Category: visual thinking

Beck Tench and Zen of Zooming

I was so, so, so sure I had blogged about this wonderful online practice shared in 2020 by the amazing Beck Tench. But when I went to find it to reshare, I could not find it in my archives. So today I am getting this on the blog!

On Zoom we have all these little windows into others’ faces (if their camera is on). It is oddly a great place to do portrait sketching as a way to see, to pay attention, to shift out of monkey-mind. Beck pulled this practice from her reading of Frederick Franck’s The Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as meditation.

Go to Beck’s post and read how to do it. https://www.becktench.com/blog/2020/7/26/the-zen-of-zooming

Then if you get to try it with others, I’d love to hear your impressions.

I found it really helpful to get out of my “solve the problem now” habits. To really look at another which I’m not sure we do as well online as we might F2F. When we HAVE shared our sketches with each other in all their glorious imperfections (you sketch WITHOUT looking at the sketch) we laugh, we wonder, even blush. It is a very human moment for me.

I’ll put some of my sketches below.

CogDog Does it Again –> Openverse

https://cogdogblog.com/2022/10/open-to-openverse/ is a great post for all of you searching for free to use images. You used to be able to easily find them via an advanced search on Google, but Alan discovered that this was, shall we say, borked? So click in, read and then see all this fantastic visual material you can use from Openverse!

Screenshot from Openverse

Art as a Method for Organizing Life Generally

From 2010 drafts. Still works. Glad I did not trash this post!

I happened upon this image and it resonated deeply with the thinking I’ve been doing about graphics in online spaces. (I’m still thinking about this!!!)

A Method for Organizing Life Generally on Flickr – Photo Sharing! I can’t seem to find the link and Google reverse image search takes me to  https://www.peru.travel/en/attractions/royal-tombs-museum

Visualizing Our Identity

I saw this post back in 2008 and was blown away by the visualization of a resume by

Greg Dizzia

Let me be transparent. I hate my resume, and I never really found many resumes to be of great value. I thought about making my own visual resume but never got around to it. Still, it is worth pointing out this post. Go to the link and look at the detailed version! The screenshot below does NOT do it justice! And still lively after all these years. Some blog drafts age well. (Not the 30 or so I’ve already deleted!)

Curriculum Vitae -PDF- by =dizzia on deviantART

Screenshot of Greg Dizzia's visual resume which is a grid with his experience, by type, over time.


Curriculum Vitae -PDF- by =dizzia on deviantART

urriculum Vitae – Greg Dizzia

PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE FULL VERSION PDF [link] – THE JPG DOES NOT EVEN COME CLOSE TO SHOWING YOU THESE DESIGNS

Here it is, the old moneymaker. This lists my history in the design world (some lesser clients have been left out) – Designed using univers exclusively. This is an appendage to a traditional resume, to be included as a forward page in my portfolio.

This took me about 15 hours.

Tools of the trade
Adobe Illustrator CS3
Coffee

Final Size
8.5 x 11.5 on extremely thick high grit paper.