Jagged Little Pixel

I’m trying to stick really hard to a schedule where, on Mondays, I hit the ground running, which, actually, I wish I could hit the ground at least galloping on Sundays, just to get a head start. But, you know, one miracle at a time.

Anyway, so, here it is 4:29 PM, and I’m about 1/10th of the way down the apparently notional chore list I’m always daydreaming about someday getting completely done. Although, as Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem says (or, at least, how it says when I bend it sideways in a possibly felonious way), there’s almost certainly no such thing as a finishable list.

For example: I had to just go look up the text entity for an umlaut for a lower-case ‘o’. So, that got added to the list, even if it got scratched back off pretty quick. The point being (although it’s a minute little point): it never ends.

Which I suppose, in the long run, is not the worst ever thing.

Anyhow, more portable sketches, ’cause my new old-fashioned sketchbook is just too blank and intimidating, while my dumb old PDA, which does not keep track of my appointments, contacts, or notes, is at least a fun little gadget to mess around with in-between actual work-like activities. These particular things were done on The Pad from VisualIT, which is an extremely basic drawing program, which I like ’cause it never gets in your way when all you wanna do is just doodle. The creators of The Pad, by the way, are obviously not responsible for how I may, from time to time, utterly misuse their product.

Squaresville

Apparently, there are about as many people selling art on Etsy as there are people living inside the city limits of the city where my wife and I live in now. Which is not so much a huge number, but it’s not a small one, either. I mean, I guess if you imagine every person on our street and on the other streets in our neighborhood has a storefront, and then multiply that number by some other large and scary number, and then add in all the people at all the stores and gas stations and restaurants in town, plus all the bajillions of people who are always, always roaming about on the various roads, then you might be able to arrive at some sort of vague visual idea of just how many people we’re talking about. Of course, you’d probably have to also include everyone on every paddleboat and picnic table at the lake, and every person in every movie audience, and everyone at the art museum, and every golfer on every fairway of every golf course from one end of the city parks system to the other, and every single student and teacher in summer school or Hebrew school or Sunday school. Not to mention, you’d have to count all the people who are riding in buses or waiting for buses, and all the people going about their lives in every hospital, factory, and warehouse, and all the many people hidden away here and there who usually don’t get counted. And, well, you know, it’s a pretty big crowd’s what I’m saying.

Which is fine, of course. It’s even a kind of amazing and good thing, that the planet’s that full of artists, despite how civilization’s not always 100% in favor of keeping artists around.

Besides, it’s a good reminder to think about the relative bigness of the Etsy community, since it reminds a person (namely, me, I guess) how the sweet delicious solipsism that wafts off the Internet like brain-shrinking glue fumes is really an enormous illusion. It’s good to remember that humbleness is way more rational than not being humble.

Speaking of which, here are some square little PDA sketches from the last couple of days. They’re not worth much, except that occasionally I’ll see something I like a bit in this or that odd corner. Such as a certain crackly line or an accidental pattern or a weird shape of eye or ear.

Thunderbirds are Go

Once again, I have no actual real-life time for this blogging junk, so I’m just gonna very fast post a few random sketches from last week’s trip out West. All these things came off my crappy old crash-happy PDA, which was a complete and total waste of money, except that I like Pocket Painter more than I oughta like it, considering that using it means I end up neglecting the nine million felt-tip pens I already own and also the extremely blank and brand-new Moleskine that needs to get scribbled in really soon. (Or, well, okay, I guess the dumb old PDA came in a little handy last year in London, when we needed to know real quick and easy-like how to ride the Tube from one place to another, which we did by checking the cool animated maps in Visual IT’s Tube 2.) Anyway, so that’s why the sketches are tiny and plus have that pixelbrick look of old MacDraw art from long, long ago, which is a look I always liked a ton. Meanwhile, the rest of the day today I’m working on Master Plan Number 99, which I’m sure is the version that this time will once and for all solve the various fun issues that now and then crop up in this so-called artistic lifestyle of mine. And I need to read some more from the book my wife recommended when she saw me struggling a bit with non-creativity. The book being Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, which so far appears to be the greatest book ever written.