Learning about Ink

The last couple of weeks I have played around with drawing with pen and ink. It has been fun and one thing that is kind of interesting about using real tools and not digital ones is that now I am the absolute expert out of all the world on my nibs. Even other people that use pen and ink and might know just from looking at my nibs how they will perform more or less don't know how it will work as well as I do.
It is like knowing exactly how to close the door so that it won't jam.
A couple of things I learned.
Pen and ink is amazingly forgiving. If you don't put the first line exactly where you want it you can just draw another line over it. I didn't love how the hindfoot of this mulgara turned out so so I just drew the tail over it and you can't really tell.

Pen and ink is amazingly unforgiving. If the proportions are off when you start with those first couple of lines you will fail. That's why after a while I started using pencil to sketch out my pictures and then followed with ink. These fighting gemsbok are the first sketch that I started doing this with, and is probably my favorite.

Being familiar with the nib you are using is very important. While working on the gemsbok above I think I accidentally broke my favorite nib. The next image I drew in pencil and I thought it turned out quite well (especially because it is a person and I struggle with people), but then my nib had broken so I was trying out other ones and the one I choose was too thick for what I was trying to do here so it turned out kind of weird, especially the face and shading.

Overall I think I like drawing animals best. I guess that shouldn't be a surprise to me,but here is one of the plants I did, a canaigre plant.

I really haven't worked with pen and ink for a long time (all my ink was dried up so I had to keep pouring water into it the first couple of days), but it was fun to play around with it again. Especially because when I did ink drawings before I mostly did it with modern markers and used the nibs and ink for calligraphy.

A couple of other things I noticed is that I do SO much better when I have a good reference picture, even if I modify it after I draw it. I also realize that I have a hard time scaling down from my reference picture.

Snap Decisions...Which I Know Nothing About

About a year and a half ago there was a week long fieldtrip that was half way across the country and they were inviting anyone from the department. The day before they left I contacted the leaders of the group to say I would go, and then I went.

My first companion on my mission and I had a conversation about snap decisions and she said "You never make snap decisions." I was a little offended, of course I do. Isn't the above example a snap decision?

I think my companion was right. What I didn't say before is that I had known about the fieldtrip for maybe an entire month and I had really wanted to go but wasn't sure I should and only that last day did I finally decide to go for it.
In general I stew about decisions for a long time. During this stewing I avoid answering the question about what I have chosen, what I want to do, because (1) I don't know what I want to do and (2) I don't want to commit myself that I might not be able to follow through with. When I do finally decide I have a tendency to make it abruptly and then I am all in. When talking to my companion I had mistaken that final sudden decision for a snap decision... but it isn't really.
If I get bullied into giving an answer earlier than I feel obligated to follow through with my decision (even if it is just whether I'm going to some activity or something).
This is not necessarily an ideal way to make decisions but at least I understand it myself now. . .  I guess.

The Rules for Stirring Hornets: Part 2

Background: I go to Brigham Young University, a university partially subsidized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. BYU is unalterably connected with the Church.

The last couple of weeks there has been some excitement in the geology department. An advertisement was printed in the university newspaper for an expo that included some speakers who some of the students and professors had already run across and found to be.... less than scientific and they have a religious bent. Some of the students got pretty excited about it and one wrote up a letter to send to the paper to say we as a department questioned the authenticity of this individual's science. The author asked a few of us to proofread his letter. I did so and I asked him to add something about how the advertisement, simply by its presence in the school newspaper) implies the university (and hence the LDS church) actually condones this expo. He added it and then several professors and students signed the letter and it was sent in. The school newspaper removed the advertisement and printed the letter in full. A few days later another newspaper wrote an article quoting from our letter and using some other sources.
I felt proud to be a part of it. A part of something bigger than just me. And proud to stand up for something that I believed in. I'm not sure I would have felt as strongly about it if I had been at another university. BYU in many ways represents the LDS Church (that is not always a good thing, or how it should be, but that is how it is).
The downside, as my Dad pointed out, is if we hadn't posted the letter would anyone have even noticed the advertisement. Even though we made the expo receive bad press, it still gave it press which it probably would not have received otherwise.
My initial response to most things like this is "yeah that shouldn't be happening" but I don't do anything about it. Arguing in public venues usually doesn't seem effective. And yet, sometimes I think it does need to be done. A couple of years ago I posted about how sometimes stirring hornets is worth it. The question is how do you know when to do it? and how do you make sure it will be more helpful than harmful?
I was flattered when two of my peers, who had been less involved in the conversation and the letter writing, both said they were willing to sign it when they learned that I had proofread it first. They trusted me to be civil, and reasonable. I hope I was. They already knew the author would be straightforward and clear. He was.
I don't know if those are the only things important when you decide to stir up hornets but I think it is at least a start.

Emotion vs Power

"It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered."
                    -Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien

I watched the Fellowship of the Ring this week and because of it I had a couple of conversations about the Lord of the Rings and just thought about it. Some people say the series is boring, and you know it is a lot slower than what today's media prepares us for. One thought I had was because the point of view is omniscient and kind of sees the whole story instead of being in someone's head the whole time there is less emotion that is blatantly shown. Don't get me wrong, there is still great emotion but that almost isn't the point. The point is the overall story in other words the themes almost seem more prominent. Other older books have some of the same characteristics, such as "Tale of Two Cities."
Brandon Sanderson is arguably the best, modern fantasy writer. The point of view he uses is always in his characters' heads, very close to the action and the emotions of the characters. This makes for a much faster pace and is honestly what today's readers want. Other modern authors, such as Orson Scott Card or J K Rowling, have this fast paced, emotional writing style. And they still have some amazingly honorable, brave, and courageous characters, and themes of triumph over evil just like Tolkien.
But sometimes I feel like because we are so close to the action and emotion in much of today's entertainment it is easy to feel the emotional power while missing some of the overall themes even when authors put them in.
It almost seems like sometimes meaningful or powerful ideas can be missed or stripped of their significance when there is too much emotion. Because emotion is so distracting in some ways. And yet.... if you don't care about the characters at all the meaning doesn't come through.
Maybe it isn't about the point of view, maybe it is more about the motive of the author. Are they trying to entertain or are they trying to moralize (don't take that in a negative way). Perhaps, there is some other reason completely.
I also think that emotion definitely has a place and brings another type of power to books. In a previous post I wrote about the emotion I felt when reading The Killer Angels by Shaara. Without being in some of those characters heads I wouldn't grasped the significance or the devastation of the battle of Gettysburg.
Ultimately, the question I have as an aspiring author is can I write a fast-paced, character-based book that is still meaningful? And what should my motive be?