Archive for April, 2011

Five Facts

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
Watercolor Pencil Pear Drawing

Watercolor Pencil Drawing of a habit-forming Pear. Click on the image to see the bigger, better version.

  • A pear and yogurt is the best breakfast that an artist can eat. Eat this daily, and it will increase your energy, motivation, and creativity. The yogurt must be plain, unsweetened, and unflavored.
  • I am both untrained and unpracticed in any medium resembling watercolors. They are unwieldy and unpredictable (at least with my current abilities of prediction)
  • You must click on the image above to enlarge it to see the more interesting details about this drawing of mine. The texture of the paper, blending of the water colors, and way the pencil fell on the paper are more interesting than the image taken as a whole. This image is better enjoyed sliced into pieces, just as pears are better enjoyed cut into slices.
  • Humans are creatures of habit. The best way for a person to change their life is to change their habits.
  • Pears can be habit forming. And life changing. To the extent pears can change lives, that is.

Dispatch: Death to the Unregistered

Friday, April 15th, 2011
PE Warrior

He signs his stamp... in BLOOD

I design things that get built.

Buildings. Pipes. Stuff like that.

I have a stamp, a special stamp, that shows I am licensed to do just this. All Engineer’s in my industry need to get this stamp.

There are many like it, but this one is mine.

This is all a matter of public record, and in fact, that is the point. I took a test (a rather difficult test, mind you), and my performance indicated to the great State of California that I can indeed design things, and that it is ok for people to build the things I design. I know enough that it probably won’t break.

So… I stamp my, uh, stamp on drawings when they are all done, just before they are sent out to a bunch of Contractors, who will all bid for the privilege of building the things I design.

Somehow, with all this jumbling in my head, I ended up drawing this little guy, fully licensed to engineer mayhem.

Engineer's Stamp

His stamp is cooler than mine, he is registered under the “Warrior” discipline, while I am registered under the “Mechanical” discipline. He seems to be registered in the State of Despair, while I am registered in the State of California.

In reality, there are no swords involved with my job, and would probably get fired if I tried to involve them in some way. Or at least, I’d get a stern warning, like when I showed up to work with a green Mohawk (it was Halloween). A sword, like my Mohawk, wouldn’t be welcome back in the office the next Monday.

Regardless, I have this doodle, which I painstakingly posted here for you to peruse.

Also, it is nice to know, in this day of electronic this and that, that my stamp is actually still an honest-to-goodness press-it-against-an-inkpad-then-press-it-against-paper stamp, like back in the good old days.