I drew again in my small sketchbook Canson art book universal (14×21 cm / 4×6 in), using individually or together a black Pentel brushpen, a grey Pentel Brushpen, Sakura Pigma Micron 003 black fine liner, Kuretake light grey Brush Writer, and a Staedtler 0.3-2.0 black pigment liner.
6 drawings are tributes to Moebius, 4 were Japan-inspired. I had fun doing all of them. It was a bit tough the last week, and for the first time I think, I was counting the days until the end.
It’s the 8th year in a row I’m participating in Inktober. The rules are simple: A different prompt every day. Use ink. Enjoy. Learn new techniques, or not.
Some choose to not use the prompt list, or create their own, or follow a different list. I prefer to stick to those proposed by Inktober creator Jake Parker, because I find it easier, even though some prompts are less inspiring than others!
A tabby cat being scratched under the chin, basking in the moment. I used a light grey Kuretake BrushWriter, a Sakura micron 003 black pen and Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens.
A tribute to Tom Haugomat. This represents an astronaut on the moon next to a peace flag, waving at a planet. I used the Sakura Micron 003 black fineliner, the Kuretake light grey BrushWriter, and the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens.
My second least favourite in the series. This is a crane in shallow water next to a branch laden with snow and some reed. I used the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens and the Kuretake light grey ink Brushwriter. And I touched up the feathers with white acrylic.
A very graphic tiger. I used the micron 003 black fineliner, Kuretake light grey BrushWriter, and the Staedtler black ink 0.3-2.0 pigment liner.
This is the top of a marble sculpture by Bernini, of Pluto abducting Proserpina. I used again the same light grey Kuretake BrushWriter, a Sakura micron 003 black fineliner, and Pentel grey ink Brushpen.
This is Toothless from the movie “How to train your dragon”. I used the Sakura Micron 003 black fineliner, and the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens.
The Statue of Liberty at night seen from underneath it. I used the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens and the Kuretake light grey ink Brushwriter.
Another tribute to Moebius. I used the Sakura Micron 003 black ink fineliner and layers of the Kuretake light grey ink Brushwriter. Contrary to the theme, the size of the character is really small (as tall as the last knuckle of my little finger.)
I had a lot of fun drawing this surfer girl. I used as a reference a travel poster advertising Ceylon, Sri Lanka – Ceylon ‘A Wave of Your Own, Talpe Beach 1970s. I used the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens and the Kuretake light grey ink Brushwriter.
A graphic dragon. I used the Pentel black ink and grey ink Brushpens and the Kuretake light grey ink Brushwriter.
2023-11-16 update: since release 3.8, which happened yesterday on my tablet, straight lines are now available as a new feature!
I recently acquired a second-hand e-ink tablet. The reMarkable2 comes with very little but specific features which optimize for efficient note-taking mainly, and for some sketching.
For the latter, the only assistance available is a few templates that afford guide lines, and the possibility to work with layers. In both cases the handling tools consist of a couple of erasers and a selection tool which lets you resize, rotate, copy and paste (except for what you typed as text, it only works for what you put on “paper” with the “pen”). No warping, no inversion, no tool to create any common shape or make a straight line.
Yet it knows of straight lines because when you use the highlighter on a PDF or EPUB file, it can “snap to text” and your highlighter strokes are transformed into straight lines.
I don’t know how others manage, when they prefer not to “jailbreak” (for lack of a better term) their tablet, but I don’t care whether I can display a custom image while my tablet is sleeping, but I do care about straight lines and shapes that are scalable. So I drew some and made a PDF of the pages.
Note: the illustration pictures are post processed with a filter to give them a slight background that changes the colour (the eggplant colour should in fact be black, the red is in fact much more vivid.)
I made horizontal lines of varied thickness and length, a few vertical lines too, and a rectangle.
When I need a line, I navigate to this page in my templates folder, use the selection tool to copy it, navigate to my destination page, and tap the pen. Then I drag it where I want, stretch it or shrink it, rotate it if I need. And repeat as often as needed.
For this cover page label, I used one of the black oval shapes I hand-drew, copied it with the selection tool, navigated to my notebook page, pasted it, and gave it the size I wanted.
Then I added a new layer. I chose the calligraphy pen, thick size, and white ink and wrote. The layer protects the oval if you erase or select and move your words.
This is exactly the same instructions as the oval label, but selecting all the black boxes of various sizes and using the medium-sized calligraphy pen nib.
In this particular notebook, I used the same cover page for each of the modules. I duplicated the first one, moved it to the right place, selected the layer where I wrote and made changes.
This is page 14 of the PDF I made. I duplicated the whole page and moved it as cover page of a new notebook. I could have selected the shape, copied it, and pasted it elsewhere, but I wanted the circles at exactly the same place.
I’m taking at my pace the free online course “Foundations of humane technology” by the Center for Humane Technology (whom I had heard of after watching the excellent documentary “The Social Dilemma”.) These are my notes.
This module addresses how to make lasting changes, building on the tenets of humane technology and highlighting the most pressing issues and stakes around building technology that interacts with human attention.
Watch and listen to Randima Fernando, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, introduce the course on the Foundations of Humane Technology (1:43):
As a summary of all I’ve learned in the course modules, here are the most meaningful elements (to me):
Now that you’re informed, determined, and ready to act, be aware of this and be prepared to do that:
The only relevant story I can think of, since I’m not a technology builder, is how I reformed the team I lead at work. Eight years ago, I was promoted to lead the team I was on. It wasn’t a career goal and I had not been paying attention to any of the leadership considerations. But once in place, I knew that making small adjustments might have a positive impact. I was aware of my colleagues’ strengths and weaknesses, and there were territories I was keen for us to explore. I wanted to achieve three things: that we were doing the things that needed to be done, that we were enjoying ourselves by doing them well, and that we take up new select longer-term projects that are more preparatory for bigger things, and less reactionary in nature. So I focused on “what”, “why” and “how”, provided some guiding principles and built a common sense of our purpose and capabilities, and broke down our projects by affinities so that anyone’s strength was put to the best use possible. There is flexibility in who exactly does what, how it is done because we focus on outcomes over tasks and we’re established some level of redundancy. After a few years, we’re inspired to grow our own expertise and learn new skills, are autonomous, efficient and credible.
