29 March 13

Aerospace Museum

MiG 17 We had the day off today so I took the opportunity to play tourist in my own backyard, and headed to the Aerospace Museum of California, which is in the north Sacramento area next to the former McClellan Air Force Base airfield. I had never been there before. Titan IV first stage engines Their collection is strong in U.S. AIr Force planes but they have some other noteworthy planes as well. I sketched three of the planes and one pair of rocket engines. The plane at left is a MiG-17: according to the plaque how the Air Force acquired this particular plane is still classified. At lower right is the pair of rocket engines from the first stage of the Titan IV rocket. This rocket was used mainly to launch large military satellites into orbit but was also used to launch the Cassini space probe which is still orbiting Saturn collecting data.

Posted by at 10:16 PM in Miscellaneous | Link | Comment

16 March 13

Arboretum Sketchcrawl

Great egret While Pica was passing through 30-degree weather in Chicago, back in Davis it reached 79 degrees today, fine weather for a sketchcrawl at the east end of the Arboretum. The subject matter was plants plus a couple of egrets. Spinning gum

Posted by at 10:12 PM in Design Arts | Link | Comment [1]

27 January 13

Sketchcrawl

antique kettles, pen and ink On Saturday we joined the Let’s Draw Davis crowd for a sketching outing in and around central Davis. There seemed to be a fuchsia flashmob going on, which I failed to draw. (When I asked one of the fuchsia-clad participants, they denied a flashmob; maybe it was just such a beautiful day everyone wanted to dress brightly.

Pete sketching, pen and ink I sketched Pete Scully sketching in the courtyard where the Tea List has a few tables outside, but mostly it was good to feel the sun on my face. I didn’t use any color on the paper, though, just the sepia fountain pen on paper that will not take any kind of wash. Next time I’m going in color.

bike basket, pen and ink

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8 December 12

New University of California Logo: Infantilizing the Academy

New UC logo Curious timing for the release of the new University of California’s branding campaign: Friday afternoon, and Friday afternoon during skiing season, when it may well have gone unnoticed by many.

In twelve hours there were 5,000 signatures on a petition to withdraw the new logo. Comments have been exasperated, some have been hilarious, almost all of them have been unequivocally negative.

It’s a difficult design task, to come up with a logo (this isn’t a replacement, the university seal has never been a “logo,” but formed part of a mark that included the motto “Fiat Lux”) that encompasses the land-grant mission across ten campuses, that draws on a tradition of academic excellence that includes 59 Nobel laureates. I’m not sure I would have been up to the task. That said…

My issues? The logo looks like one more suited to a children’s book publisher, specializing in under-three-year-old fare. (Not to mention the spiral C swirling down the drain, which at least is honest.) It’s like a radioactive millipede. Call me an old fart, but I still think university branding ought to involve some sense of gravitas, something that reflects the tradition and importance of the academic endeavor. Unless you’re peddling bought degrees to illiterates. This logo mocks the exorbitant fees charged of undergraduates. If I were one of them, I’d be seeking a transfer. Now.

This logo is like one of those sadly ill-advised uniform changes of baseball teams in the 1970s. Is this what we want? People laughing their socks off in forty years over the “ten worst university logos of all time,” which this would surely top? The rotund “c” does harken back to an earlier time, to be sure, but perhaps not one we should be all that enthusiastic about replicating: 1970s mass-culture design, finally breaking free of helvetica’s black-and-white austere totalitarianism of 60s high culture, playfulness much loved by Dunkin Donuts (note the interesting spelling, maybe we should copy that, too) and burger establishments, it’s a shameless dumbing-down.

As a member of the University of California community, a venerable public institution under fire, reeling from years of budget cuts, whose state just mere weeks ago voted to TAX ITSELF in order to save its infrastructure of education from complete devastation, I am disappointed. I’m actually quite angry. I’m signing the petition. Not that I think we have any chance whatsoever of stopping the purveyors of watered-down Ikea-like dreck from completing the task of rendering the university irrelevant; I’m just sad to think they’d do it so blatantly.

Ikea roll

December 17, 2012: The University’s Office of the President has withdrawn the logo in the face of the opposition because it’s causing “a distraction.” Defensiveness (and there’s plenty of it) aside, they should be commended for paying attention.

Posted by at 11:49 AM in Design Arts | Link | Comment [4]

5 July 12

Developing Meaning

Riot monsters I spent last week up at Calligraphy Northwest held at Reed College in Portland, this year’s edition of the largest calligraphy conference taking place in North America, with 500 participants. Workshops ran 2 1/2 days and 5 days; I took a 5 day course entitled “Developing Meaning” taught by Brody Neuenschwander, which was an exhilarating workshop on improving the textual content of our calligraphy works. Prior to the workshop we had a homework assignment to write three short texts about a significant recent event in our lives, something that shook us to the core. I ended up choosing the pepper spray incident from last November. We used these texts initially for a series of calligraphic riffs and wrote these on good paper to be bound into a book. Towards the end, we started writing out the texts in full into the books. I don’t think anyone completed this task during the class, and I’m still working on writing in the texts. Here are a couple of images from my book in progress. Rally on Easter Island

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27 June 12

More Gray Foxes

gray fox male, Derwent coloursoft So the gray fox family is doing well. Five pups, now about 12 weeks old. I was able to catch the male this evening as he was guarding the whole territory. They make a funny kind of bark, like a terrier but much deeper, growling in there somewhere. (Below is a photo of the male barking at me.)

Having wild creatures like this so close to an urban area is thrilling but also worrying — too many cars going way too fast. For now, they seem fine.

Gray fox barking

Posted by at 09:20 PM in Nature and Place | Link | Comment

14 April 12

April Sketchcrawl

Eliza the black lab A lovely spring day today, though with the ongoing tornado outbreak in the Central Plains I am reminded that lovely weather in one place is always balanced by horrific weather somewhere else. We had our monthly sketchcrawl today in Davis, walking a four-block stretch on G Street downtown. I mostly worked large today, using a 9 × 12” pad of watercolor paper I picked up last time I was in Berkeley. Above at left is a black lab named Eliza who was outside at the Davis Food Coop. And at right is a gentleman with his coffee in Mishka’s. Guy in Mishka's

Posted by at 10:08 PM in Design Arts | Link | Comment

27 March 12

Disembodied Soundtracks

I’ve been following the blog of James Gurney for a while now. Gurney is the author and illustrator of Dinotopia but like many creative people he is extremely generous about sharing his process. His most recent post is a sketch of some people in a diner with the snippets of conversation overheard jotted around the edges.

I do this a lot, listening to unrelated and hilarious-by-juxtaposition fragments of conversation. They are best done in a crowded place like a city, but usually more interesting if most people are moving, or at least moving on after a short stay in, say, a subway car. (This genre found a perfect outlet in Overheard in New York, but I love the idea of combining the fragments with sketches. Hmm.)

Edited to add: today is the blogday of Feathers of Hope. On March 27, 2003, Numenius posted his first entry in Moveable Type. To those of you who still stop in here occasionally, thank you. Welcome to newcomers too.

Posted by at 01:55 PM in Design Arts | Link | Comment [4]

20 March 12

A Painting a Day

I have not been keeping up with Bird by Bird, but there’s a lot of nesting activity at the moment and I mean to get back to it.

My friend Jennifer has just alerted me to a gorgeous Swedish blog, 365 Akvareller. My Swedish is not up to the task of finding out the artist’s name or gender, but I urge you to take a look at these beautiful watercolor sketches. The translated description:

365 + 12 watercolors in a year I painted a watercolor for each day plus a large watercolor of each month, which is 365 plus 12 watercolors. Here you can see all. I did not have time to paint every day, but I started a new one every day and could continue with the next few days while the other watercolors dried. I usually say that you cannot do one every day but you can make seven in a week. Each watercolor is
a book with all 377 images.

There are lots of birds here, and I’m motivated to get back to it!

Posted by at 01:29 PM in Design Arts | Link | Comment [1]

27 October 11

Cat On The Windowsill

Charlie on the window sill I’m taking a silkscreening class right now at the campus craft center and find myself needing a bit of black-and-white artwork from which to make a screen. I haven’t done much black-on-white art so I sketched Charlie sitting on the windowsill with ink and a Chinese brush.

Posted by at 09:59 AM in Design Arts | Link | Comment [1]

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