Category Archives: personal

Obliging

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On the Gold line from Pasadena to downtown on Saturday I was looking to relax a bit after a long morning of work over a meeting I had with some colleagues. I got out my pencil and notepad and was happy to find that just over the way at the perfect distance (not to close, not too far) was a fellow who was looking out of the window and obligingly keeping his head more or less in the same orientation, or bringing it back to a similar position if he looked away from time to time. So I got some good looks and built the drawing on the right, over 20 minutes or so. As a bonus, […] Click to continue reading this post →

Incomplete Subtractions

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Well, it has been well over two months since I popped into the studio I sometimes visit to to a “drop in and draw” session. (I’ve spoken about the value of such practice here before.) Although I’ve been drawing a bit here and there on the bus and subway to keep practicing, and also doing some work on some pages of The Project (actually, some pretty detailed finish work on a few pages I’m quite happy with), I was not sure whether I’d have the right chops to do a good job at the session, and expected that if I went I’d have a frustrating -but of course valuable- evening of knocking off some rust and oiling the wheels again. So I went along yesterday.

Strangely, it felt like it was going to be a good session as I approached, and as I settled down and began to try to capture the 2 minute poses, and then the 5 minute poses, I felt like I was flowing along pretty well. It helped that the model on duty is […] Click to continue reading this post →

Pen Faces

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Well, it has been a while since I’ve posted any sketches, but that does not mean that I’ve not been doing any. I’ve had a visitor and have not been on my usual routine, and so I’ve got a bit out of practice for not doing so many, but I still snatch the opportunity to sketch when I can. Here are a few faces and fragments of faces I grabbed on the bus and subway in recent weeks. (Click for a larger view.) I just used a ballpoint pen, and a sideways glance or few…

I’m trying to decide whether […] Click to continue reading this post →

At the Breakfast Bar

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This weekend I stayed over at the house of some dear friends, spending a bit of time out of town. I was up early this morning, and while I waited for everyone to get into full gear, I had a bit of time on my own to do a sketch of what was sitting in front of me after I finished my coffee and toast. (Click for larger view.)

I got my sketchpad and pencil first, and then decided that it was a while since I’d done anything directly on the iPad, and not since I’d got the new iFaraday stylus I got […] Click to continue reading this post →

Preparing…

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Ah, preparations. In a few days it’ll be time to start teaching a new class. The new semester will begin. This means I need to start getting ready, but of course, in the last few days I’ve finally hit a nice groove on the work I’ve been doing on The Project, and have knocked out – wait for it – a whole page! Yeah, I know, it does not sound like much but this is between a host of other tasks (some of which I will tell you about) and it was a complex page and full of things I wanted to try for the first time, not to mention I had to knock off rather a lot of rust. Now the rust is off, I’d love to get more done, but alas… prep. I’d show you some of the results beyond the first panel I shared a few days ago (now with the colours adjusted a bit – not quite so red, etc), but the page is the first of a visual motif I want to save for later. So I won’t be able to share much of the progress on this story at all.

Anyway, the good news is that it is a class I started some years ago, and so I get to have a lot of fun with a new bunch of enthusiastic juniors and seniors, exploring a topic that never stops giving – General Relativity. (See this post and those linked within for reports on the teaching of the class last time, in 2008.) I don’t expect that there’ll be any filmmakers visiting the class this time (that time it resulted in the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tart Grab

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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 →

Fig Resurrection

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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

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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 →

Nostalgia Furniture

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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 →

Tales from the Industry XXXVIII – Improvising

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For the second half of today I was involved in film-making again, but this time not the usual science documentary material, but something else. What, exactly, I am not at liberty to tell you since I don’t really know, if the truth be told. It is going to be a rather beautiful-looking piece of work, with an interesting narrative arc, and… well that’s all I know. I was cast in it a while back following an interesting story in and of itself. I’d made friends with a really engagingly interesting bartender at a bar downtown that specializes in rum, a while back…(a year? more?) We had a great time chatting about ideas in science, the arts, and beyond, and did that “let’s stay in touch” thing that people do a lot, which may or may not really happen…

Some months later, the same fellow came to see me in my office to tell me about this film he was making, and that he’d like me to come and be in it. At the end of the conversation, somehow I still knew nothing about the film and what I was to be doing in it. I was just going to be in a splendid house somewhere, talking to people, and… […] Click to continue reading this post →

Market People

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A few people I quickly captured while relaxing in the sun at the farmer’s market this Sunday. (For larger views, click the images.)

It has become quite cool in recent days, and so it was nice to have a patch of warm sunlight to sit in for a while, as I watched people go by.

I was late for the market that day, and so I’d missed the people whose tamales I usually get, but found a tasty pupusa instead. […] Click to continue reading this post →

A Humble Pie

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For some reason yesterday morning, I got the urge to taste a good old-fashioned meat pie. Perhaps it is the Winter feeling that has come over everything with the switch to chillier weather, rain, and the delightful seasonal hint of vegetative decay in the air… I was in a strong maker-mood and so this urge built into the desire to make the thing for real with my own hands. I had leeks and beef in mind, but it is not time for leeks yet in the Hollywood Farmer’s market, so I picked up some red potatoes, two types of mushrooms (shitakes and white buttons), two red peppers, some yellow onions and some garlic (forgot to get some green onions), and returned home (after stopping at Trader Joe’s for some good tenderloin beef).

I made some flaky pastry (half butter half shortening this time… figure it would be […] Click to continue reading this post →

Premiering…

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Well, it is a week full of premieres, it seems, all with a little personal flavour for me, but possibly of wider interest. I’m talking about two TV shows and a movie.

The movie is going to be out in theatres at the end of the week, and it is called “Being Elmo”, co-directed by Phillip Shane and co-written by Phillip Shane and Justin Weinstein, two friends of mine who are flying into LA for the premiere. It is about Kevin Clash, the guy who operates the Elmo muppet. In short, it is a film that people seem to be really enjoying (it won the special jury prize at Sundance, and was a finalist for the Humanitas prize), and I can’t wait to see it! I worked with Phil on a two hour Einstein special that aired on the History Channel a while back (see Equation Wrangler), and so I know his working style a bit, and the results are great – so I think this’ll be really good!

The new Nova mini-series based on Brian Greene’s second book “The Fabric of the Cosmos” begins this week. They do a very good job, working closely with Brian to produce a show of rather high quality. I hope they do a good job (as you can see from the picture, they’ve got Brian to reveal his superpowers on screen – we’re not supposed to do that Brian!). It should be interesting to see, I think. I can’t recall if I mentioned, but I filmed some contributions for it last year, and some of that will be in the first episode (and I think the fourth). (You may recall that they extracted some of my interview […] Click to continue reading this post →

Patrice

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Hurrah for excellent late(r) night live Jazz in LA! I’d been needing some live Jazz, so this came along at just the right time. My dear friend Patrice Quinn was singing at The World Stage in Leimert Park last night, with Jacques Lesure on guitar and Don Littleton on percussion. I went with a friend to see the second set, starting at 10:00pm. She was wonderful! I’d previously only heard Patrice sing privately (a mutual dear […] Click to continue reading this post →