Friday, September 17, 2010

Notebooks (A Start)


Before I start:

Today is Friday and I usually try to do something special on Friday. I had planned on doing a long post about notebooks today but I got all emotional about something not directly related to notebooks and I kind of lost my train of thought. I’m still going to make today’s post about notebooks, but I am cutting this post short because I am so angry and—as bizarre as this sounds—filled with hate right now that I can’t write what I wanted to write and I don’t want to say something driven by my emotions-of-the-moment that I’ll regret tomorrow.

One of the few things I really hate is a very popular thing on the modern internet—it wasn’t as popular during the early years of cyberspace—and that is free-floating ridicule. In the early days of cyberspace people made fun of things and other people for specific reasons. Mostly, in the early days, things and people got made fun of because they were stupid or incompetent or thoughtless or badly made. Whatever, there would be a reason for ridicule. Nowadays people make fun of things and other people just to engage in the mindless expression of snarkiness.

And there’s a kind of arch-cynicism, the obnoxious belief that since nothing matters anyway and since nobody pays attention to what anybody says anyway why not make fun of everything?

I mentioned this kind of thing once before about a red jacket of mine. I’m not going to dwell on this now. I hate that stuff. And I hate the people who do it. Fuck them.

I’m not going to dwell on this now.

Here is a small bit of what I’d wanted to make into a long post. I will come back to this some time in the future when I’ve had a chance to catch my breath and relax a little.


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I have a thing for notebooks. I like notebooks. I really like notebooks.

I’ve used a lot of notebooks in my life. Some for writing. Some for drawing. Some for painting.

I don’t like most of the notebooks you find in stationary stores. And many of the notebooks you find in art stores also seem badly thought out and badly made to me.

A notebook should open flat and remain flat when it’s in use so you can draw or paint without distortions. A notebook should have good paper because sometimes sketching or painting requires rubbing out or quite a bit of water and cheap paper will fall apart or warp badly.

I just ordered two of these:



I’m looking forward to working in these. I often “freeze up” when I use good paper. I don’t think of myself as having any real art skills and I usually work on simple inexpensive copy paper so I can just throw it away when I screw up. But I can draw a little bit and I can use watercolor a little bit and I want to get comfortable with good paper because good paper really does make the work easier and it makes the finished product look better. And the process of working on quality paper just is a more enjoyable process.

So I’m getting a couple of good notebooks.

I’m going to draw things from a lost world.













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Princess From Atlantis Without A Band-Aid


The Occult Technology Of Lost Songs
















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