Frank Chimero on the Humble Pencil
It takes great restraint for me to not re-blog every single post that Frank writes. This one is too full of juicy goodness, I can’t resist:
The pencil is general, yet specific. Ideas can be hashed out with ease to gauge their potential. The marks can be vague enough so one doesn’t judge the execution, but instead judges the potential of the idea. This is why I can’t come up with ideas on computers. Computers are too specific; they have too many degrees of separation between my mind and the canvas. With a pencil, it starts from my brain, moves down my arm, straight out my hand to the paper. Atoms transfer from the tip of the pencil to the surface of the paper. I can see the sheet fill up…Computers have an infinite canvas, so I can’t feel like I’ve filled one sheet to start on another…There’s no pile of paper to look at and to say “Look at all this ground we’ve covered.” Every mark has the finish of a final mark on the screen, and ideas in progress do not look how they should.
Do yourself a favor and read Frank’s entire post in all its glory.
