#117

Sounds like I know what I’ll be doing this weekend!

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#118

Does anyone have tips on improving handwriting, particularly longhand cursive? I taught myself cursive years ago when I started journaling regularly, and it was once readable but now it’s just as atrocious as my printing.

I’ve already checked YouTube but most of that is people doing calligraphy. I just want to make my writing legible, which involves forming some new habits, and maybe some practice paper of some kind.

1 Like
#119

Quite a few years ago I “fixed” my (pretty bad) handwriting by essentially writing the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog hundreds of times. Taking a similar approach to music, I started slow and with great intention in my motions, then tried to work up my speed to a more realistic writing tempo.

I think from there, in your regular writing, you might take mental notes of any letter combinations that trip you up or could be improved. Then it’s a matter of going back to slow and intentional with those things until it’s “fixed”.

I’m not totally happy with my ‘m’, ‘u’, ‘r’, and ‘n’, but it’s been a while since I did any sort of practice.

edit: having pictures of peoples’ handwriting you admire nearby can be helpful too, I took inspiration from a few different places when I was relearning

8 Likes
#120

i love moleskine (blank pages) notebooks, all sizes , from super tiny to the bigger onew. i had the chance to do sound design for them (and LEGO) more than a decade ago, have a look :slight_smile:

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#121

I remember a friend had one of those!
What a great video!

#122

Hi, slightly outside the topic, or not. I got an ad in my Facebook feed about a course from this site Domestika. It was probably a black friday-offer because I got an offer for a course of 10 bucks, so I enrolled. Pretty excited about the teacher and his Moleskine-doodles becoming both art and a career.

His site shows how he draws in his notebooks. https://mattiasadolfsson.com

I find his story very inspiring as an esthetic principle. Just work on your thing and stay with it, find your style, amplify it - and it will become something special and interesting.

2 Likes
#123

:slight_smile: yes, i like it too :slight_smile:
they did a pretty good job with the slow motion.
i used the ms-20, my fave sound design mic ( sennheiser mkh 416) recording various sources (paper, aluminium, scraping of various objects), some library sounds and some sounds i recorded on movie sets. i think the sound design came out fine enough (i’d do it very differently now, but i still kinda like it). i was also asked to do a music soundtrack (which i did, it was a strange morricone meets nursery rhyms kind of style hehehe) but then they decided to not put music on it.
anyway, i’m glad i did it for the brand which produces my fave notebooks :slight_smile:

#124

Wow! I didn’t see this before. Time to order my first book with blank pages.

1 Like
#125

I’ve been using Life Noble Notebooks for a long time as I’ve not found anything comparable for the writing feel. The main gripes I have with them is the rather flashy covers and the difficulty of opening them flat enough to write comfortably near the inner margins.


I haven’t usd the Midori MD paper but it looks like it might be better.

I also use Pilot Iroshizuku inks as they’re pretty cheap over here in Japan and the bottles are just lovely.
My current ink of choice is Kiri-same, a warm grey ink. Having never used grey inks, I was a bit wary that it would look like watered-down black ink, but it’s actually rather lovely to use, especially in a pen that has fairly decent flow so it gets some shading.

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#126

New notebook day! Picked up a fresh Leuchtturm 1917 to dedicate to learning Teletype.

I am such a sucker for new notebooks. What is that? The feeling of potential? I don’t know.

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#127

I have a thing for pencils and do all of my roughdrafts and notes in pencil, and while I use a bullet pencil on the go (for a field notebook kept on my person), I’ve long had a thing for lead-holders or clutch pencils but have generally felt underwhelmed by the quality or form of most. There are some interesting options between the $30-$70 range, but as that’s a good chunk to spend on a pencil (even a mechanical one), I was never keen to spring for one that wasn’t going to be an obvious improvement over the cheaper ones. Then I stumbled across this:

I’ve found it to be a rather elegant approach for the writing I do at home. It doesn’t work with a leadpointer (at least not the one I have), but manually sharpening bare lead is hardly a chore anyhow. The actual design of the thing seems most reminiscent of a dip pen or even a calligraphy brush and is quite comfortable to use, even with that ring there. Anyway, I’m quite pleased with it.

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#128

My recent obvious epiphany has been that journaling when I have something worth writing down is much more rewarding than trying to set a schedule.

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#129

Oh yes, that is a great idea.

I occasionally create sketchnotes to learn, grasp and memorize things (an excellent tool!). Here is a sketchnote about Stockhausen’s Four Criteria of Electronic Music.

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#130

looking for desktop pencil sharpener recs.

so while I always did and kinda still do hate writing with pencils over pens, graphite has crept its way into my artwork over the last couple years to become a pretty important part. I’ve tried a bunch of different brands of pencils, using some mechanical ones mixed in too for where I need really fine and consistent lines. I can’t find a good and thin mechanical graphite that is accessible enough though - the only one I really like is harder to find and I still don’t like it as much as my caran d’ache pencils. but, my sharpener doesn’t do such a good job and I think maybe its time to invest in a good desktop one for when I need a really fine tip. I’ve tried using a razor and sandpaper, but when I want a point rather than a chisel tip I can’t consistently or easily enough get what I want. I think its time to cave for a better sharpener and I’m looking at the Jakar crank sharpener but am curious what other people have found good or bad about similar ones.

#131

I am sure that there is a whole world of delineation among pencil sharpeners that I am not aware of, but I have two different sizes of the muji desktop sharpener and it’s served me extremely well.

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#132

Maybe this isn’t the right thread for this, but I found a great little book when cleaning out someone’s desk by at work. (They retired.)

How great is it that this whole book is handwritten and drawn in such a clean style? No handwriting font here.

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#133

I have Getting Started in Electronics by the same author. It seems like Forrest Mims hand drafted all of his books (at least that I’ve seen). They’re gorgeous. It reminds me of how Dan Clowes hand letters everything in his comics, including the copyright page.

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#134

Yeah, I have a couple of booklets by Forrest Mims, they’re of that same style as well. Very nice.

#135

I’m pretty sure my dad had that exact book.

#136

those Mims books are how I got started in DIY. lots of great little circuits, his 555 timer book is good too. he does have some problematic personal politics.