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drawingonthenaturalworld.blogspot.com

drawing on the natural world: Jay is for January

http://drawingonthenaturalworld.blogspot.com/2017/01/jay-is-for-january.html

Saturday, January 7, 2017. Jay is for January. I picked the Blue Jay, Cyanocitta cristata,. For the January bird of my 2017 bird calendar because I love seeing the blue jays in the winter, their exquisite blue up against the snow or even against the browns of winter oak trees. Their name includes cyan. The color on the blue jay’s tail and back are closer to cyan than the feathers on its body. But when it catches or reflects the light, it magically turns blue. It is magic too—not simply pigment. They bury...

drawingonthenaturalworld.blogspot.com

drawing on the natural world: November 2016

http://drawingonthenaturalworld.blogspot.com/2016_11_01_archive.html

Sunday, November 6, 2016. Reds Made on Purpose. Red Maple Leaf in Autumn Drawing. A most interesting discussion has begun about a process that most of us marvel at each year and that is the turning of leaf colors. All the way back on October 25, 1936, in the New York Times. Charlotte Wallum wrote “The red pigments are cell-sap colors. They are supposed to be tannoid compounds (referred to as anthocyanin) and the pigments of red beets and dark grapes are similar compounds.”. She tells us that the anthocya...

stories-at-the-edge-of-time.blogspot.com

StoriesattheEdgeofTime: Zalman's Slipper

http://stories-at-the-edge-of-time.blogspot.com/2012/04/zalmans-slipper.html

Saturday, April 7, 2012. Ometime before dawn on the morning in question, Zalman was crudely awakened by a strange noise in the closet. Every day being the same, Zalman took great comfort in relying on the familiar pattern of sounds from morning until night. So although this new intrusion was only a slight thud, nothing more than a gentle shove against the still air, it was loud enough to send Zalman into a fit of concern. But he was only vaguely successful. What could it be? So what could it have been?

stories-at-the-edge-of-time.blogspot.com

StoriesattheEdgeofTime: Sinister Arabesques

http://stories-at-the-edge-of-time.blogspot.com/2012/04/sinister-arabesques.html

Saturday, April 7, 2012. 8220;You who have looked and never seen. Or seeing only knew through science. Judge me not with your eyes all gleam. For an anthroid stands here in defiance.”. While it is we anthroids who wear our emotions on the outside plain as a face. To get the basic fact out of the way, I did kill my friend, Dr. Pithecus. My. They have told me not to use the word. I am not ashamed of it, quite the contrary. It is these others, these investigators, who seem ashamed. Why would I be? And so I ...

gizmotics.blogspot.com

Gizmotics: The Ring of the Neoluds

http://gizmotics.blogspot.com/2012/04/ring-of-neoluds.html

The Ring of the Neoluds. 8220;The engines he will have invented will. Be beyond his strength to control…”. Henry Adams, writing in 1862. Our responses to Gizmos evolution are all over the place. They range from blind acceptance to healthy skepticism to outright rage at the machine. Most folks become whine connoisseurs, always aggravated. But for a smaller group, the world is going right to hell on a microchip. I understand these modern Luddites very well; they are really preservationists. One of the main...

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: THE MUSEUM OF DECENT ART

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-museum-of-decent-art.html

THE MUSEUM OF DECENT ART. In the news is yet another uproar about. Offensive art and a call for a panel of experts to address the problem. Nothing will come of it because the logistics of evaluating all the exhibitions in all the museums and public spaces are impossible. So much garbage, so few shovels. As a public service, I have come up with a better idea. Instead of eliminating all the smut and crud that is passed off as art these days, we should counter it with the creation of a Museum of Decent Art.

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: HIGHER TEA

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/higher-tea.html

The spoon I had in hand was no ordinary utensil. It had a fancy vine pattern etched on the surface. A spoon, of course, does not need to tickle your eye or tongue; it simply needs to spoon. This is surplus design, perhaps a throwback to a time before modernism declared that excess was excessive. An ode to details from a time when details soothed. The columns that supported this ornamental sky were themselves elaborate confections. Lost arts from a lost time. Glasses clinked, silverware chimed, and chatte...

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: LEAP OF FAITH

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/leap-of-faith.html

As designers know, the whole process of making something centers on a certain leap of faith. The challenge, the research, the insight, the plan, the construction.all of that has to work towards a realizable goal of course. But behind it all as a kind of impetus is the belief that the design will work in the world just as well as it did in our imagination. Design – any design from a logo to a starship – is therefore a leap into the unknown with only a concept to keep you aloft. By the early 820s, a new Ca...

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: VEGAS IN NO TIME

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/vegas-in-no-time.html

VEGAS IN NO TIME. Nothing can really prepare you for Las Vegas. Not old TV shows, not movies, not postcards, not even previous visits. Las Vegas is unlike anything else and not even very much like itself either. It is based on a theory of design which says that form need not follow function and function is no fun anyway. This is city as confection, a dessert in the desert, thought up by the same people who invented wedding cakes, Easter peeps, and sundaes. Birds fly, lizards dart. It rains every hour.

notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com

The Made World: UPON THE ROOF

http://notesonthemadeworld.blogspot.com/2013/10/upon-roof.html

For months I have been watching my neighbor’s roof. Sometimes with binoculars but mostly with my naked eye. My obsession started in the summer and has now continued into autumn. The roof in question belongs to a brownstone on my block and my apartment on the ninth floor of a nearby building gives me an aerial view over it. It is the perfect perspective from which to gaze in awe, but the object of my fascination is not what you might think. It started with some neat men walking around the roof and pointing.