A few years ago, I spent too much money on plates and bowls crafted by a local Melbourne potter. A potter I’d seen at markets for years, her work getting better and better with every throw. Plates and bowls. Such ordinary objects. Objects that are so easy to acquire for any price, at any time,… Continue reading The importance of investing in everyday things
Category: Making
A team that sits together, ships together
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from building software it’s that the designers and engineers need to sit together. They need to talk together, design together, build together, test together, iterate together. In every software project I’ve ever worked on, when this happens, so does magic. The work is more creative, more efficient, more beautiful… Continue reading A team that sits together, ships together
Work needs Play
The best work comes from Play
Credentials aren’t that important for most things
An uncertified surgeon is illegal but it’s probably true that no one has ever died by looking at artwork produced by an uncredentialed artist.
The problem with pure
Are acrylics or digital any less ‘pure’ than oils? Those in the art world favour tradition over new technology, but everything was new technology once.
Colour palette reference: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
She-Ra’s poppy, but limited colour palette show that you can still go bright without going gaudy.
Lucky breaks are everywhere
Our intuition tells us that good luck is harder to find than bad luck, but what if luck was just about the way you looked at something?
How much should I spend on a pencil, paper, and eraser?
Maybe “Buy the best art materials you can afford” isn’t the best advice after all.
Quiet, Please
An artist’s challenge is to create their own quiet amidst all the noise because no umpire will do it for us.
Ideas are easy, progress is hard
Ideas are everywhere, but artists are not. Is it really just fear of failure that prevents people from converting their ideas into art?