Strathmore Parchment Paper
So this summer, I needed parchment paper. The closest art supply store to me at that time carries a very narrow supply of everything so the Strathmore brand was one of two options, the other being rather expensive. However, I’ve always trusted Strathmore so I thought hey why not. I took home a pack of gold colored Strathmore parchment paper (it was a bit too dark, but I did need it sooner rather than later). The package guaranteed great results and the website says: “Parchment-toned paper has a smooth surface for even fluid ink flow. Ideal for scrapbooking, invitations, certificates and traditional calligraphic lettering applications.”
I should have checked the website first as I would have noted the phrase “parchment-toned.” This paper is not okay with “traditional calligraphic lettering applications as it bleeds! The difference is more obvious in person but:
The Strathmore. the fuzziness isn’t bad picture quality. It’s bleeding ink.
The Parchment. Not so much the fuzzy. Would have picked a sample with the same script but I don’t have one that uses the same nib size at the moment.
Now, it isn’t terribly noticeable to someone who does not do calligraphy but with every letter I wrote I could feel the ink being absorbed by the paper, not only making a fuzzy outline, but also making the area soft and susceptible to crumbling (All those little seedies on the paper. It will eventually wear a hole through if it is worked too much). This also meant that, if I made a mistake, it would not come off very smoothly with normal removal procedures.
After about three words I gave up. It wasn’t worth all of the effort if I wasn’t going to gave a nice finished product. Instead I simply went to another art store and bought actual parchment about 18in x 24in for $.80 a page.
Let’s do some math: Strathmore 8.5in x 11in 50 sheets = $7.40 at that price, you could get about 46.25 sheets of actual parchment that does not bleed, can take a lot of abuse and looks gorgeous. Maybe it’s just my horrible experience, but I think I’ll spend my money on the real stuff and leave the Strathmore for the scrapbookers.
Visuwords
…so I just came upon this… amazingness! Visuwords is an online graphical dictionary. It looks very much like a thought web (like teachers made you use in middle school to write papers) and has different colored lines that connects alternate words to the word you looked up (the color code is explained on the side of each page)! It’s just so cool to look at.
An Imaginary Library: Children’s Books That Do Not (Yet) Exist
I think this is one of the most brilliant ideas ever! This collection, soon to be making it’s only West Coast stop at Wilson Library in Western Washington University, is made up of covers designed by various children’s book illustrators. These covers, however, are for books that haven’t been written yet! Each author made a book cover and then wrote a blurb about the book. These are accompanied in the info pamphlet (which I was so privileged to get my hands on) by a short list of similarly themed books that are already in existence.
I can’t wait to go see it.
For more info, please visit the Western Libraries Information Page or the Exhibit homepage on the Western site.
Shaun Tan
Can we say amazing? This is what I think of when I imagine myself as an illustrator. Work like Shaun Tan’s is not only inspiring, but thought provoking. This image are from “The Arrival,” his wordless book about a man who leaves his family to seek a better life in a different country. Through only pictures, Tan is able to evoke emotion and set a mood. And they are not necessarily abstract and most definitely are always fully readable: there is no airy subjectivity much associated with modern expressive art. This is more like a fantastic throw back to another time.
He is also completely versitle and uses several different mediums and styles to express himself, as seen in his books “The Rabbits.” I’ll not upload more, but leave you with a link to his website and the rest of his amazing work: Shaun Tan
The Adventures of Faye and Pookie – Volume 1
Here’s the 1.5 week collaborative comic I did with my roommate this winter (if you don’t know, a week and a half for a comic is lunacy, and it was pretty tight, but we totally made it within our deadline). She did the dialogue and pencils and I did the panel layout, background and inking. We both worked on the story (a.k.a. she worked on the story but thinks I helped). It’s about a young Taiwanese assassin and her faithful warhorse Pookie as they boldly gallop through fields of cougles and skirt seas teeming with twales…
Go for it: The Adventures of Faye and Pookie
It’s an Office 2007 Powerpoint. An updated Powerpoint viewer should work with it, but if anyone is dying to see it and can’t, let me know (although how often is this the case? 
)
Yudu
So there is now a self-contained desktop screen printer. It LOOKS amazing, but I’ve only seen one infomercial and have heard nothing else about it. It’s like $300 and can be given a trial through the commercial for $33 (I don’t quite buy that). I’d really love to know how well this works because is seems pretty amazing provided that you don’t want to print anything larger than 8.5in x 11in (but then again, that is rather rare when doing shirts and the like but I’ve seen plenty of long and large designs so this factor is pretty limiting.
The Yudu site Someone enlighten me please.
Forgotten Things That I Love
Actual life stuff! Beware!
I’d say I’ve been pretty tired of everything lately: not people, just stuff (hobbies, etc.). It’s not that I’ve been consciously loathing things, just that I’ve been avoiding my hobbies because I don’t have the energy. Today however, while shelving books, I remembered that… I like books. In fact, I love books. Not just reading, but being around them. And then, a few paces later, I remembered that I like creating and inking comics (I felt the joy of inking last month, and vaguely remembered that I once enjoyed it, but not much past that).
Therefore… guess who’s actually going to make non-school related things on a regular and enjoyable basis? Yeah, yeah, I know I was supposed to be doing these things all along. We all procrastinate. Of course it helps when we actually want to create now doesn’t it?
Oh silly me.
And I know this doesn’t really make sense but it’s entirely true. I suppose I just forgot why I once enjoyed things. And know I remember. Yay life!
Shades of Grey
US and UK covers respectively
Oh I AM excited! I’m not sure why I didn’t mention this last month, but Jasper Fforde has a new book out and I NEED it. He is the amazingly witty creator of the both the Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes series (I looked it up,’ series’ is an irregular plural noun like ‘deer’ never thought about it before…).
Amazon.com says (minus the commentary):
Part social satire, part romance, part revolutionary thriller, Shades of Grey tells of a battle against overwhelming odds. In a society where the ability to see the higher end of the color spectrum denotes a better social standing, Eddie Russet belongs to the low-level House of Red and can see his own color—but no other. The sky, the grass, and everything in between are all just shades of grey, and must be colorized by artificial means.
Eddie’s world wasn’t always like this. There’s evidence of a never-discussed disaster and now, many years later, technology is poor, news sporadic, the notion of change abhorrent, and nighttime is terrifying: no one can see in the dark. Everyone abides by a bizarre regime of rules and regulations, a system of merits and demerits, where punishment can result in permanent expulsion.
Eddie, who works for the Color Control Agency, might well have lived out his rose-tinted life without a hitch. But that changes when he becomes smitten with Jane, a Grey Nightseer from the dark, unlit side of the village. She shows Eddie that all is not well with the world he thinks is just and good. Together, they engage in dangerous revolutionary talk…
Yes please.
As usual, Fforde has made a web page for it including contests, special features and free stuff as seen here with this nifty wallpaper:
I hate buying new books (I’m the type to ravage book sales and live at the used book store) but I’m gonna have to go ahead and order this one. I just can’t wait to see what he has in store!
Review to come.
Shades of Grey Official Website (highly entertaining and useful)
Spins
Vertigo (from the Latin vertigin-, vertigo, “dizziness,” originally “a whirling or spinning movement,” from vertō “I turn”) is a specific type of dizziness, a major symptom of a balance disorder. It is the sensation of spinning or swaying while the body is actually stationery with respect to the surroundings.
The effects of vertigo may be slight. It can cause nausea and vomiting and, in severe cases, it may give rise to difficulties with standing and walking.
Vertigo is qualified as height vertigo when referring to dizziness triggered by heights. “Vertigo” is often used, incorrectly, to describe the fear of heights, but the correct term for this is acrophobia.
Thanks Wikipedia. Sounds pretty cool till you have it. In short, I’ve been pretty disabled for the past week and a half. I have a good-sized chunk of school artwork (that I really don’t want to do despite the fact that these classes are right down my alley) but after I’m all caught up (missed a few days of progress) I think this shall be a quarter of art! Okay, maybe not, but this shall be a quarter of art planning (possibly)!
On the other hand, I made rather delicious lentil patties a few days ago. I shall perfect and make a picture the next time I make them!
Collaboration
So I have to admit that I hate collaboration on a general level.
From my experience, working with other people can be an absolute pleasure and it’s really great to have people to bounce ideas off of and to inspire you. But in a collaboration, to be fair, there has to be an equal amount of both people’s ideas present. Dependant upon the people I am working with, this generally means that I have to approve of some ideas that are not so clever and give up many of mine (that generally aren’t so cleaver either. I’m no genius!) So basically, when it comes to final product time I end up with something that is okay, but that neither I nor the other person are totally in love with because if we’d stuck with more of my ideas, it would be more to my liking and they are probably thinking the same of some of their ideas.
The other problem is long-term (or even short-term) dedication. All those times when people talk excitedly about doing something, but you seem to be the only one doing the work? Yeah, that stings a little. Rather frustrating.
And a personal issue I have is that I want my final product to be fantastic. Therefore, I have trouble approving ideas that are… not that great. Especially when I have ideas that I think might work better. Again I will state that I’m NOT brilliant in any way, but I can generally tell when things aren’t gonna quite work well, even when I can’t generate a better solution. Therefore I have to force others to come up with more ideas and make decisions so that I don’t seem like I’m taking over since I generally desperately want to…
It is not always the case, of course, that collaborations are stressful nightmares. I happened to get through a collaboration recently that was pretty painless (minus a time crunch!) and it turned out… well, we didn’t have much time. I originally envisioned it super awesome and detailed but we just didn’t have the time, so we picked the more simple road. I would have loved to have added more detail yet but, for the track we chose, it turned out more-or-less as I imagined it and it was (or at least I really tried to make it) equally representative of each of our ideas and styles.
Therefore, I suppose my message on collaboration is that, yes, they can be a pain, but if you pick the right person (and that takes a lot of careful plotting and choosing) then it’s not always that bad. In fact, the last one was verging on fun. A comic. Not sure if I’ll put it up or not. We’ll see.
