Jaw, Jaw, Jaw
Part of the set of photos I took at the Page Museum yesterday. These are upper parts […] Click to continue reading this post
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Category Archives: Los Angeles
Tart Grab
I hope the holiday period is (or has been) going well for you. As you may know from reading this blog, there’s often a lot of cooking going on in my kitchen, especially during the big Fall and Winter holidays. This weekend was no exception…and there were several elements of the meal, each the product of delightful collaboration among myself and my visitors. I did not document all the food that was prepared this time around, but I am happy to report that it was a great meal… I did grab a before and after shot of a lattice coconut tart that materialized.
You might have seen a lattice tart on here before… not sure. I did the lattice work […] Click to continue reading this post
Science Comics and Branded Content
People often point to certain “science comics” as examples when I explain to them what The Project is about. In turn, I explain that while both things have science in them, and both things use sequential art, they’re not really the same. Not everyone gets it, but that’s ok. (If it helps, ask yourself if you would assume that I was writing a bodice-ripper for Mills and Boon or Harlequin if I said I were writing a novel in which there are elements of love, relationships, romance, etc., in it*.) There’s room for more than the “hey kids! science is awesome!” model, as fine a model as it is.
Since the confusion with that genre is so easily made I confess that I find myself reluctant to discuss it much here, lest I compound the confusion. That might be silly. Anyway, as an exception, I thought I’d point to a little collection of comic covers (and an extract from an interior) that the Washington Post has on its Innovations site as a piece about the movement in the fifties to get kids interested in science, through the big popular culture medium of the time – comics!
I wonder how much it worked, as compared to other efforts at the time. Is it even measurable? (For example, I think that the stuff I do in science outreach helps the cause of strengthening science (and its understanding) in […] Click to continue reading this post
Fig Resurrection
Ah, the Bleak Midwinter is here. My mum has come to visit and so I’ve started bringing out some of the fruits of Summer that I wanted to share with her… the figs! My plan was/is to make a batch of fig jam (see here and here for some of the earlier posts on that), and I still might, since I’ve a fair amount left in the freezer (as I got a set off the trees I’d chop them up and bag them and freeze them). But one thing you can do with them (actually with any fruit – I experimented with apples the other day) is make a quick tasty fruit compote to go on fresh pancakes! (Or yoghurt, or other item.)
I make mine by simply chopping up the fruit into small pieces, putting into a small pan with a little water, a bit of brown sugar, and some cinnamon and nutmeg, and just cooking it down slowly for ten or fifteen minutes. Stir frequently in the later stages as it begins to thicken. Don’t overwhelm the taste of the fruit with too much sugar -it’ll add its own sugars too, which you don’t want to drown […] Click to continue reading this post
The Dancers
Yesterday I went along to a friend’s dance class to sit and watch the proceedings and sketch a few gestures as they flit by…. It was fun!
I wasn’t entirely true to the process that I had set out to follow – a light touch with relatively few swift strokes – since I found that often when that worked, I was tempted to do a bit more finish work than I should, sometimes way too much… but hey, it was fun and I got something out of it, certainly getting some nice gestures here and there.
This is a very different process of drawing from some of the other things I’ve described here before… It is closer to the sort of drawing I do of people on public transport (catching glimpses and building a sense of the person, not a full, careful portrait since you can’t stare), but not entirely since of course you don’t have the luxury of stillness… Instead you try to internalize some of the shapes you see, and try […] Click to continue reading this post
Scribbling about Quantum Gravity
So I mentioned that I was doing some more material for the Nova people, via their website. (See here for some earlier material about Multiverses.) They’ve a blog called The Nature of Reality with contributions from many interesting people. Well, now they’re featuring those pencasts I think I told you about in an earlier post.
The pencasts are all about Quantum Gravity, a major research topic in physics. I talk about what it is and why we care about it. I speak and write, scribble and draw and […] Click to continue reading this post
Lunar Eclipse!
For those out here in the West of the continent, there’ll be a lovely lunar eclipse tomorrow morning (I should have mentioned it before but it somehow missed my attention). It will be at its peak about dawn (about 6:00am), and so if you are an early riser, it should be a nice sight to greet you – especially since it is expected to be somewhat red in hue. Of course, look for the moon in the West, near to setting. Since it will be close to the horizon, it will look quite large as well.
The eclipse will actually be visible right across the Pacific too, and into Asia and Eastern Europe, but check local details for the specifics.
There are more details here*. I plan to get up and have a look… maybe we’ll all be watching it together!
Enjoy!
-cvj
*Thanks Shelley! Click to continue reading this post
Goldilocks Final
So it is the final exam for my quantum field theory class tomorrow, and today I need to write it and typeset it. I’d given them a choice of exam. They seemed to want a take-home exam, but I warned them that a take-home is probably going to be way more challenging. I’d be thinking up newer, harder material that you can’t just google the results for. An in-class exam has a time limit, which seems to freak people out, but on the other hand (assuming the examiner (me) is a reasonable person – and I think I’ve given them every reason to believe that) it is likely to be written to be solvable in the assigned couple of hours. So there is a much stricter limit to the length or depth of what they’re going to be asked to do. If they’ve really been following along in the class and doing the homework, they should be able to get most of the exam done without breaking a sweat in 3/4 of the time allowed… maybe the last 1/4 of it might need a bit of furrowing of the brow, squinting the right way, scribbling hurriedly here and there, but in the spirit of a challenge, not torture. Even if they don’t get every last part solved, a well-designed exam will give them several opportunities to show off what they’ve learned.
I like setting take-home exams too, but I’ve a soft spot for in-class exams, I’ll admit. As you may have guessed, I loved in-class exams when I was a student. Yeah, I’m weird. This does not mean that I always scored super-well on them, but I enjoyed the […] Click to continue reading this post
A Splash of Colour
As compensation for the rather incomplete and patchy sketch of the last post, here’s a sketch that’s at least more uniformly incomplete (!) that you might recognize from a while back. The difference here is that this is an early experiment with applying splashes of (mostly flat) colour directly to my pencil sketches digitally, as an alternative approach to half tone, etc. I did this back in May.
In fact, you’ve seen several better examples since (for example here, here (well, not all flats there), and here (also […] Click to continue reading this post
What Goes Around…
So you probably heard about the remarkable wind storm in the region that hit last Wednesday night. It was quite the storm indeed. I was out in it almost at its peak, and so was reminded of just how devastating concentrated gusts of wind can be, even for a short while. Strangely, while houses on several neighbouring streets had lost electricity, and even some on my street, I’d managed to not have any extended electricity outage (although I think something did take place in that regard while I was sleeping). Several 
friends and colleagues had no electricity for days after, so I’ve been wondering what I did to dodge that bullet.
Well, as though not to leave me out, last night I came home to find that it was my turn to have a disruption, although it was rather an odd one… some systems in the house had electricity, and some did not… The few things that did were some lights that came on about 1/4 the brightness they normally would. Various other systems were unable to deal with this sort of meagre supply and either were complaining or just refusing to operate. Strange.
Anyway, it made me glad that I had gone out, since I’d have been all frustrated had I intended to do a lot of work indoors. I’d gone out to sit in a studio and do a bit of drawing from a live model, for practice. It has been a while since I’ve been to a “drop […]
Anyway, it made me glad that I had gone out, since I’d have been all frustrated had I intended to do a lot of work indoors. I’d gone out to sit in a studio and do a bit of drawing from a live model, for practice. It has been a while since I’ve been to a “drop […] Click to continue reading this post
Nostalgia Furniture
New acquisitions. I’ve been a fan of the work of Marcel Breuer for many years now, going back to my first postdoc in the early 90s, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. There, I lived (over three years) in some lovely 1957 apartments designed by him, with furniture of his design in them too. (It’s a bit different now, I understand.) The Wassily (or, Model B3) chair is one of my favourites of his, and two days ago, when I got an email from a friend I’d not heard from in a while that she was getting rid of a leather-finished pair of them, I went to see them as soon as I could (especially when I heard of their colour, which I’d decided would match my floors rather well). I came back from the visit with (after some negotiations and handing over of payment) the pair and set them up.
Yes, they are just as wonderful as I recall (and this set is particularly well made – very good reproductions), beautiful, very comfortable, and a good fit for my living room… […] Click to continue reading this post
Almost at an End
I’ve had a fun time over the last few lectures with some more mature topics, pointing the students to things that they will see more (I hope) in the advanced class next semester. 
We covered the large N Gross-Neveu model in some detail, giving me the opportunity to give a glimpse of several important topics and techniques… at large N the 2 dimensional model’s solution is exact, and it shows important phenomena such as spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, dynamical mass generation for the fermions and dimensional transmutation. These are all important phenomena shared by (the more difficult to study) quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong nuclear interactions. (See an earlier post about some of these properties and what they are… there’s also a mention of a new general level book that goes into some detail on the physics and the history.)
The other thing I took some time to explore was the diagrammatics of the model, and the interesting patterns that emerge […] Click to continue reading this post
More Mannequins
So, this weekend I am determined to get fully pencilled at least one page of this new story for the graphic novel (the one featuring science as the main character… follow the link for more).
(I had a fantasy that by the end of this weekend the page would be inked and painted as well, 
but I spent a bit of time on teaching myself a new set of techniques instead, which will feed into much of what is to come… so I am behind.) So I’ve designed the interiors, done all the layouts for this page, and am very happy with it. I have done the first pass at the accurate pencil-work, and there it is on the left. Those mannequins from before are back, now fully worked out in perspective for you. Takes a long time, as I’m rusty, but it’ll gather pace now, as I clothe them in flesh, then cloth (and some leather), and also the space they are in. Compare to the rough layout of this same page from a previous post.
The story? Well, not giving away anything in detail, but the two characters you saw conversing in an earlier story had met before. This is the story in which they meet for […] Click to continue reading this post
Happy Thanksgiving!
For those celebrating it today, Happy Thanksgiving! I’ll be doing only a little cooking today, making one or two dishes to take over to some friends’ for a meal where ten people are bringing items together for what I expect will be a great meal. So I’ll be working for a chunk of the morning and then breaking to make Southern-style collard greens, and maybe also a sweet potato pie… Are you cooking? If so, good luck, and have fun!
Some people sit at thanksgiving dinner and in turn call out something they’re thankful for (or at least do so internally)… Well, if looking for some new things to be […] Click to continue reading this post
Hanging Out at the Paramour
Now that we’ve finished the shoot, I’ll tell you that we were shooting at The Paramour, a wonderful old house in one of the Silver Lake hills of some renown. It is part of the Canfield-Moreno estate, famous for being a mansion built for a silent movie star and his bride. It has recording studio facilities used by lots of musicians of all sorts (you’re maybe heard recordings that were done there), and it is used a lot for filming. You can read more about it here.
The above sketch is one I did there yesterday while waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for the various scenes I was to appear in. I chose this part of the house because that’s where craft services was and it was one of the places people were allowed to congregate when not involved in shooting. There are more beautiful parts, but then… you see those in photos all the time anyway. It’s time this side got some attention. I did 90% of the pencil work on the spot, and finished it up and splashed some (digital) paint on it in the early hours of this morning (Inexplicably, I got up at 4:30am and have been up for four hours now… I think I am going to try to have a nap before going off shopping). I was also going to share with you some sketches of people playing a dice game (karaki? I did not know it before) that we used to pass some of the time, but I didn’t finish any of them, sadly…
The rest of the shoot? Yes, it went well. I brought an extra layer of clothing against the cold, but it was still very cold, especially since this time most of the filming was outside. The afternoon was ok, as there was a bit of sun, and, helpfully, a pig was roasting, so we could stand near the heat from that. Yes, you read me right… there was indeed a pig being roasted. It was for a scene involving a picnic, followed by revelry later (hired revelers were bussed in for the night-time craziness), with several of us standing round talking about random topics as the film crew wove in and out of our groups, catching snippets of conversation. Lunch later on involved eating the pig (not on camera). I had a monologue coming up later on in the day, and so I memorized it in the […] Click to continue reading this post
