Archive for September, 2007
Papers and Tschai
I’m a crafter by heart. My soul sings for PAPERS. What can i say? I’m addicted to paper and everything that’s related to that. I started my bookmaking / journal-making hobby 2 years ago, after my first child was born, but has been planning on it since college. I have a bachelor’s degree in Architecture and my passion is graphic design.
Papers & Tschai at Etsy
View her Flickr set
Flickr Friday
Most of the time i love to take my drawing toolbox go anywhere with me. (Sometimes i`m lazy….)
PD&BE is an artist in Yi-Lan, Taiwan who draws dolphins and elephants on a Rhodia notepad and loves to make art on “rescued paper”.
Magic pencil
I received my order of pencils, and I am very happy with them. Of course, I really like the Rhodia. I would like to order a box of them when they come in.
I taught English classes to children at the junior high, senior high, and college levels for about thirty years. Every once in a while when shopping, I would come across some high quality pencils, I would buy a box and then display it proudly on my desk at school.
Whenever I had to sign a hall pass or tardy slip, I would reach for the box and pull one of the pencils out with such flair and drama, everyone in the class would turn their eyes to me to see what I was up to. Invariably, one of my students would ask what kind of pencil I had, and I would cup my hands together at my lips and project an echoing whisper out to the class, “Magic. It’s a magic pencil.”
Christopher K writes to Don at PencilThings
Writers rooms: Joshua Ferris
I don’t write directly on to the computer because I don’t think well facing forward with fingers on a keyboard. I think better looking down holding a pen. And the concentration quotient of pen and paper is higher than when I’m moving words around on screen. The pad is a Bloc Rhodia No 38 and like the desk it provides a lot of room which allows me to move around on the page in defiance of linear thought.
Related story:
Claire Zulkey interviews Joshua Ferris
On keeping a sketchbook
My sketchbook is one big mess of rough-drafts, filled mostly with illegible notes and blobs. When I’m working on a new design, I start by going through my pages of scribbles and choosing a few that I like. Then, on pieces of looseleaf paper, I sketch out different versions of illustrations which I scan into the computer to add color and other effects (with the help of my more tech-savvy husband) to make a bunch of test prints.
Here’s a picture that shows the different stages of my Momofuku journal cover design, from the first scribbles to a detailed sketch, and then a printed draft. There was something off about that draft, and we worked at it for almost a week (wanting to completely drop that cover design) till we came up with the final version, which shows an image of only two bowls of noodle and very little additional color. We’d gotten so caught up in adding things to the design, when it was the simplest arrangement that looked good. That’s something I keep in mind these days when designing new things.
Judy Lee blogs at five and a half
There’s a how-to video of Judy featured in Photojojo recently on how to create your own perfect-bound journal.
Image © Five and a Half
Wee Will Doodle
WeeWillDoodle is a group of artists based in the Philippines deeply in love with the power of the doodle. This artist collective believes in, respects, and plans to harness the raw power of our sponteneous ideas and capture them in different mediums—on paper, on plastic, on walls–you name it and we’ll draw on it. Give us a blank room and we’ll charge in with multi-colored markers blazing! We draw now and ask questions later.
16th Annual Fountain Pen Supershow
At the 16th Annual Collectible Fountain Pen Supershow held last August 9-12 at Washington D.C. In the picture are Frank Fiorella, Rick Conner, Bill Hong, Pam Williams and Sam Fiorella.
Sam and Frank own Pendemonium. They are experts on all things paper, inks and pens. With them is Pam Williams from Exaclair, Rick Conner, another pen expert; and Bill Hong, a Pendemonium customer that helps out at the show.
Thanks, Karen!
All images © Pendemonium.com.
PDF report © Pencentral.com.
My 9/11 relic
Dallas Morning News reporter Rod Dreher shows us a notebook page upon which he was taking notes from man-on-the-street interviews as the first tower collapsed.
Here is an image of my reporter’s notebook page on which I recorded the moment the first of the Twin Towers went down. I was standing on the Brooklyn Bridge interviewing people. You can see some of those quotes at the top of the page (e.g., “This is Tom Clancy. This is unbelievable.”). Then, under a line I’d drawn midway the page, you’ll see a jittery line fading away toward the bottom. I’d had pen to paper when the tower collapsed. I literally fell backward as my knees started to give out. Then, in my panicked scrawl, these observations:
explosion, fell to ground
people on bridge sobbing, one woman
it’s not there anymore!
It collapsed!
LINK
Via D Frontburner
Image © The Dallas Morning News.
On Making “The Baxter”
I worked for eight months on an outline. I filled many little Rhodia notebooks with notes and ideas, lines of dialogue, potential outcomes, etc. This is outlining to me. It’s not at all a technical process. No graphs or charts.
I think that many screenwriters fear that outlining will strip them of their creativity. To me, outlining is the most creative part. It’s where every crazy idea is given its day in court. Finally, I wrote a first 30 pages that I thought was really good but I was incapable of writing a 31st page. In spite of all my notes, I just didn’t know what happened next. There were so many possibilities and I’d considered them all. I banged my head against the wall for many weeks. I guess I had writer’s block. Somewhere in that time I quit smoking too (a ghastly two pack a day habit), which can’t have helped.
One day I wrote my umpteenth potential next scene and I made something of a breakthrough. It felt like the characters were speaking without my help. I was just recording the conversation. The rest of the script flowed very quickly from there.
I wrote non-stop for the next seven days and then it was finished, but I had taken notes and prepared for eight months before that. I don’t want to say that it only took seven days. It took eight months and seven days.
Michael Showalter in his own words
Graph the good phite
Abraham with a Rhodia pencilOne of my friends likes to refer to my having a hypergraphic streak, and perhaps there’s something to such jovial jabs to tell me I have stumbled into a writer’s life. But assuredly not a real writer. The sort of writing I do at my profession must be factual and unambiguous. Journal writing is different, having no rules, no assigned audience, and without a set pace or context. It’s really quite liberating, and reflective writing can take on any theme- including the topic of reflective writing.
Be that as it may, one may be as the biblical clanging cymbal of insubstantial verbiage, or the pilgrimage and its narrative may be such that we “lose track of time.” Years back, during a spirit-breaking crisis, I took a few days’ leave of my job and life to journey to a monastery for a retreat. One of my colleagues sent me off with a small blank book, which I gratefully received while confessing that I had nothing to write and did not imagine myself to be a diary-keeping type. “You’ll have plenty to write, when you get there,” my friend said. But, truly, don’t we do what we do because we know we must? Much like the life of faith, there are explorations, then reinforcing nurture; there are observances and reflections- or, if we will, there is reading and there is writing.
As thoughts and words manifested together, it became necessary to write; It became vital, especially in the immediately ensuing years, that I cultivate the silent witness to my life’s voyages by articulating my adventures and thoughts in writing.
Read La Vie Graphite
All images © La Vie Graphite. All rights reserved.
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From the coast of Maine, ever musing upon life’s fascinating mysteries and living a pilgrimage of trust on earth. “La Vie Graphite,” the Graphite Life- began in pencil, and continues as an equally erasable medium of varying tones. Heavy thoughts at times, but from a lighthearted soul- always glad to hear from kindred souls.
Found: Your Lists
I am an obsessive list-maker. My roommate, who is well-aware of my compulsion to write lists for everything, often finds my notes scrawled on the backs of receipts and envelopes. She’s much classier than me, so she brings me back post-its and notepads from wherever she travels to indulge my obsession… so now, all over the house you can find a to-do list here on paper that looks like the Alamo, a shopping list on paper from a French museum, or library books tallied on Westin stationery. There’s just something so satisfying about crossing each grocery item off as I drop it in my cart, or X-ing out “clean litter box” after completing that odorous task.
Once, when browsing through my favorite bookstore six years ago, I happened upon a total oddity — the first issue of Found magazine, a periodical dedicated to my detritus and that of people like me. Found doesn’t only compile lists — they’ll take anything from photos to lists to love letters to homework, so long as the submission was found by someone other than the creator (my eyes were glued to the sidewalk for weeks after I read the magazine — my best find was a photo of a toddler at a drum set).
Image: astrangegirl @ Flickr
© All rights reserved.
DIY Rhodia leather case
MBMosher shows us how to make a fancy leather case for your Rhodia pocket notepad (No. 11) and a space pen.
I used some scraps leather I had hanging around to make this project and a sewing machine. Originally I was going to use fabric, but that failed, miserably. I made some pattern piece for this project you can download as PDFs; they’re designed for the 3″X4″ notepad.
How to make your own Rhodia case at Instructables.com
