Every month, I share the articles and sites that I found most interesting. Here’s what caught my attention in December: dealing with perfectionism, the art of the supervillain, misinterpretations of historical photographs, hand exercises for artists, and more.
• MY BRAIN IS A JERK: a post about writing with (and in spite of) perfectionism by Laini Taylor
I guess this is “process” but it’s bigger than that. It’s not just about whether you use a computer or a notebook, or whether you outline or not, or work in the morning or at night, or in a cafe or at home, etc etc. It’s about your brain, and getting it to do what you want, as often as you possibly can and for as long as you can, and this will be different for everyone. AND. It will be different for you from day to day.
• Rian Johnson’s Looper and the Art of the Supervillain by Leah Schnelbach (Contains spoilers for Joker, Looper, and Unbreakable.)
Like approximately 2 billion of you, I went to see Joker last month. And as the ensuing conversations about The State of Society and Is Violence Ever Justifiable and Angry Men and oh yeah What About The State of Cinema and Wait, Batman Canon! swirled around, I realized that the biggest disappointment for me is that the film simply did not work as the supervillain origin story it purported to be.
• Anna Karina, Catherine Deneuve: how movies malign women by calling them muses by Anne Billson: “The history of male auteurs and their female muses is essentially a history of “othering” women, even if the flower arrangements can be bewitching in themselves in their presentation of the self, the creation of a persona, the playing around with behaviour and appearance and pose.”
• The Most Stylish Scammer: 20 Years of ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ by Haley Mlotek: “Highsmith, Minghella, and Ripley were all obsessed with beauty not because it is good but because it is capable of being the exact opposite. Audiences have the luxury of wondering: What if our obsessions are not just weaknesses but also a warning?”
• ‘Once photography gets a grip, you’re captive’: Don McCullin and Giles Duley in conversation by Kate Kellaway: “People ask: can you change the world with your photograph and I would say, no, but maybe we can inspire the people who do.”
• Loss of Vision: How Early 20th century Photography Was Misjudged by Critics and How Archives Obscure the Image by Nicolette Bromberg
Having worked with many collections of early commercial photography, I become particularly interested in the misinterpretations of commercial photography by modern critics and art historians who judge it using incorrect standards, and I also became interested in how the photographic document can be obscured by both photographers themselves and by archival practice.
• The Complete Guide to Mastery by Fadeke Adegbuyi: “Mastery culminates in these public displays of deftness, but it doesn’t start there. Rather, mastery is the years and decades of learning, practice, failure, and hard-fought improvement that lead individuals toward unmatched greatness.”
• 12 Hand Stretches For Artists: Hand And Wrist Pain by Patricia
The best way to prevent hand and wrist pain is to actually do some exercises before you draw, paint or do something with your hands.
This also counts for people like writers, teachers and general people that use their hands and wrists a lot in the same motions over and over again.
• A Better Internet Is Waiting for Us by Annalee Newitz
Social media is broken. It has poisoned the way we communicate with each other and undermined the democratic process. Many of us just want to get away from it, but we can’t imagine a world without it. Though we talk about reforming and regulating it, “fixing” it, those of us who grew up on the internet know there’s no such thing as a social network that lasts forever. Facebook and Twitter are slowly imploding. And before they’re finally dead, we need to think about what the future will be like after social media so we can prepare for what comes next.
• Sleepy Skunk’s 2019 Movie Trailer Mashup is incredible. It was a fantastic year for movies. But the decade in review mashup? Even better.
What’s the most interesting thing you saw online this month?
Reghan Skerry 