conversation is an engine

I like reading blogs because…detail

In regular life you might never hear the word combinations that people reveal in blogs. Bloggers can answer questions you’d never dream to ask—and suddenly you are enriched by some comment outta nowhere.

Like this quote (above) from Roz Wound Up.

I recently started following Roz Wound Up, a Minneapolis artist/sketcher/writer (designer/illustrator/teacher at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts) because of the detail she includes about how she practices her craft. A few days back she wrote a fascinating post about the ethics of sketching people in public. Hint: wear a large duck-billed hat so people cannot see your eyes. Today’s delightful post fixates on ears:

I’ve been watching tattoo shows again—Best Ink is the one that’s on right now. It was late, the day had been a complete wash up. Then this kid was standing there being judged on the show and I simple fell in love with his ears.

Read any of her posts and you’ll find in yourself a growing affection for pens and paper and seeing. Specifically:

• Pentel Pocket Brush Pen
• Fabriano Tiziano (8.5 x 11 inch sheet of cream)
• And this: the way the pen feels going across the paper. Especially that.

I once thought a pen was a pen and paper was just something you grabbed from the drawer on the copier (and money’s just something you throw off the back of a train—thanks for sticking that in my brain, Tom Waits).

No longer. Sketching is a sensual art. Maybe seeing is too. The focus of Roz Wound Up has piqued my interest. And with the little sketching I’ve done I’ve started to have a sense of the way my pencil graphite feels across the fine tooth surface of my sketch pad. Now seeing has a sensual element—it’s something I do with a pencil and paper in hand.

Seeing rocks. I hope to do more of it.

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Image credit: Roz Wound Up, Kirk Livingston