{At the end of confidence, there is only one feeling. Only one.
That one has the capacity to bear all that comes.}
Tag Archives: journal
Daybook: The journal of an artist
One of my best books last year was Daybook: The Journal of an Artist, by American artist Anne Pruitt. I wasn’t familiar with her work before and not even sure how I came across this book, but I enjoyed it immensely.
The book is a collection of Ms. Pruitt’s journals over multiple years, and she touches upon so many of the dilemmas we ourselves have felt. We, as in, anyone trying to balance motherhood and artistic or creative pursuit, to begin with, but also, for any artist who has ever questioned intuition, instinct, and flow in their own work. Here’s a map I was making while reading the book.
Her thoughts on art are highly conceptual, and she articulates them beautifully. Ms. Pruitt was a psychologist before she became an artist, and maybe that’s one reason she is able to tease out details of her experiences and subconscious thoughts with such great clarity, and in such elegant prose.
Here’s one of my favorite quotes from the book –
“The meaning of our experience is held in the infinity”
Anne Pruitt
…which is about how we derive meaning from the short intervals between our sensory perceptions. As usual I drew it in my sketchbook.
By the way, WordPress was a bit of a letdown while making this post, and readers you may have some challenges here and there as well. First, the WordPress iPad app got stuck multiple times and so I gave up drafting there and used my laptop. And now there are other issues with the standard post format that I tried to resolve for the last half an hour. Oh well, tech.
Happy new year!
So it’s yet another new year and I am still alive. Sometimes that’s a magical thing.
Despite everything going on around us, I’ve been lucky to have a good enough first week of 2022, filled with things I cherish, and was really looking forward to this weekend.
So here’s the journal drawing I did last night –
For the curious:
I’m in the middle of my first book of 2022, which is Agnisambhab, a Bengali novel by my aunt Reeta Basu. I’ll write a more detailed post when I’ve finished it but suffice to say that I’m feeling very lucky to be reading it.
Finally, for the past year I’ve been helping jdallcaps publish the DesignUp newsletter. If you’re interested, do subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/jdallcaps
Here’s wishing you all more resilience for 2022, and a year filled with personal meaning.
Days in a week
Random journal entries from last year. Watched Aranyer Din Ratri – one of my favorite Satyajit Ray films – and read a bunch of Emily Dickinson.
Design after all is a process of inquiry…
A moment of bliss
At the ends of long days what a pleasure it is to sit and draw…
A Bad Day at Work: Surviving Work, Part 3
As I said the other day, all through 2017 I was drawing out my stress. One day, after an incredibly difficult meeting I came back to my desk, and took a few minutes to quietly straighten myself out.
TRANSCRIPT
- 01: Soo: Thankful I can draw
- 02: Soo: Ah…Instagram…
- 03: Instagram post
- 04: Soo: Quickly finish this then go home for the next meeting
- 05: Soo: Ma? Umm..hmmm
- 06: Soo: I’m OK, I’m at work. Such a bad –
- 07: Ma: Oh you’re at work? I saw your post on Instagram – I thought something was wrong with Orin! Bye!
Surviving work, part 2
It was early 2017 when I first started to use my drawing to deal with work stress.
I was still grumpily trying to understand what my role as a Design Manager should be, and the anteater, as usual, gave his sage advice:
Sometimes all you need is a different perspective on life, like The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman.
And I also finished reading M Train by Patti Smith around that time.
While all this helps momentarily, there’s actually larger causes for work stresses which need to be carefully resolved. But of course, I didn’t know that then…
Surviving work
The last two years have been incredible years of growing for me in my professional life. Challenging work, difficult situations, and always the need to build trust from bottom up.
These are some of the earliest drawings from those days:
What kept me going was the long game, and guiding myself with
Progress, not perfection
which I learnt from this 99u talk by Effie Brown.
I also draw myself out of stress, since drawing is nearly therapy for me. The 2017 and 2018 sketchbooks are filled with “stressy” drawings – as my friend Uli would say – like this one:
After a while though I got used to it, and learnt how to survive difficult days
Though our man, the brown boy, did have the last word:
“Ultimately, it’s all about having a good time. Later on if you feel you haven’t enjoyed yourself it’s not worth it.”
inktales 