Devouring dandelions

Five things from this week

This week: Lawn maintenance. Photos of my sketchbook. Waterproof notebooks. A bunny munching on dandelions. Is vertical video the future of movies? And more!

🔗 Any text that is underlined is a link that can be clicked 🔗

---

1. Drawing with machines

Before / After

I constantly oscillate between, “My lawn should be an wild prairie full of life and diversity. This is nature, isn’t it?!?” and, “My lawn should be an immaculate spectacle, precise to the very last blade of grass. This is civilized society, isn’t it?!?” Either way I reclaimed about a foot of our driveway and sidewalk and drew some straight lines. Humans love straight lines, but you won’t really find them in nature.

I’ve been thinking more and more about the relationship between maintenance and art. It’s been simmering in the back of my mind for awhile, but this interview with Alberto Aguilar turned up the heat. In the interview he mentions Mierle Laderman Ukeles who has been the Artist in Residence of the New York City Department of Sanitation since 1977. This article is a nice introduction to her work and philosophy.

After Mierle had a kid she was finding it hard to be both a mother and an artist. In an interview she said,

I literally was divided in two. Half of my week I was the mother, and the other half the artist. But, I thought to myself, ‘this is ridiculous, I am the one.’

I’m trying to be a good dad and husband while also trying to be a good artist. I know a lot of you are in the same boat. How do you manage? How do you balance the parent/artist (or even parent/everything else you have to do) relationship?

I’m typing this while my wife packs for a trip and my son plays by himself.

---

2. Sketchbook photos

I said I wanted to write and draw more so here’s proof I did it every day this week.

---

3. Waterproof notebooks

I found some Rite in the Rain pocket notebooks at a garage sale for $0.50 a notebook (much cheaper than buying them brand new). I already have enough notebooks, but those prices are impossible to ignore.

Turns out they’re actually waterproof! The only downside is you can’t use water based writing instruments and all my favorite ways to write involve water.

It’s nice to know my ramblings and scribbles won’t be destroyed if I send this notebook through the washer, but who would really benefit from these notebooks? People who spill a lot, pirate poets, paddle boarding journalists, those people who steer those cool boats with the long oars in Venice, anyone in Portland (I heard it rains a lot there), kayaking illustrators, anyone who weeps while they write, parents with toddlers, toddlers, scuba instructors and waterslide mechanics.

---

4. This bunny ate like five dandelions

I looked into our backyard to see a bunny absolutely devouring a dandelion. It ate the whole thing, bottom to top, in like eight seconds. Then it inched forward, bit off another one and proceeded to finish it off in one go. Something about it not moving a single muscle in its entire body while gobbling down dandelion after dandelion really struck me. I had to animate it. I’m not sure it works but whatever I tried.

---

5. Landscape vs Portrait

Do you think we’ll be watching vertical movies in the future?

Vertical video is basically the default for anyone recording with a phone and almost every social app encourages it. I’m curious if Hollywood will follow suit. Based on the failure of Quibi, probably not any time soon.

However, I think vertical video could be interesting in a cinematic context. This is a nice video breakdown of Damien Chazelle’s short film for Apple (shot vertically on iPhone). Will there someday be movie theaters with vertical screens? There’s a vertical TV.

I’m writing about this because I teach a class about posters and another about publications (books, magazines, newspapers, zines, etc.). The different formats of these things have me thinking about the size and orientation of the everyday things we interact with. Why are they the way they are? Why are most posters vertical? Why are most computers landscape? Why are most phones vertical? Why are most landscape paintings landscape? Why are most portraits portrait? Why was there a pear shaped phone in iCarly?

I know there are very logical reasons for all of these things, but isn’t it interesting how technology comes around and totally upends our standards and preconceived notions? Vertical video is a totally different way to experience and document the world.

It’s exciting that people are trying new things, even if it ends in failure. We wouldn’t be anywhere if we didn’t have people saying, “I don’t know if this will work, but let’s try it anyway!”

Someone used AI to extend clips from a bunch of different films so you can see what they would look like in portrait format. It’s kind of compelling.

Comics are fun because the frames can be portrait, landscape, square, circular, oblong or whatever shape you want. Plus all of this can happen on the same page.

---

ALSO

• Any suggestions for an inexpensive, small, point and shoot, digital camera? Something in the ballpark of this video.

• Highlights from the National Film Board of Canada's online archive of animated shorts – Move Madly

• The P.F. Flyers rebrand is pretty, pretty, pretty good.

• A well illustrated (but unfortunate) Fish Farm Report – The Rán Flygenring Show

• I usually send these updates in the afternoon, but I sent this one early in the morning (at least for US central time zone folks). Do you have a preference?

---

Comic-like things I read this week:

GLEEM – Freddy Carrasco, Shortcomings – Adrian Tomine, Spider in the Well – Jess Hannigan

---

*Knox farts* “Knox, what do we say after we fart?” “Ha ha ha!”