Miscellany – Page 220

This blog is a teenager

Sunday, September 9, 2018

i seem to pick up scraps and they appear as bodies of work

I started posting to this blog 13 years ago today.

Do the work you want to see done

Saturday, September 8, 2018

Thanks to @misszita for this lettering of the manifesto from chapter 3 of Steal Like An Artist. I like that if you put a comma after the word “done” it would be like a note to myself!

Our portion of the infinite

Friday, September 7, 2018

This morning we debated whether to walk out in the rain or stay in the house with the boys. We chose the rain and were rewarded.

It’s almost spooky how many days my daily reading of Thoreau’s journal syncs up perfectly with my mood. (As he wrote, we receive what we’re ready to receive.) September 7, 1851:

We are receiving our portion of the infinite… I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it.

The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer. How to live. How to get the most life. How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my every-day business….

I am convinced that men are not well employed, that this is not the way to spend a day. If by patience, if by watching, I can secure one new ray of light, can feel myself elevated for an instant… shall I not be a watchman henceforth?

Always drawing

Thursday, September 6, 2018

I took this photo of our 3-year-old’s setup in our hotel room in Chicago. (I had to run to the local Target after two days to buy a new ream of paper.)

Here’s half a day’s worth of drawings on our kitchen floor. My wife sweeps them all up into a big pile at the end of the day.

As I’ve mentioned previously, the 3-year-old loves drawing skeletons, but refuses to watch Coco. He still refuses to watch it, but he’s now discovered the Coco coloring book, so many of his skeletons now play guitar. (I’m reminded, now, of the genius of merchandising: hook ’em through coloring books first…)

He does this new thing where when he makes a particularly good line, he’ll stand back and pull his arms to his side and just shake in excitement. It’s infectious, watching a tiny person draw this much. And humbling. Back to work, papa.

Inspiring diaries

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

I’m devouring Duncan Hannah’s 20th Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies right now. My only gripe with the book is you don’t get a sense for how wonderfully visual his notebooks were.

More inspiration came this morning, courtesy of my 5-year-old’s diary. (Everything on that page after the words “as usual” is invented.)

I keep a huge file of inspiring notebooks on my tumblr, which I relied on when making The Steal Like An Artist Journal. Here’s a slideshow talk I gave a few years back with some of the highlights: