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Weekly Update: New Journal and 10 Years of Writing at Large

It’s been a while, mostly because life has been hectic, not because I don’t have things to write about. Here’s to trying to get more posts in, even if they aren’t perfect or particularly long.

I’ve just finished another journal (the yellow one on the left in the photo below) and have set up my new one. Both are Stalogy 365 B6 notebooks, and both have a similar initial setup:

1.I flip the notebooks upside down so that the header with the dates is on the bottom and out of the way, as I don’t use it.

2. I use the front endpaper to write an “in case of loss” message (my name, email, phone number and a request for the finder to do the right thing).

New journal on the right, old journal on the left.

3. I use the back endpaper as a sort of “dashboard”. One side gets stickers on it, the other gets a post it with some journaling and review prompts.

Endpaper view of the new journal.

My new journal’s cover was damaged in transit, so I covered the worst of the damage with washi tape. It adds some character to the black cover, and if it gets too grimy or peels off I can always replace it.

My old journal lasted me for 5 months, which is about what these notebooks last for. My Moleskine journals lasted for 3-4 months because they had fewer paged and I used them for scrapbooking as well.

In other news “Writing at Large” is 10 years old. I never thought that I’d be publishing it for so long, but I’m glad that I started it way back in July of 2015, and I hope to keep it going for many years more. I’ve been through a lot over the past decade, and this site reflects a tiny part of that. If I can recommend something it’s to invest your time in your own site and your own work instead of on social media. If you persist, it pays dividends.

Reading

Finished The Day of the Jackal by Fredrick Forsyth and found it fascinating. I’m planning on reviewing it here.

Started on We Solve Murders by Richard Osman and I’m working on some Ulysses posts.

Health and Fitness

It’s getting hard to run outside, harder than it ever was, in this heat and humidity. Global warming is making treadmill runs more attractive. I’ve started using the NRC app‘s guided treadmill runs and they are pretty good and making treadmill running more bearable.

Have a great week and be kind to each other.

Inktober 2023 Day 6: Grey Elephant

I enjoy sketching with grey inks, so I oftentimes have a pen filled with a grey ink of some kind or another. Today’s selection is the Pelikan Souverän M605 Stresemann with a medium nib (which as it’s a gold nibbed Pelikan, verges on the broad) filled with Diamine Silver Fox. Silver Fox is from Diamine’s 150th anniversary collection (one of the original ones they issued), and is a slightly warmish medium grey with fantastic shading.

African elephants are pretty fun to sketch, so I may be tempted to sketch another one of them later this month.

If you’re looking for a grey ink that’s well behaved, offers a lot of shading, is readable even in fine nibs and is slightly on the warmer side of the grey spectrum, then I recommend giving Diamine Silver Fox a try.

City in Grey

A5 Stillman and Birn sketchbook spread with two watercolour drawings, one on the lower left side and one on the upper right side (with ink), and two text blocks, one in Hebrew on the lower right side and one in English on the upper left side. The palette is grey and muted.

In early January we had a bout of very foggy days and I took photos of various city scenes in the lockdown and the fog thinking that I’d later draw them. I thought that drawing fog in watercolour would be pretty straightforward, because what is easier than just drawing wet on wet and letting the watercolour do its thing? But after looking more closely at the photos I realized that fog isn’t just grey sky melting into the landscape, it’s also a muting of colours, a flattening of the landscape, the lack of shadow. In the end I drew two small landscapes, one urban and one of the park, and although they were challenging I enjoyed drawing them enough to want to have the same experience with the text. The grey writing in Hebrew in the bottom right corner is a line out of a well known rock song that embodies a lot of the spirit of Tel Aviv. It was written using Diamine Silver Fox on a semi-wet background, to facilitate ink spread.

These drawing also showcase a shift I have made in my palette and my mixing over the past few weeks. Once things settle down I’ll probably post about my new palette.

Black Lives Matter

Black lives matter.

If you break into an apartment and shoot a woman in her sleep, you are a murderer.

If you kneel on a man’s neck for 9 minutes, you are a murderer.

There are no circumstances that make this OK:

If you’re going to comment that he only aiming a flash bang, or that he wasn’t aiming at them but at a protestor standing next to them, f*ck off.

To my friends who say that the US police are scared for their lives because every traffic stop could end in a shootout I say: why aren’t these cops protesting the NRA? Why aren’t these cops pushing for gun control? Why did these cops have zero problems when a bunch of red necks with guns charged state capitals demanding that the state reopen so they can get a haircut? Exactly how threatened are these cops who shoot and mace and hit peaceful protesters?

I donated money to the Equal Justice Initiative, Black Lives Matter, and Black Girls Code. I’m actively working to educate myself and follow more black voices on social media. I strongly urge that you do the same at the very least.

Black Lives Matter.