I do handwriting. Plenty of. A lot. It's still one of the fastest and expressive input methods for me.
One of the arguments in favor of choosing the Valkyrie was its active stylus pen, and with Arcadia desktop I use a plain Wacom tablet.
But when traveling or just on the go, nothing beats ol' good analog paper notebook. Right now mine comes in a form of a shiny leather passport-size traveler journal with replaceable insets. Easy to carry, upgradable (I feel like a magpie looking at all the brass goodies attached to it), instantly ready to absorb important stuff written down, yet keeping it organized - due to a separate inset for each category of notes.
LoL, I even got me a paper guillotine to crop the notebooks to passport-sized format! Because ordering insets from overseas sounds somewhat deranged.
These insets when finished need to be stored somewhere, at least temporarily while the Very Important Information is still fresh. For that purpose I've made these windowsill racks, each dedicated for a category represented by one of the Four Elements of the Universe.
The mapping of the note categories onto the elements is as follows:
Water: General daily planner. One has to be fluid like water to navigate modern life.
Fire: Work-related planner and notes. The symbolism should be obvious.
Earth: Self-study topics and theoretical lecture notes. Heavy foundations.
Air: Creative ideas and RolePlaying stuff. Castles in the clouds.
The craft was rather easy, with roughly half of the time spent on paper templates. In essence the racks are a triumph of square forms, just like the Eidolon is. Each template is a set of 4 sides cut from a sheet of paper. The sides were initially squares with 12cm sides, and then a variation of height between 9cm and 12cm was applied to the back and side walls of each rack. Moreover, 3 of the side wall templates were used twice for the racks to form a visibly smooth row when put together. Then all of the floors and walls were cut out of a same-thick layers of fireclay. The sides bear minimalistic patterns together with my Stamp.
Of the glazes used I'm particularly curious of the one used for the Air rack: it was especially hard to apply, but after annealing it shows not only an interesting light-blue color but also a very nice pattern of cracks.
I'm yet to learn about the composition and chemistry of glazes. Which looks like one of the foundations to add to my notes while the studio is closed for the summer vacations.
