C17: Day 7 – More tiny triangles

January 7, 2017

Today was another pretty long session of little triangles, or as some of them look like, little feet. Starting to feel like my control over the brush is improving, but it’s still difficult to really keep the edges crisp. I was a bit lazy on grinding the ink, as you can see by how light […]

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C17: Day 6 – A new brush!

January 6, 2017

Today, I felt like I really learnt something! I found a smaller brush (on the right) that has roughly the same shape as the ones that came in the set, and I think I did a better job with the little triangles. They are smaller, but I think better formed. I also learnt that one cannot […]

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C17: Day 5 – Brushes

January 5, 2017

Day 5, pretty much like Day 4, and I am losing patience with these brushes. There’s just no way that this brush is going to give good results, given how it splits and doesn’t hold its shape. It’s also shedding bristles like they are going out of fashion. Tomorrow, I will have a look through […]

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C17: Day 4 – Triangles and lines

January 4, 2017

Welcome to Day 4 of my 2017 creative challenge. Today is Triangles and Lines Day, aka, Holy Fuck This Is Really Hard Day. I can’t imagine that today’s creative session was helped by a migraine which is, sadly, still ongoing as I write this. Early night tonight, that’s for sure. But nevertheless, I soldiered on […]

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C17: Day 3 – Triangles

January 3, 2017

Today’s session was spent making little triangles! I found a video on YouTube (below) and decided that it was as good a place to start as any. My triangles are variable, but I did feel like I was making some progress. Some triangles were easier than others, and it’s clear that it requires a lot of […]

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C17: Days 1 & 2 – Brush calligraphy

January 2, 2017

My year of being creative every day got off to a slightly time-shifted start. I sat down on New Years Eve for my first session of brush calligraphy, because I knew that yesterday I would spend literally all day in a car, driving from just north of Dallas to northern Illinois, and so it was. […]

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Wishing you a creative 2017

December 29, 2016

No doubt, 2016 has been a bit of a weird one, and it’s been hard to remember that fun things have happened in my life because of all the crap that’s gone on in the wider world. It’s been emotionally draining, and it’s far too easy to focus on exactly the wrong sort of thing […]

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Open Letter to People Who Regret Voting Leave: You Have My Sympathy

June 25, 2016

Dear Regretful Leave Voter, I want to open this letter firstly by apologising to you for the way that the UK has let you down. You were openly and repeatedly lied to by the Leave campaign and by the right-wing media, and no one seemed to have the will or the authority to do anything […]

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Advice for readers reading writers’ writing advice

April 26, 2016

If there’s anything writers love more than having written, it seems, it’s giving advice on how to write. It’s a nice way to feel helpful and useful and, for those who sell consultancy or editorial services, it’s a good way to build relationships with your future clients and be seen to be relevant. But so […]

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The winter that will not die

April 10, 2016

Technically, it is Spring. The Spring Equinox was Sunday 20 March, so there can be no doubt about it. But meteorologically, here in the Midwest, it’s definitely still winter. It snowed all day yesterday, and although the pavement (sidewalk) and road (pavement) were too warm for the snow to accumulate, the grass and the roofs […]

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Why you should (probably) binge-watch Lucifer

March 5, 2016

It seems I can only be prompted to blog during bouts of strong emotion these days, writing in midst of white hot anger, extreme smug or, in this case, intense over-excitement. Maybe it’s because, after 14 years, the dynamic of blogging has radically changed, moving from the urgent confessional towards a more self-conscious performance. (Or maybe […]

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Restoring a plaster frame

January 19, 2016

Back in 2011, I bought a plaster mirror off eBay for £26. It was badly packed by the seller, however, and arrive with several cracks and chips. I was gutted, but kept it anyway. In 2013, it got shipped over to the US, during which process our moving company broke it even further. When I […]

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Labour’s already dead, but who killed them?

July 21, 2015

Journalist Simon Ricketts wrote an excellent piece about Labour in which he argues that because there’s no real way that Labour can win the next election, they need to get a hold of the narrative and own it. They need to actually move the debate to the left, to be seen to stand up for what’s […]

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The single most important thing you need to know about Go Set A Watchman

July 16, 2015

There has been, and will continue to be, a lot written about the publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman by HarperCollins over the months since the announcement of its discovery. There are many questions remaining over how and when it was discovered, and over the decision to publish it, but right now the […]

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The stealth feminism of San Andreas

July 11, 2015

Kevin and I went to see San Andreas last Sunday, a film that I nearly missed because I was in the UK whilst it was running at our local cinema, but which I was so eager to see that I made Kevin drive for an hour so we could catch the closest showing we could […]

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