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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battling
samurai
with a
spork
I tried a few lineweights with this Spork. The simple clean version one felt most spork-y.
,
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.
,
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.
,
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.
,
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
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PPPPPS—Practice
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