Offline table
Putting my offline table in the studio to work.
The best cartooning is efficient visual storytelling
via youtube.com
In my next life I’m going to be a cartoonist. That’s after the life where I’m a singer with a voice like Barbra Streisand. Or maybe I’ll do that later and do the life as a cartoonist first. Hm. Hard choices.
Ivan Brunetti, cartoonist (for The New Yorker among others) just released a new book: Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice – about the importance of combining art and story when drawing cartoons – as well as how easy it is. The video sure makes it looks fantastically easy.
I’ll think I need this book (http://amzn.to/ejHeLF) pronto – better start practicing for that next life in time.
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”
I spent part of the weekend at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas and one of their signature restaurants, Comme Ca, had some very nice placemats… You put your plate on top of a visualization of Henry David Thoreau’s quote “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”.
Food was great – both looking at, seeing and eating.
Colorful Visualization of The Nature of Emotions
via fractal.org
I came across this colorful, simple and yet complex visualization of emotions by Professor Robert Plutchik the other day. The core consists of the eight primary emotions – and organized as four pairs of opposites – as in “admiration” is the opposite of “loathing” and “grief” is the opposite of “ecstasy”. I wonder if the color coding for the primary emotions was deliberate to illustrate the feeling or random to just separate the feelings in the model.
Maybe there are more clues in Plutchik’s book: Emotions and Life: Perspectives from Psychology, Biology, and Evolution.
The Creative Beast Visualizes The Best Question in the World
If you haven’t discovered Betsy Streeter yet – you’ve missed out. She has a great way of visualizing the importance of staying in touch with your inner creative beast – and not forget to stay creative. And oh, how I wish I could draw stick figures like her!
When the going gets tough and I spend way too much time creating file after file on my computer – I have a little printed drawing by her next to my screen and it reminds me to stand up, shake loose, erase the whiteboard from unimportant stuff and draw stick figures for awhile and keep my own creative beast happy.
Besty Streeter has entered in Slideshare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest – and it’s one of my favorites in this year’s competition. Ask yourself the best question in the world “What would happen if…?”!
Follow Betsy Streeter on Twitter to get a flow of great inspiration in your feed: @betsystreeter. And don’t forget to let your creative beast out!
The smell of crayons
For years I didn’t know how much I had missed this smell. The smell of crayons. And the feeling of opening a brand new box of Crayola crayons, in new colors (and with funny creative names even though I never realized the beauty of the names until recently). When do you throw out your crayons? When you become a teenager?
My house is once again filled with crayons and sometimes I manage to sneak away some and smell them and check their names. And when someone isn’t watching, I might actually draw with them, practicing my Dan Roam sketching techniques in bright colors. One of these days I’m going to Michael’s and get my own set, that I will hide from the rest of the house…