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Prints 1.9

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Welcome to Prints volume 1, issue 9.

Table of contents: Reading • Making • Links

Reading

Recent nonfiction reads

  • The Last American Aristocrat, by David S. Brown. Confession: I went into this thinking it was about Henry James. No. It’s about Henry Adams (grandson of John Quincy Adams), who I knew nothing about beforehand. It ended up being a much slower read, I believe because its prose was dense and less scannable. There were also some mildly confusing time jumps. Overall, though, I liked it and I’m glad I read it. Learned a lot about the late 1800s and early 1900s. Also picked up the word filiopietistic.

Recent fiction reads:

  • Network Effect, by Martha Wells. The full-length Murderbot novel. Really liked it. It was more horror in some ways, but still a comfort read. I’m going to be sad when I read Fugitive Telemetry and run out of Murderbot.

Books acquired since last issue

  • Shakespeare: The Biography — Peter Ackroyd
  • The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco — Marilyn Chase
  • First Platoon: A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance — Annie Jacobsen
  • Heir to the Empire — Timothy Zahn
  • Dark Force Rising — Timothy Zahn
  • The Last Command — Timothy Zahn
  • From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death — Caitlin Doughty
  • This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate — Naomi Klein
  • A Victorian Lady’s Guide to Fashion and Beauty — Mimi Matthews
  • Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power — James McGrath Morris
  • Emerson: The Mind on Fire — Robert D. Richardson
  • Part-Time Gods — Rachel Aaron
  • Night Shift Dragons — Rachel Aaron
  • Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities — Craig Steven Wilder
  • An Eye for an Eye — Carol Wyer
  • The Puma Years: A Memoir — Laura Coleman
  • The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America — James Bamford
  • The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens—and Ourselves — Arik Kershenbaum
  • Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found — Suketu Mehta
  • The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth — Richard Conniff
  • Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence — Christian Parenti
  • The City We Became — N. K. Jemisin
  • The Great Fossil Enigma: The Search for the Conodont Animal — Simon J. Knell
  • Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation — Anton Howes
  • Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle — Clare Hunter
  • Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages — Dan Jones

Making

Releases

Some religious art:

When Our Heavenly Parents We Meet II
When Our Heavenly Parents We Meet II_. More in the zoomed-in negative-space vein. I like how it feels more intimate and personal.

Why Weepest Thou? II
Why Weepest Thou? II_. I know, I know, it also looks like a) an old floppy disk or b) a headphone-wearing creature with an open mouth which bears resemblance to my Nom Nom painting. Turns out these negative-space pieces end up looking like other things half the time.

By the Laying on of Hands III
By the Laying on of Hands III_. Going back to full bleed. In hindsight, this maybe feels a little too zoomed-in to me.

By the Laying on of Hands IV
By the Laying on of Hands IV_. This is basically the same as the other. Felt like doing it at the time, now second guessing that decision. If it’s not yet clear, I have a complicated relationship with some of the pieces I make.

I Am a Child of God III
I Am a Child of God III_. Inordinately pleased with the painterly look of the background. The mult-layer SVG technique is a new favorite for sure. This piece also looks to me like a crazed fox wearing a white-collared shirt and red robes. These are the perils of negative-space art!

Current projects

Retzi (working title): Ten minutes a day is still working spectacularly well, and I’m making good if slow progress. The first draft of this story is done (it’s only five pages), just need to do a final editing pass. Expect it next time!

Religious art: Got burned out on this and planned to take a long break, but that didn’t last. Thinking about using Blender more for texturing, like I did with Within the Walls of Your Own Homes, using both displacement/bump maps and sculpting. But I also really like the SVG techniques I’ve been using lately, so we’ll see.

Picture book: Haven’t really done much of anything on this (soon to be a common theme). Thinking about using the multi-layer SVG technique for the art.

Shadow art: Nothing to report.

Type design: Nothing to report.

Musical: I think I have the basic idea and some initial song ideas.

Film: Nothing to report.

Getty’s Persepolis Reimagined. So cool.

Julia Evans with a list of newish command-line tools. I’ll admit I have a weakness for these kinds of tools.

Ernest Blum back in 2008 on learning languages via interlinear texts. Mixed feelings on this.

Mermaid, a Markdownish tool for diagramming and charting. Intrigued, particularly from the genealogy angle (pedigree/descendancy charts).

Kottke on kaketsugi. Love this.

Jim Nielsen on ordering CSS declarations. Agreed. I’ve been using alphabetical declarations for a while and it’s worked well (and any exceptions are then obvious).

Rikako Murayama and Akiko Okamoto on new electric chopsticks to enhance salty tastes. I don’t know what to say, but I’m intrigued.

Isabel Slone on learning to sew at the end of the world. I still itch to get into sewing.

Rob Gardner’s “My Kindness Shall Not Depart from Thee”. One of my favorite songs.