« my vision of the perfect life | Main | it's all clear now. »
October 06, 2005
Art
So, next week i'll be away at this conference. The sort of conferences I attend aren't the kind normal geeks attend; there's no vendor floor, no signing away one's lifeblood for a Speed Racer lunchbox filled with Twinkies (I never did that, really), or collecting logo'd pocketknives from tool vendors. (Get it? Pocketknife? Tools?)
The conferences I go to are like school. Or rather, they are school. UI school. There's really no other way to learn the stuff that I do, aside from teaching myself.
I always find myself mentally overstimulated during these things. I never bring a proper notebook, and wind up with pages of free conference notepads crammed with ideas for UI widgets, menu designs, site structures... the classes always make my brain a little crazy.
So for this trip, I decided to be prepared. I went out at lunch and bought a ring-bound, unlined sketchbook, and one of those really amazing archival-quality pens that have tiny nibs measured in microns. I packed up a couple of mechanical pencils from work and my favorite big eraser. I'm ready.
Wandering up and down the craft supply store aisles, I felt sad that art supplies are no longer a part of my life. Did you know that paintbrushes now have rubberized handles? I didn't. I remember when a block of Arches was one of my most prized possessions.
Now it's all ones and zeroes. I do kind of miss the way really good watercolor paper smells like a paper factory when you wet it. But I was never a very skilled draughtsman, which you need to be to get anywhere with painting. Color, and handling the paint were my best skills. But it was all abstract, and rabbits. Lots of rabbits.
Anyway. One the best parts of my current job is that I sometimes get to sketch with real pencil and paper. I think my crude pencil sketches horrify some members of the team who are accustomed to doing wireframes and whatnot in a drawing program. But the users and the developers love them, and they're so fast.
I look forward now to filling many blank pages of that sketchbook while i'm away.
Posted by lisa at October 06, 2005 05:12 PM
ok, so a) your comment won't post right away because i have to approve it first and b) you might get a server error but your comment probably posted anyway and c) previewing doesn't work so i've removed the preview button.