GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Artifacts

  • Inktober24, week 2

    I went hard on the brushes this week. I suspect this week will be the creative apex of this challenge. I’ve enjoyed pushing things to the limit, but it takes a lot of time and Halloween is looming!

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    10/6

    worlds hiding
    trek
    inside pages

    Super-graphics look cool, but they are hard! Not only are they big, they have to be right. Then again, the misses create a lot of scrap sheets for extra practice.

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    10/7

    sparrows
    fly without a
    passport

    I pondered this poem while hiking the arroyo. Getting into nature is one of the best ways to focus on an interesting problem (beyond the mundane distractions of daily life).

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    10/8

    brain walk your soul
    hike

    Again, super-graphics are hard! I took ten shots to get something that worked. I got lucky that this sheet had a thin layer of crayon, giving “hike” a beautiful shimmer. This one also introduces my normal handwriting, even if it’s lost in the noise.

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    10/9

    why does the sun sleep?

    I tried a few arrangements with this one, and started testing them all this one sheet. Eventually it became the (non)answer.

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    10/10

    nomadic
    galaxies
    herding
    wayward
    nebulas

    I came up with this poem with similar sized words and then flailed for a composition. On one shot, I used an oversized brush to make the pink layer. That was pretty good, but it didn’t hold it’s own. So I scanned and printed a few copies to experiment with a second layer. It was nice to come up with a good solution, but I still had to execute. Writing the blue layer was the most stressful thing I did all week. If I made a mistake, I’d be ruining two attempts at once.

    I imagine such exercises will get easier after acclimating to this script (as opposed to creating it an hour before completing the image).

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    10/11

    he yowled
    daddy
    stole
    snacks

    Speaking of ruining a composition on the last word. I messed up the “y” on yowled but was too burnt out from yesterday to try more than a few attempts. November’s project will learning copperplate and writing with a sharp nib—proper cursive is a black hole in my game and there are enough youtube and instagram videos that prove it’s doable for lefties.

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    10/12

    remote
    is your next minute

    It‘s nice to just do a simple composition. It helps that I’m now good enough with the brush to easily repeat a word. In this case, I had already completed a decent composition, which erased all the stress. So I just played, trying slightly different arrangements and landing on that script that I learned a few days with “nomadic”.

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    Two weeks into Instagram, it’s a mixed bag. Discovery is awesome. One can feed any interested with an endless supply of images by following hashtags. But the algorithm is capricious (for an addictive slot machine dynamic), creating psychological tension.

    There is an implicit pressure to compare oneself against the best. That’s a ridiculous notion. An amateur would be wise to reference the greats, but the flattening effect of social media creates a mirror of self comparison against those who have dedicated their lives to the craft.

    So I must constantly remind myself that the goal is to make images that I’m curious to see, not to enter a popularity contest of algorithmic work. Even more fundamentally, the doing is the prize, everything else (even that image) is a bonus.

    Cya next week!

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    My daughter joined in for Trek, this time with Procreate. Hopefully she’ll draw more, preferably physical but I’ll be happy however she wants to create.

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  • vertical

    Earlier in the year, I waited eight weeks for the local Ikea to finally get a shipment of Billy bookcases.

    The particle board smell was so strong that we started with two book cases and let the rest air out in the garage. This start was enough to handle a third of my books.

    A few weeks later, we raised the final three and finally emptied our boxes of books after eleven years!

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    Social media is dangerous. Our puny individual ape brains were not evolved to survive hordes of corporate psychologists. However, there is great value buried in those sites.

    After being on on Instagram for #inktober for two weeks, I am all the more certain that the best way handle a social media website is to decide upon a real-world analogy (to limit your use) and never let it slip out of its prison.

    Here are my personal metaphors for various social media sites.

    • Twitter—Newspaper opinion pages (lurk only—no comments, no hearts)
    • Facebook—Telephone gossip among old friends
    • Linkedin—Awkward business networking event
    • Instagram—Mall of private galleries (I’ve had a rotation of interests, but my current selections are calligraphy, illustration, and airports).
    • Reddit—Collection of old school special interest web-forums (ignore the all-in-one feed on the main page).
    • Substack—The collected newsletters make an Arts and Poetry Magazine, with Notes as an attached web-forum (I avoid hot button topics like politics).
    • Youtube—A giant Fry’s Electronics wall of TV’s. Even though I only lurk the site, this is by far the hardest place to keep in check. I might institute a personal rule to write a sentence about each video I watch (h/t James Hart).
    • Tiktok—Just Say No.

    In these battles against the algorithm, you will be constantly presented with intriguing morsels creeping outside of your proscribed boundaries. Don’t take the bait. You must constantly ignore, mute, and cull your feeds. Big Social is a fine servant but a cruel master.

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  • Inktober24, week 1

    This year, I’m doing the Inktober Challenge, which includes a daily word prompt. Instead of waiting a month to compile all of my entries, I’ll share them a week at a time, with a little commentary to accompany each 5 Word Poem.

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    9/29, 9/30

    dancing
    letter
    poems
    Inktober
    incoming
                                hi!

     
    The weekend before the challenge, I learned Textura Prescisus to have a script that contrasts strongly against scripts. I then wrote this 5WP to mark my the arsenal on the eve of the event.

    It had been a struggle over two months to learn twisting the nib for both Foundational Hand and Celtic Half-Uncial because they move the pen differently from each other. To my surprise, that painful skill building set me up to learn Textura Prescisus in a flash. I learned it so quickly, that I picked up Chancery Cursive (hi!) the morning after.

    That said, these new scripts betray an uncertainty in the hand, but only time and practice will fix those lines.

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    10/1

    proudly
    carried
    his
    red
    backpack

     
    The boy got a red backpack at a back-to-school event this summer. Even though we’re doing online school, he proudly wore it when we went to Springs Preserve. With the brilliant Birmingham Ink Magma in one of my pens, this was a no-brainer.

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    10/2

    reaching
    out
    we
    discover
    ourselves

     
    I started the challenge with Foundational Hand, which I knew best. On this second day, I snuck in Celtic Half-Uncial to highlight the day’s prompt.

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    10/3

    boots
    never
    worn
    new
    work

     
    I bought a pair of steel toe boots since we were about to start construction on a new DMV. Then I changed jobs. By the time life slowed down, it was too late to return the boots. They’re sitting in the closet, waiting.

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    10/4

    exotic
    is
    your
    neighbor’s
    normal

     
    I paired an extreme form of Textura Precisus (cutting off the baseline of the script) with Chancery Hand (its narrowness lets me fit “neighbor’s” onto the page). These 5WP’s are a balancing act to find a decent poem that also works visually on the page.

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    10/5

    eye
    see
    binoculars
    far
    out

     
    I took two bites of the apple with this one. After posting the first version, my daughter mentioned that the “b” looked small. I was also unhappy with the original wording so I went back upstairs to try again.

    The shading displays the proud entrance of brushes into the mix. I wanted something that could let me write larger on the page, after maxing with the 6.0mm Pilot Parallels. So now I got hairs to lay ink.

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    This week has been fun. The 5 Word Poem format had gotten stale, so it’s been invigorating to have someone else hand me a fresh word to wrangle every day.

    It’s also a pleasant challenge to produce a finished drawing every day. Sometimes it’s important to lie fallow and just play, but a little pressure is often necessary to push the process. Luckily I had enough free time this week to both play with brushes and make a 5WP each morning. I doubt I’ll be so lucky in the coming weeks with incoming Halloween events.

    Cya next week!

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    BONUS!

    The girl finally joined the Inktober fun on Saturday after I showed her a series with Pokemon. Hopefully she’ll keep it up, at least on the weekends.

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  • unordered

    The husband of local architect collects Pokémon cards. When I asked her where to buy a big box of cheap commons, she handed me a pile that I passed onto the kids.

    That became a giant mess on the floor, way past bedtime!

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    I’m learning that cleaning up is a slow necklace of focused moments.

    Each attempt at organizing takes way longer than planned. But if you tackle each clean-up endeavor as a focused chip off a giant boulder, you’ll make a dent over time.

    Last Saturday we finally put up shelves in the garage. Sunday, I threw the mess up on the wall. Admittedly this just made a vertical wreck, but it was nice to see the concrete slab again.

    This morning, I sorted through the stuff, consolidated the boxes, and we now enjoy a tidy garage.

    Onto the house (a small corner at a time)!

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  • tundra


    In winter, we played in the snow as the sun set over the girl’s last afternoon as a 9 year old. With the rains of that week, our usual spot at Mount Charleston (in the valley below the visitor center) was in fresh deep fluff.

    Coincidentally, this week, I’ve been listening to the Fred Frith soundtrack to Rivers and Tides which includes a few scenes of Andy Goldsworthy working in the winter cold. My memory of the sounds from that afternoon have blended with the sounds of that lovely film.

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    After four and a half years, COVID finally found us.

    I got the symptoms first so I rushed off to my in-law’s empty rental house. Too late, the family all came down soon after.

    But inertia took over and I stayed there for a couple of weeks as we recuperated separately.

    One can get a lot done without family responsibilities. I cleaned up the place thoroughly, finally finished T-Zero (fine book, but still a sequel) and The Conference of the Birds (a glorious Sufi poem that I can barely comprehend), created AutoCAD templates for my calligraphy practice, and ate a lot of TV dinners.

    Without kids, the place stayed remarkably clean. Entropy moves slower in the absence of little people. But still, nice to be home again, mess and all.

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  • shelter

    We settled into our new home six months ago and reality intruded on the even the earliest moments everyday magic.

    Here is the boy is looking down as I tidied the garage. A minute later, a yellow pencil poked a hole in the screen.

    And while making our first batch of pancakes, he threw a tantrum after I mixed the batter, after telling me to go ahead and mix without him. Then I got into a tiff with Mama because I burnt the first few pancakes while learning the new stove. (Couples cooking has never been our strong suit.)

    The gods have been gracious, but they always spice things up to keep us in our place.

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    I was given a tour of landside operations at the airport. Since they manage parking and traffic, they have a large team. I asked one of their managers how someones stands out when a promotion is open.

    First, he noted that not everyone is ambitious. He started with an entry level job 25 years ago and some of his colleagues are still in that exact same position.

    Beyond that, he advises every new employee these three simple guides.

    • Be here when you’re supposed to show up.
    • Do what you’re supposed to do.
    • Don’t do what you aren’t supposed to do.

    After that, he said it’s a matter of politics and luck. These factors are out of our hands. For example, he almost got a job with another county agency in 2007. It didn’t work out, but that team experienced massive layoffs during the great recession while the airport avoided layoffs altogether.

    You never know if you’re winning by losing.

    The gods are funny like that.

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  • relocate

    This kitchen table continues to serve us over twenty years through six abodes.

    This afternoon, we thoroughly cleaned up lunch (cod, broccoli, and rice).

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    It’s been four months since I posted the letter “Q”.

    These hand sketches were photographed last year, so it’s just a matter of tidying the images and writing a little journal entry to mark the passage of time.

    I started the year hoping to catch up on the backlog—let things go, either out to the wild or into the private archives.

    Hopefully I now have the mental space to do this work.1

    Of course, there is a fresh set of sketches to scan. And tiny poems . And those zines that I slammed together twenty months ago.

    One step at a time.

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    1. To repeat myself: if you’re unsure about staying at your current job, it’s time to leave. ↩︎

  • Vegas Ordinary, July 2024

    In early May, this daily practice sprung up at a delicate moment. I so busy at work that I had no mental space to practice anything creative, especially with a looming job switch.

    But I made time to post a simple photo every day.

    This practice kept me afloat amidst the during a season of change. It’s now time to sunset this three month project to make time for other pursuits. Thanks to everyone who supported this little creative life raft on Substack Notes. Your likes and comments helped me persevere, turning a stray notion into a project of seeing (and framing) the mundane.

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    Carpet.

    7/1

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    Ceiling.

    7/2

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    Wrap.

    7/2

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    Checkout.

    7/3

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    Cereal

    7/4

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    Flowers

    7/4

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    Angles

    7/5

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    Dinner.

    7/6

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    Cabinets.

    7/7

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    Reflect.

    7/8

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    Can.

    7/9

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    Cloud.

    7/10

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    Legs.

    7/11

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    Up.

    7/12

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    Plate.

    7/13

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    Wall.

    7/14

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    Twenty-five.

    7/15

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    Telephone.

    7/16

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    Games.

    7/17

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    Mail.

    7/18

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    Cookie.

    7/19

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    Science.

    7/20

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    Snowman.

    7/21

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    Diamonds.

    7/22

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    Phonics.

    7/23

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    Blue.

    7/24

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    Aggregate.

    7/25

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    Smoke.

    7/26

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    Elbow.

    7/27

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    Retail.

    7/27

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    Feet.

    7/28

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    Gap.

    7/29

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    So what’s next? A couple of months ago, I came up with the idea of 1P+1P (one project, one practice).

    Unfortunately, life is complicated. So I’ve changed it to 2(P+P)—two practices and projects (a creative and practical endeavour for each).

    For my Projects, I’m returning to my 2024 theme of “Settling up”. For creative, it’s time to tackle the Grizzlypear backlog (200+ drafts!). And for home, we need to fully settle into our “new” house (six months after moving in!).

    As for Practices, I need to start exercising and I’d like to work on my calligraphy. I’ve hit that inevitable point in this new hobby where it’s time to grind down to reach the next plateau. Maybe I’ll eventually give up, but I want to put in a solid effort before deciding that the next level of proficiency isn’t worth the time.

    Hopefully this dual track approach provides a better balance of fun and responsibility. We’ll see!

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  • Vegas Ordinary, June 2024

    Life has slowed down (in a good way) after changing jobs. For example, I’m posting this collection on July 7th, while I didn’t get around to uploading the previous month’s compilation till June 19th, a week after I started at the new job.

    As for this Project, I got one more month before I move on to something else. Follow me on Substack Notes if you want to see these photos in real time. Or just wait for the final compilation in late August after we come back from our not-Vegas vacation.

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    Type.

    6/1

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    Mess.

    6/2

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    Laundry.

    6/3

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    Corner.

    6/4

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    Cafe.

    6/5

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    Notes.

    6/6

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    Cubicle.

    6/7

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    Blankets.

    6/8

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    Artichokes.

    6/9

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    Airport.

    6/10

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    P.

    6/11

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    Strawberry.

    6/12

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    Foam.

    6/13

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    Muse.

    6/13

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    Legs.

    6/14

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    Empty.

    6/15

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    Draw.

    6/16

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    Conduit.

    6/17

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    Cinema.

    6/18

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    Tails.

    6/18

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    Panel.

    6/19

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    Solstice.

    6/20

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    Grain.

    6/21

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    Laureate.

    6/22

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    Office.

    6/22

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    Desktop.

    6/24

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    Curtain.

    6/25

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    Goodbye.

    6/26

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    Liftoff.

    6/26

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    Keys.

    6/29

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    Straggler.

    6/29

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    Bed.

    6/30

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    Next week will be the first time that I actually work a full forty hours for the airport. In the past four weeks, I’ve had two days of County Orientation, Juneteenth, a day of Airport Orientation, and Independence Day. Three full days of orientation is a bit of overkill, but it was better than 90 minutes of signing forms and learning the rest by asking random coworkers.

    One thing that stood out at the Airport orientation was lunch with senior managers. It was a nice show of solidarity that they would come down and join us for a meal and introduce themselves. Then again, maybe I won’t want them to remember my name after I start to ruin their work lives with the Terminal renovation!

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  • Created with Human Intelligence (HiBadge 2024)

    In June, 

    Introvert Drawing Club posted a badge that caught fire, cause we’re sick of the cheap plagiaristic garbage being shoved in our faces online.

    This morning, Beth Spencer posted a note that she was only 53 badges from 1k.

    Let’s make that 52!

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    The image was hand drawn with fountain pens in and edited in Pixlr. This morning I added the text as a markup on my iPhone, with the PNG export done in Pixlr after deleting the white background. You can see the badge in action on my photo on the about page.

    If it looks familiar, it’s because I made the original image last year in a post about alternatives to AI art. There is so much great free art made by real people, why would anyone outsource our visual world to thieving machines?

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    Bonus! I originally wrote the badge with “Made”. Since it’s not doing any good by itself on the computer, here it is if you’d prefer this wording.

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    Check out the IG page for all the other #HiBadge2024.

    Happy drawing!

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