The Tumblelog of Brandon James Scott.
Creator of Justin Time, impulsive designer and occasional writer.
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The Messy Sketchbook
I remember when I first saw James Jean’s sketchbooks. I said, “Ah! So that’s what a good sketchbook looks like!” And I went to the art store and bought some fine ballpoint pens and a Moleskine, a brand of notebook I’d never used before but at $26 a pop was sure to create magic. And that elastic band to keep it closed? How sophisticated.
Those tools didn’t make my sketchbooks any better, of course.
But this isn’t about tools. The sexiest book and the finest pen can’t produce the beautiful drawings James is cranking out. That’s just James. To think that I can do that because I use his choice of paper or pen is just silly, right? Because I don’t know what I’m doing when I open my sketchbook. That’s actually the reason why I’m opening it, most of the time. To figure something out.
I am not a guy who makes pretty sketches. Sometimes they make my head hurt to look at them. I don’t show them to anyone, really.
But here’s a page. This is after flipping through a few to find a good one:
I don’t even know what’s going on in half of those thumbnails. There’s a couple mushrooms, a few cats, a bear (of course), and some other wacky shapes. And I think that dude on the right is barfing up a flower. This is a very typical piece of paper after my pencil has had some time with it. Doesn’t get any better than this. I wont ever be hanging a page from my sketchbook on the wall.
But that’s not the point.
The point is to just keep making these pages.
Over and over.
It’s a chaotic way of asking, “What do I do next?” Sometimes, you’ll even find an answer! Then you ask more questions. Then you fill more pages.
But the only one who ever has to see them is you.
So be messy.
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I feel like Reggie Watts’ fame is way more interesting and durable than, say, Lady Gaga’s. It is, first of all, entirely his own creation—it feels like an asset he’s nurtured and grown, not an investment that someone else has made, contingent on certain outcomes. Also, it’s somehow scale-free: Watts is capable of performing on a big national late-night talk show and at a weird little regional conference, too. The former doesn’t intimidate him, and the latter doesn’t diminish him. Gaga is the opposite: she’s operating at a much bigger scale, sure, but she’s trapped there.
Robin Sloan on the rise of Reggie Watts and the right flavor of fame.
His performance at TED is, as usual, amazing.
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The Beach Boys’ Crazy Summer →
Fascinating look at the story of Brian Wilson.
What Brian wants to do, it seems, is make music. As the Beach Boys splinter—Al leaves; Carl dies of lung cancer; Mike sues for unpaid royalties and exclusive rights to the group’s name—Brian regains his footing, releasing several albums of original songs and performing Pet Sounds live with his crack new band. He still hears voices, but he “combat[s]” them “by singing really loud” and “play[ing] my instruments all day.” In 2004, he finally completes Smile. It is hailed as a masterpiece. “I swear you could see something change in him,” his engineer will later say. “And he’s been different ever since.”
Not to sound like a douche, but Pet Sounds changed me when I heard it, and I wasn’t even there when it happened.
In fact, I’m going to listen to it now:
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When Harris thinks of children asking questions, he sees them performing a series of complex mental maneuvers. “The child has to first realize that they don’t know something…and that other people are information-bearing agents,” Harris said. “Then the child has to be able to, somehow or other, realize that language is a tool for shifting stuff from that person to them.”
Adults tend to rush through those steps, perhaps because they seem like second nature. But figuring out what makes a good question—or rather, what kind of question will get us the information we want—isn’t such a simple thing, even for grownups. It requires stopping to think about what we’re trying to find out, what the person we’re talking to might know, and what words we should use to coax them into helping us.
Paul Harris in Leon Neyfakh’s article on asking questions. -
On Quora - How can I increase my productivity on my side projects? →
So maybe you’re like all of us and you come home after your workday or wake up early before it, and you want to start something for yourself. A business, a project, a book, a website, a (whatever). Why not? Making things is addictive.
But how do you do it? How do you find the creative energy to start something else when you already have such a big commitment taking up your day? Well, first, care.
And then you can look at this Quora thread.
From Kah Keng Tay:
Biting off only what can be chewed. Related to above, I make sure I tackle only what seems reasonably possible within the time I have. If I took on too big a task and didn’t manage to finish, and only got back to it a few days later, I would have forgotten by then some of the reasons why I did things in a certain way. This would cost me time that is spent rethinking and refactoring my design unnecessarily.
From Venkatesh Rao:
Regularity on Main Stuff: You have to put your main life on autopilot to the extent possible. This means putting all your energy into just 1-2 projects, minimizing interactions to just the critical few people, and putting all the work there on a very steady routine. This does not mean slacking off. It means reducing meta-thinking at your day job as near to zero as you can. This does not mean you become a dumb cog though. It mostly means picking allies carefully, cutting off time wasters, developing extraordinarily strong noise filters, not picking pointless fights, and going for quick, decisive wins when you do fight.
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Eephus League Magazine →
What a beautiful website.
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Make good art.
(via Neil Gaiman commencement address explains the artist’s life - Boing Boing)
On this shortened (Canadian Holiday) week where my Monday is a Tuesday, I don’t think I could have started it any better than with a cup of coffee and this video. If you make anything at all, you’ll enjoy this.
Edit: Maria Popova wrote a nice summary of the content of his speech.
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