I’ve been doing more sketching so far this year, partly, because I realized I was getting massively burned out last year. I have always enjoyed art—drawing, textile design, type design—and a few years ago I was set to follow it full time. Then the opportunity to go back to school for marine science came up, and I had to jump at it. Unfortunately, being a full time student really reduced the time I had for other pursuits. Grad school squashed what time was available for artistic pursuits to nothing. For the past three years I have done almost nothing artistic. The last significant art project I worked on was the octopus scarf. The one exception is might be Science Deck cards, but I don’t count that because it is all digital design, and more and more, I need analog art mediums. I need to feel the art come to life in my hands.
This sketch was the first effort this year, born of frustration with progress in my writing and a burning need to find some way to detach from the thesis writing in an enjoyable, and dare I say it, me-centered moment or two. Fortunately, when I focus on art, I am pretty solidly focused, but it is a very different type of focus than writing or crunching numbers. Instead of a focus that becomes heavy over time, it is one that seems to make things lighter.
This year (and next) will be very stressful. Transitioning into a fast attack Ph.D. plan (total of 4 years of research/classes/study) quals, thesis writing, presentations, etc. To keep from going totally bonkers—a highly technical term—I absolutely need to have some down time nurturing the creative side. To further that end, I started making a concerted effort to sketch at least every other day. Not a resolution or a promise, but a goal, same as my goal of 120 dives and 120+ hours in the water this year. Doable, but if it doesn’t happen, it’s no big deal. Just something to aim for.
The sketch above was my desk at the time of the sketching. On the right is my Wacom tablet, to the left of it is the legal pad with notes for my thesis writing—yes, I write the first draft of each chapter longhand on legal paper. All my major note-taking methods (except drawing) are represented in the image:
- Small Moleskines for taking daily notes.
- A larger notebook (this one also a Moleskine on the left) with project notes, effectively my lab notebook.
- Index cards above that for details about each video or photo frame (community composition, location, etc). Each card ends as a record (several records actually) in a database in the end.
- A legal pad for writing manuscript rough drafts.
Scattered on the desk are several of my writing tools: a pair of Waterman Hemispheres and a Waterman Phileas. One of the Hemispheres has a matte black finish with a fine nib and is loaded with black ink. The other has a blue, marbled body with a medium nib and is filled with Noodler’s Polar Blue ink. The Phileas is a medium nib with blue Waterman ink, a real workhorse of a fountain pen, which was quite affordable in it’s day. It’s a little large for my hand, but still comfortable enough for hour long writing sessions. This one is now out of commission, as the end cap came off and got lost just the other day. I really like the Hemispheres. They are very nice pens. I do need to spend some time with the fine tipped one—a gift from Dad—to personalize the nib. It’s just a bit scratchy right now. Unfortunately, my favorite pen of all, a Parker Sonnet with fine nib, is not in the lineup since its nib met with the deck of the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster during the one evening of storm waves we had during our cruise last spring. It slipped longways off the desk and landed directly on the nib, doing quite a bit of damage. I’m hoping that the folks at the Fountain Pen Hospital will be able to affordably fix it by either replacing the nib or straightening it out.
I plan to post several new drawings and doodles here and at my Flickr Photostream.
