Square Head

My silly little doodles for today.

Swirl Tutorial for Illustrator

This is an interesting and well written tutorial from Bitbox, on a clean and simple way to make curves curls and swirls in illustrator.

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Found this interesting list of creative ideas by Bruce Mau (via Jen Renninger's blog, 365): I like looking at other people's lists for how to live a successful life. It makes you think. Sometimes I don't agree with everything. Some things make me wonder. How that applies to me, how he came up with that particular one, what was the story behind it... and marvel that each and every one of these has at least one real world story that ended with, "and so after that, I came up with this little rule about life..."

anyway... the list is in the above link, but I also included it here. Much thanks to Bruce Mau and Jen Renninger for helping it make it's way to me.

1. Allow events to change you.
   You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
   
   
2. Forget about good.
   Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.
   
   
3. Process is more important than outcome.
   When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
   
   
5. Go deep.
   The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
   
   
6. Capture accidents.
   The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
   
   
7. Study.
   A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
   
   
8. Drift.
   Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
   
   
9. Begin anywhere.
   John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
   
   
10. Everyone is a leader.
    Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
    
    
11. Harvest ideas.
    Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
    
    
12. Keep moving.
    The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
    
    
13. Slow down.
    Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
    
    
14. Don’t be cool.
    Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
    
    
15. Ask stupid questions.
    Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
    
    
16. Collaborate.
    The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
    
    
17. ____________________.
    Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
    
    
18. Stay up late.
    Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.
    
    
19. Work the metaphor.
    Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
    
    
20. Be careful to take risks.
    Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
    
    
21. Repeat yourself.
    If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
    
    
22. Make your own tools.
    Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
    
    
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
    You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
    
    
24. Avoid software.
    The problem with software is that everyone has it.
    
    
25. Don’t clean your desk.
    You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
    
    
26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
    Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
    
    
27. Read only left-hand pages.
    Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
    
    
28. Make new words.
    Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
    
    
29. Think with your mind.
    Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
    
    
30. Organization = Liberty.
    Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'
    
    
31. Don’t borrow money.
    Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
    
    
32. Listen carefully.
    Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
    
    
33. Take field trips.
    The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
    
    
34. Make mistakes faster.
    This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
    
    
35. Imitate.
    Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
    
    
36. Scat.
    When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.
    
    
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
    
    
38. Explore the other edge.
    Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
    
    
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
    Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
    
    
40. Avoid fields.
    Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
    
    
41. Laugh.
    People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
    
    
42. Remember.
    Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
    
    
43. Power to the people.
    Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

Mistress Mary

Based loosely on a photo of Miss Mary Hoover, via Shorpy. Papermate ballpoint pen on random scrap of paper (which appears to be what I've got lying around on my desk).

I am not a fan of ball point pen, which is actually why I am using it now, though that only makes sense if you are one of those kinds of people that does things to spite themselves. um, Booyah and all that.... I am even LESS of a fan of the unibal signo (although I confess, I DO love the squishy bit, It's what lured me into buying it in the first place, stupid tempting space age technology, grrr). I was using that to doodle with all last week (see previous post). For some reason, these silly super cheapo papermate pens give a nice line quality that makes me kind of happy. I always liked them on top of matt medium, but now I find I like them on any old random paper as well. I still love my prisma colors, but there is always that dreadful tenancy to noodle... not that a mere cheapo papermate ball point pen can stop me and my noodling ways. I am unstoppable (at least today I am)

Green Girl

Playing around with some simple painting stuff, and some random doodles.

"How to be Creative"

Found this list by Hugh Mcleod, via Stephen Silver's blog. Much more detail included in the original post, but here is the list that I think is interesting. I don't think I agree with everything here, but it does make for an interesting conversation starter.

So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years:

1. Ignore everybody.

2. The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours.

3. Put the hours in.

4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.

5. You are responsible for your own experience.

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

7. Keep your day job.

8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

11. Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

13. Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.

14. Dying young is overrated.

15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.

16. The world is changing.

17. Merit can be bought. Passion can't.

18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.

19. Sing in your own voice.

20. The choice of media is irrelevant.

21. Selling out is harder than it looks.

22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

23. Worrying about "Commercial vs. Artistic" is a complete waste of time.

24. Don�t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

25. You have to find your own schtick.

26. Write from the heart.

27. The best way to get approval is not to need it.

28. Power is never given. Power is taken.

29. Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.

30. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.

31. Remain frugal.

32. Allow your work to age with you.

33. Being Poor Sucks.

34. Beware of turning hobbies into jobs.

35. Savor obscurity while it lasts.

36. Start blogging.

Dude with Hat

Ever have one of those things, like a lucky shirt, or, say, a black leather jacket and a pair of sexy black boots? Something that makes you look at yourself in the mirror and smile to yourself, and think,

"aww, yeah".

With this guy, it is ALL about the hat.

Playing with profile

This playing around with relationships in profile.

Random Doodle