The constant stormy and rainy weather is not agreeing with me at all. At any rate, I’m a lot more tired than I should be after only one week of school.
Plus, the uncommonly mild winter is making my hayfever flare up early. In fact, my hayfever never really stopped this winter, because I react badly to rapeseed pollen. Which wasn’t a problem when the rapeseed was harvested in June or July. But nowadays, many farmers plant a second rapeseed crop that matures and blooms in the autumn and is just left on the fields as bio fertilizer, until the frost kills off the plants. Which is really bad news for me, because I never really get rid of my hayfever, unless we have at least a week of sustained frost or snow.
Anyway, in lieu of the proper post, here are two interesting links on ways of finding graphic inspiration:
At Paperback Writer, Lynn Viehl has a good post on how to use the Wordle toy for inspiration. I like Wordle a whole lot and play around with it when looking for a title, to give physical shape to a story or as an editing tool to detect overused words. But just inputting words for inspiration is new to me and might just spark a story idea or two.
Meanwhile, Catherynne M. Valente writes about Zentangles, a graphic doodling cum meditation exercise. These Zentangles remind me of the black and white abstract doodles with which I filled my notebooks in highschool and university. Besides, it is known that doodling relaxes the mind, which is why I don’t stop the kids who are doodling in class, provided they don’t doodle on tables, walls and other surfaces where doodles are not easily erased.
The official Zentangle site is here and here is a pretty good how to.
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