Talking at Fermilab!
This evening at 7:30pm Central time, come to Fermilab (online) for a public talk I’ll give about shaking up how we present serious scientific ideas in books for the public. It should be fun! The information is here. -cvj
This evening at 7:30pm Central time, come to Fermilab (online) for a public talk I’ll give about shaking up how we present serious scientific ideas in books for the public. It should be fun! The information is here. -cvj
Revisiting an old friend you might recognize. (And discovering that my old inking/shading workflow was just fine. – I’d been experimenting with other approaches and also just getting back into the saddle, as it were. I’ve found that I’d already landed on this approach for good time-cost/benefit reasons.) -cvj
Felt like one of the best things to sit and do with family on the morning after the day before…
A shot of a (relatively) quick sketch in progress on Sunday, done with a dipping ink pen, and then splashing on some watercolour. Mostly just knocking rust off the sketching machinery (haven’t used these tools in a long while), and relaxing for some moments between one thing and the next … Click to continue reading this post
I found a few minutes to sketch a few days ago. Just a little bit of time. And it was one of those drawing episodes where – after three or four lines -things just fell nicely into place rapidly and I could see the way all the way to the … Click to continue reading this post
How do I prepare my research talks? I usually just sit down with a pencil, some paper and a cup of something warm, and I just draw/map out the story. Each box is a beat of the narrative, and ends up corresponding to one or two slides (if I’m doing … Click to continue reading this post
I realized recently that I’ve forgotten a great deal of my drawing skills, settling back into some clunky habits, due to zero practice. But I’m going to need them back for a project, and so will start teaching myself again. Above is a (digital) chalk doodle I did yesterday. –cvj
Oh, that talk I did at Perimeter? It is available online now. It is all about the process of making the book “The Dialogues”, why I did it and how I did it. Along the way, I show some examples and talk about the science they’re bringing to life, but this is not primarily a science talk but a talk about talking about science, if you see what I mean.
The talk starts slowly, but bear with me and it warms up swiftly!
YouTube link here. Ended below:
[…] Click to continue reading this post
I was asked by editors of the magazine Physics World’s 30th anniversary edition to do a drawing that somehow captures changes in physics over the last 30 years, and looks forward to 30 years from now. This was an interesting challenge. There was not anything like the freedom to use space that I had in other works I’ve done, like my graphic book about science “The Dialogues”, or my glimpse of the near future in my SF story “Resolution” in the Twelve Tomorrows anthology. I had over 230 pages for the former, and 20 pages for the latter. Here, I had one page. Well, actually a little over 2/3 of a page (once you take into account the introductory text, etc).
So I thought about it a lot. The editors wanted to show an active working environment, and so I thought about the interiors of labs for some time, looked up lots of physics breakthroughs over the years, and reflected on what might come. I eventually realized that the most important single change in the science that can be visually depicted (and arguably the single most important change of any kind) is the change that’s happened to the scientists. Most importantly, we’ve become more diverse in various ways (not uniformly across all fields though), much more collaborative, and the means by which we communicate in order to do science have expanded greatly. All of this has benefited the science greatly, and I think that if you were to get a time machine and visit a lab 30 years ago, or 30 years from now, it will be the changes in the people that will most strike you, if you’re paying attention. So I decided to focus on the break/discussion area of the lab, and imagined that someone stood in the same spot each year and took a snapshot. What we’re seeing is those photos tacked to a noticeboard somewhere, and that’s our time machine. Have a look, and keep an eye out for various details I put in to reflect the different periods. Enjoy! (Direct link here, and below I’ve embedded the image itself that’s from the magazine. I recommend reading the whole issue, as it is a great survey of the last 30 years.)
The working title for this was “when you forget to bring your camera on holiday…” but I know you won’t believe that’s why I drew it! (This was actually a quick sketch done at the beach on Sunday, with a few tweaks added over dinner and some shadows added using iPad.)
I’m working toward doing finish work on a commissioned illustration for a magazine (I’ll tell you about it more when I can – check instagram, etc., for updates/peeks), and am finding my drawing skills very rusty –so opportunities to do sketches, whenever I can find them, are very welcome.
In case you’re wondering, after yesterday’s post… Yes I did find some time to do a bit of sketching. Here’s one that did not get finished but was fun for working the rust off… The caption from instagram says: Quick Sunday watercolour pencil dabbling … been a long time. This … Click to continue reading this post
I think that I forgot to post this link when it came out some time ago. I gave a talk at Google when I passed though London last Spring. There was a great Q & A session too – the Google employees were really interested and asked great questions. I talked in some detail about the book (The Dialogues), why I made it, how I made it, and what I was trying to do with the whole project. For a field that is supposed to be quite innovative (and usually is), I think that, although there are many really great non-fiction science books by Theoretical Physicists, we offer a rather narrow range of books to the general public, and I’m trying to broaden the spectrum with The Dialogues. In the months since the book has come out, people have been responding really positively to the book, so that’s very encouraging (and thank you!). It’s notable that it is a wide range of people, from habitual science book readers to people who say they’ve never picked up a science book before… That’s a really great sign!
Here’s the talk on YouTube:
Direct link here. Embed below: […] Click to continue reading this post
Today is the release of the short story anthology Twelve Tomorrows from MIT Press with a wonderful roster of authors. (It is an annual project of the MIT Technology Review.) I’m in there too, with a graphic novella called “Resolution”. It’s the first graphic novella in this anthology’s five year history, and it is the first time MIT Press is publishing it. Physicists and Mathematicians will appreciate the title choice upon reading. Order! Share!
A pair of panels from my short story “Resolution” in the Science Fiction anthology Twelve Tomorrows, out on Friday from MITPress! Preorder now, share, and tell everyone about it. See here for ordering, for example.