fantastical absurdities of Borges, Calvino, and the Oulipo group.
I wonder if this explains my preferences in movies as well. I don’t dig romance nor horror. Both of those genres are too visceral, but I can’t handle drama’s either—I can only do life one youtube clip at a time. But for 90 minutes straight unless it has to be the glorious absurdities of animation, or an action flick.
—February 2022
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PPPS—Practice
—October 2026, I got sick at the start of the month so I went into quarantine. The boy got slightly under the weather, but fortunately my wife avoided long COVID this time. On the other hand, she got to run the house for a week while I had a vacation in the calligraphy-collage room.
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