My love of letters came to me much later in life, as I've expressed in other posts. As a toddler, when I first saw the Roman Alphabet, I did not think the letters were beautiful. I played with a Fisher Price chalkboard and set of magnetic letters, Helvetica style. The thick straight lines, unbalanced asymmetries struck me as ugly and lacking the magic of languages like Chinese. When I finally began to love the alphabet, it was because I was drawing so much and occasionally, in my search for beauty, even making up letters of my own. I learned from my personal explorations that letters have patterns and that there is a balance in letters between individualism and conformity. If letters are too dissimilar, they do not work together beautifully. And if letters are too similar, they are too easily confused with one another and their identities blur. I began to respect rules as a source of beauty and harmony, through my explorations with letters.
The Chinese language builds like bamboo, held in lines by knots and short, strong segments. ?Learn to change trees to bamboo and bamboo to trees?, the author suggested.
The Aleph is the first stroke of the universe. Back before I stumbled upon a ?first stroke? of my own, I thought of the Aleph as a tree. It was like the solid base of a trunk: the source. This is not wrong. But then, I found a new way to see it. Drawing letters, playing with curves, might allow you to explore the strokes you like best and choose from among them. Certain strokes do hold more than others. which is what I learned painting these grasses ?a magical idea.
This is my favorite time of year, because of the frog chorus. I can walk out my back door and explore the ponds and woods with my daughters. The air is cool and full of new growth, and there isn't the heaviness of mosquito clouds that will be surrounding us in another month or two.
his is a branding concept I offered to the new Milwaukee Food Truck Association. This may seem an unlikely project for a medical illustrator. But more and more I am finding that I value the simplicity of good design. I want to be pulling to the ideals there in as many ways as I can. And so, gladly, I offer my skills to this area when the opportunity arises.
Now, I will let go something.
I will allow mist.
Sometimes, explaining offers clarity,
and it works well.
Other times, it destroys
the delicate web of threads.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9jvVzkZiRs&feature=plcp
Watching the July 4 fireworks, there seemed a whole life revolving around the lone moon: not so circular and isolated after all.
Written & Painted by Laura Maaske, MSc.BMC, Medical Illustrator & Medical Animator| e-Textbook Designer Earliest Human Impulses to Create an Alphabet With the weather getting colder, I’ve been taking my daughters to parks a lot less. Recently, as an after-school activity, I talked with my daughters about the alphabet, how each character makes a […]
I have a childhood image of my dad
which carries through all the years.
He's standing at the patio door with his hands interlaced behind him
silently engaged with a tree (or it might be the moon).
Even when I was very young,
I kept at a distance, so as not to disturb the feeling he created there.
Our Feelings about Brands Written by Laura Maaske, MSc.BMC, Medical Illustrator & Medical Animator I was five years old and I slid to the front seat of the car, looking up at the back-lit letters designating the drugstore into which my mom had stepped. I had spent a lot of time looking at letters: […]
The Power of Light as a force in Medical Illustration or any Illustration Written & Illustrated by Laura Maaske, MSc.BMC, Medical Illustrator & Medical Animator Do you recall your first discovery of light when you were a child? What an alluring beauty that intangible phantom presents for babies at a certain age. I remember […]
“There’ll never be a door. You are inside and the fortress contains the universe and has no other side nor any back nor any outer wall nor secret core. Do not expect the rigor of your path, which stubbornly splits into another one, which stubbornly splits into another one, to have an end. . . […]