looking up

We must be an inherently optimistic people. How else could all manner of words from "fantastic" to "terrific" come to mean "extraordinarily good"?

art materials: brush pens

Here is something fun for a bit of art on the go. These are various sorts of brush pens and a water brush (top). The brush pens are all loaded with pigment now, but were fresh nylon bristles when I got them, just like the water brush.



I wanted to be able to do watercolor easily in the field and I hesitate to take anything that would need cleaned up "in the field" as well. The Pentel Color Brush Pen (bottom) seemed like a good thing to try, and I've seem people bragging up how wonderful their "Pentel Brush Pens" are. I got the sepia to try out, but was not impressed. It was a bit like a brush trying to be a pen and it wasn't a very good brush. Particularly the bristles keep trying to be in two bunches instead of one. I'm willing to believe that that is not usual and it's just a problem with mine, but it didn't leave a good impression. I'd also read that you can do a bit of watercolor over it after a day or two drying. This is truly like watercolor and it doesn't matter how long you let it sit, it will not allow for painting with water over it.

Then I found that what people rave about is the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen (one up from the bottom), which only comes in black. It's also a little harder to find. I gave it one more chance, although I can't get any other colors, and got one. This has much shorter bristles that seemed to be connected when I first got it, but split up as the ink soaked them and it was used. Unlike the other brush pen, there is nowhere to press to help the ink along, the ink flows into the bristles as it will. This is much more like a pen that aspires to be a brush and overall has been very pleasant to use. There is nothing unruly about this nib.

I also got a Kuretake No. 61 Brush Pen with silver ink (one down from the top) for little bits of fun. The tip is a little shorter than the color brush pen. It also needs to be squeezed to push the ink from the reservoir to a second that fills the brush. This one stays in one tight bunch but is a little wider than the color brush pen. For what little I've used it, it has been quite nice if a bit bolder than expected. The metallic ink is not transparent.

more minis

I have more darling little hand made comic books. Actually, I may have ordered practically everything Matt Wiegle has done and is available plus one he just drew most of the artwork for.



They even came with a piece of original art!

The three along the bottom are all adapted from old tales which are all a little off as such tales tend to be. These haven't been Disneyfied yet.

Murder, in the middle of the top, was written by someone else and most the stories are drawn by Matt. I saw a review on it somewhere, which I think may have been the trigger to remember I wanted to devour all the other books I could get but hadn't yet.

At the corners are lovely little nonsense books like Your Karate Vacation was. These are little gems that should be shared at every opportunity.

The last piece in the middle is the original art on the back of a Partyka postcard. Now I just feel special.

I'd never ordered minis so I twitched for the two weeks hearing nothing trying to remember that this is just spare time stuff until the envelope popped up in the mailbox. And then I twitched for the rest of the day knowing that I should be working, not opening up envelopes full of minis. Okay, they may not have lasted the whole day, but testing computer programs can have down moments that are perfect for reading mini comics during.

pull out

There's something deeply disturbing about the pull quote "India's answer to The Lord of the Rings" on a book called Ramayan 3392 AD.

Project: Telstar

It must be said that the folks at AdHouse love books, although as a "boutique juggernaut" that's not many people. I still wish they'd print a few more, or perhaps that's reprint a few. Still, I have gotten hold of the book that inspired my previous rant (Project: Telstar) for only somewhat above cover price. I also got hold of another of the set (Project: Romantic) for my regular discount. I will not be getting the last of the set (Project: Superior) unless it is reprinted. At $50 for a library copy (ooh, it's come down), I'll just have to be happy with my free comic with part of it from a few years ago. It's the Joel Priddy part anyway.

So I hold in my hands a copy of Project: Telstar, which is A Spacial Robotic Anthology. The detail that has gone into this is just delightful. There's a busy little scene of robots and workers bustling about on the cover. Over the subtitle, little ones and zeros are printed in clear, a reminder for those who look of what makes a robot tick. Cute rounded corners, but heavier than it looks because it's actually printed on good paper. It all gives a good feeling, and so you open it up.

And there's more art on the end pages. In fact, it turns out that the front cover was the first page of a wordless story contained on the covers and end pages of the book. The book itself is printed in two colors, traditional black and a metallic blue. It's a choice that just makes sense.

The various authors utilized the two colors to varying degrees. There is some wonderful work in this taking advantage of ink. I do particularly like the work by Jay Geldof and Rob Ullman. There's also a few that would have been better off to have the colors printed in the opposite order.

There's almost nothing I didn't like in this. There's three portfolios contained in the book, which I didn't care for although I felt my heart softening for the third one. Still, they're not stories! Meanwhile, lots of wonderful, creative robot stories.

shirt of Tee

I have found the greatest tee shirt offered by the internet. So many are offered here and there, but so many aren't very good. There are a few good ones, like xkcd has some nice ones in the store.

Ah, the regular expressions shirt... except that the whole swinging in heroically to apply them rather made the comic. And I don't really use them enough so any time I really want to do something fun with them, I seem to have to look up bits.

Ooh, the sudo shirt... even though it always felt like a joke I'd tried before. Odd thing is, the systems I might try it on rarely have the command installed and even fewer seem to have given me sudo permission on the particular command in question.

Hum, the one titled "stand back (science)" is getting there...

This is the greatest tee-shirt on the net. It has a wonderful mix of alienness and childishness and simplicity. Also fun is the related web comic.

Forbidden Kingdom

I went to see a pointless movie meant to be mainly (kung-fu) action film stars you thought were retired already doing what they do best. There is a subtle difference between the movies Jackie Chan and Jet Li can be found in, so they'd never actually been in the same movie until Forbidden Kingdom. It's fun to see the drunken whatnot that seemed to be what made Jackie Chan famous (at least here) again. They really managed to make the two actors from different kinds of movies work without making their style change.

Meanwhile, someone had the bright idea of actually adding in something like a plot to this whole thing. They wrapped it around a whiny, weak willed teenager (well, I think he was supposed to be about that old) who thought that knowing the names of flashy movie kung-fu made him knowledgeable about the actual thing. He gets pulled back in time to an age of myth where he's got to go on a quest. He is the stick holder while everyone else works. He also sort of gets to learn, um, well, movie kung-fu but we're to believe it's real even though he still seems to be a weak willed and whiny sort-of-like-a-teenager. If you beat him up enough at the end, he'll at least eventually remember he could try not to be so weak.

But it was a meaningless and fun romp so long as you ignore the main character. A silly monkey with a wild bit of wire work (and his... fur) and an absurd drunken fellow who always seems to be in the right place already get up to much joyous fighting. Though it could be a little faster.

Where the stunt bloopers at the end at?