Over the years I have learnt to be careful in my selection of bedtime reading. I know I must avoid anything too stimulating or my brain will gradually warm up and sleep become impossible.

Something similar happens when I’ve been drawing just prior to closing my eyes for the night. As soon as the world goes dark, it lights up again with beautiful three dimensional drawings of whatever I’ve been sketching. Much to my chagrin these are many times better than I can actually draw.

Perhaps it is that annoyance that stops me from sleeping. You would think that the vividness of the images would be so much like a dream that I’d get to sleep all the more quick-sharp. However, I suspect the similarity to dreaming could actually be tricking my brain into thinking that I’m already asleep; hence it doesn’t bother to initiate the actual sleep sequence.

Whatever theory proves correct, the images are beautiful enough (again far beyond my actual capabilities) that this is a kind of insomnia I can live with.

Except tonight I’m worried.

Because I have been spending the evening drawing skulls. And I’m worried about what this might inspire when I close my eyes.

I can only pray that I’ll be lucky and get a band of friendly pirates.

It’s late again.

It’s the pictures, you see.

I’ve been working hard on developing the habit of drawing everyday, and now I can’t stop. The more my pencil flows the more time seems to flow with it and before I know what is going on it is late into the wee hours of the morning.

My sketchbook needs more pictures. It commands me to create them.

The trouble is: drawing doesn’t inspire writing. I need to read books in the evening to inspire blog wisdom. Unfortunately, anatomy books for the artist just don’t cut it. And so you get this kind of thing.

Blogging everyday hard.

For a while I’ve been trying to spend all my free evenings at my drawing desk, trying to improve my draftsmanship. Like most people who love drawing but are not doing it professionally or studying art full time, I have found the habit of drawing everyday to be a difficult one to foster.

But recently I seem to have managed to do just that. It is now what I automatically do after I have my dinner instead of surfing randomly online, watching TV, or washing the dishes.

Even though my primary objective is to enjoy the process of learning and ultimately use it to relax, I’m the kind of guy that gets most satisfaction out of taking things quite seriously. So when I’m drawing, I’m working hard on my weaknesses. Right now, I’m spending most my time studying human anatomy.

Professionally, I make websites and my primary interest is in the user interface. At one end of the scale, this is quite a formal – almost scientific – pursuit. But at the other end it is about making things look nice. So add design to my interest in drawing.

What I wanted to do with Finding Form was split my professional interest in user-interface design into two categories – usability and aesthetics – and study aesthetics separately. The ultimate dream is to create beautiful computer interfaces that are extremely usable, but Finding Form has a tighter goal. Although I believe you always interact with an image in some way, and although I believe most images contain some kind of meaning, the focus here is on the aesthetics of the image. What makes imagery appeal to the senses?

As much as possible then, I want to stick to talking about subjects such as light, contrast, line, colour, balance, texture, shape and how these are used to create something that is beautiful or emotionally captivating in some way.

I would like mentions of creating websites to be seldom. As I focus in on the Finding Form project, the plan is to keep it as some kind of cross between design and fine art. However, if you are interested in my wider goal Jason Santa Maria’s presentation on web design demonstrates a similar goal to mine (see below).

A website for Finding Form will follow, but for now I am starting with a Twitter account.

Here is that video…

SVA Dot Dot Dot Lectures: Jason Santa Maria from MFA Interaction Design on Vimeo.

Back in the spring I signed up for an account at Audible. I took some convincing to join, because prior to then I’d listened to maybe three or four audio books in my life; and I never felt any desire to listen to any more. After a year’s worth of advertising, the marketing department of Audible finally got the better of me. I’ve been hooked ever since.

Pre-audio, my book habits mainly consisted of fiction, biographies, business and design. As soon as I started listening to audio, my intake of most of those genres increased; and history got added to that list. I did not read less, I just had time to consume more.

I have time for audio books because I never just sit down and listen to them; I’m always doing something else at the same time. Such as drawing. Drawing and audio books go very well together because they don’t distract from each other. In fact, I find drawing helps me to focus on the book more.

Paper books on the other hand, take all my attention. Even if I put music on in the background, I soon zone it out. That means I have much less time for it. It’s great for train journeys and to wind down just before bed, but other than that I have to find the time for it. I do find that time, but it doesn’t come easily.

However, as far as I can tell, time is the only reason I’ve become hooked on audio books. In every other respect, reading is favourable.

But not by much. Being able to control the reading pace wins kudos for paper books. I also find it a bit annoying when I want to research something I’ve heard about in a book, but don’t know how to spell what I’m researching because I’ve only heard the word. Yet, knowing the pronunciation almost counteracts that negative.

Reading is not favourable by much, except that is, for fiction.

I’m currently listening to my first audio fiction book. It’s Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather. Prior to this, I had read 19 other books from the same Discworld series so I know what to expect; and in the audio version I’m not quite getting it.

As great as Nigel Planer’s narration is, there is something very definite that is lost with the book read aloud. The atmosphere, mood and even visual quality of the book diminishes. In most cases, I would struggle to understand exactly where these things qualities dwindle, but one obvious example is the rendition of the character Death.

Readers of Discworld will know that Death speaks in capital letters (or small-caps). For those who don’t, here is a quotation near the beginning of Mort:

   The air took on a thick, greasy feel, and the deep shadows around Mort became edged with blue and purple rainbows. The rider strode towards him, black cloak billowing and feet making little clicking sounds on the cobbles. They were the only noises – silence clamped down on the square like great drifts of cotton wool.
    The impressive effect was rather spoilt by a patch of ice.
    OH, BUGGER.
    It wasn’t exactly a voice. The words were there all right, but they arrived in Mort’s head without bothering to pass through his ears.

How, other than in writing, can you express that kind of voice?

Being one of the ten people who have yet to buy an iPod, the iTunes store has always been next to useless for me. My only choices to get new MP3s that I can play on my portable player has either been to steal it or to head back into the 1990s and purchase a compact disc.

Several months ago Amazon gave me hope when they began offering DRM free music from their store; but they failed to offer it to non-American residents. Have none of these companies heard of the new global world?

But Aha! Today I discovered Tesco Digital. A place to buy legal – free from DRM – downloadable music in the UK.

Bravo Tesco!

The selection is rather pathetic at the moment, but it is a start at least. Worth checking out as a first port of call.

[note that the MP3s are DRM free, but the WMAs are not.]

I was recently fiddling around with Inkscape when I discovered the feature for converting raster images into vectors. For fun I tried it on a random drawing I had scanned into my computer. The result is below:

I was really surprised by the result. I know it’s not the most amazing of images, but it’s the first pencil drawing that I’ve managed to successfully import onto the computer so I thought I’d put it on my blog.

When I find time to get on the scanner, I’ll try importing some more successful drawings.

I think these are quite revealing.

More here

EDIT (moments later): The Mona Lisa in Microsoft Paint.

Ken McCarthy has just posted some interesting news about the migration of television. First it was obviously on the television, then it hopped to the Internet, and not it is heading back to the television again.

This week, Tivo announced that its customers will be able to view video content off the web on their television sets.

I love news like this because it’s a sign of the future happening as we speak.

I’m particularly excited by this other news:

Apple announced it has partnered with major airlines to let passengers power their iPods in flight and watch iPod videos in their seats.

This is an early sign of truly portable computers (computers that we can carry in our pockets). IPod videos are currently a bit pathetic because of the small screen, but when you can plug it into something of a decent size it makes a whole lot of sense. So essentially you have your videos always available in some form wherever you are, but when you find a screen, you can plug it in.

It’s not difficult to make the connection between iPod videos and fully functional computers. You can check your email wherever you are, but when you find a connection point you suddenly have the bonus of a big screen and a keyboard. I think video may be the one to drive this.

A final quotation from Ken McCarthy:

My prediction: When all this finally shakes out, every TV will come with a broadband connection and an easy search console that will enable users to search the Net and find the exact programming they want without leaving the living room sofa.

If they’re going on a trip, users will be able to insert an iPod-like device into their TV, grab the programs they want for the road and where ever they are – in a hotel room, on a plane, in an airport or train station, on a cruise, or the back seat of a car – they’ll be able to plug their video storage device into any video player and watch what they want.

What you want to watch – when you want to watch it – and the one I don’t here as often, but will be equally as important – where you want to watch it. That’s the future of video.

Read Ken McCarthy’s The Great Migration here.

If sound is done badly, people notice that the work is rubbish.

If it is done well, it’s mostly ignored. This is a good thing.

And then there’s this tape dispenser. Which is probably too overt for most productions, but works amazingly well in this short.

Watch Moth

(Also check out the stop-motion Orange Ad, and… well everything else really)