Currently Browsing: Random Thoughts 224 articles
Drawing to Improve Your Mood
Recovering from the iliac vein dissection has been difficult. It’s placed limits on my mobility and energy. I’ve had to change how I think about exercise. My heart is broken that I can’t cycle any more. One morning I wrote this caption on the next page in my journal, after a painful effort of exertion. […]
What I Did in the Pandemic: Thoughts
The page spread from 2020 is the post. That’s a sketch of a chef on one of the many cooking competition shows I watch. It’s simply fun to watch people create things.
In Context: Sketching to Work Something Out
The other day I sketched this white Chihuahua. I went in too dar with the ink to start, and at one point before much was down, I made a small circle at the top right to start again, but then I thought, “Just look at the hair.” And I went back to the main sketch […]
What I Did in the Pandemic: Zooming
During the Pandemic I did Zoom calls with friends, as you’ll learn if you read this page spread—which is full of writos; it was late, I was tired, but you can tell what I meant to write in context. For the first time in 43 years I was learning what it was like to have […]
In Context: My Life Is a Stream of Detective Shows
…often the detectives meet on the page. Update: People didn’t recognize Ray Collins as Lt. Arthur Tragg from the long-running “Perry Mason” with Raymond Burr. Yes, he has nothing to do with Poirot, that’s what I meant by my life being a stream of detective shows—meeting on the page. If you’re one of the folks […]
How Things Line Up
When you post on Instagram your images shuffle over and your whole grid of images, all the way back to your first post shuffle over. Rows change contents. I know there are folks who really plan the organization of their posts so that there is some type of cohesive whole going on. But since my […]
Not a Waste of Space
The questions I get most from visual journaling students surround the issue of the use of space on a page or spread. There are a lot of factors that feed the questions, swirl around in the mind and stopping action. I like to remind students that the more they journal the more these questions will […]
Euclid, Geometry, and the Practice of Art
Here’s a quotation from an article I was reading in the New Yorker Magazine recently. Beyond geometry the writer, James Somers, reminds us something about the practice of anything. And the many paths to something—whether it’s geometry, coding, art, or…
Notes from Past Conversations
One of the benefits to come out of downsizing is the sorting through of things, notes, boxes, shelves, and nooks and cranies. Lots of things turn up. I have been putting the little scraps of things into my current journal if they mean something to me. Here’s a little note I made after a conversation […]
