Artist Creates Fantastical Woodcuts and Engraved Paintings Suited for Fairy Tales [Interview] [Shared]

When Matt Roussel traveled to Mongolia in 2015, something critical dawned upon him: he didn’t want to work as a 3D illustrator anymore. This decision ultimately propelled him toward the multimedia practice for which he’s known today, revolving around everything from woodcuts and prints to ceramics and painted, engraved wood.

During this transition, Roussel first gravitated toward woodcutting, developing a style replete with unusual creatures, playful compositions, and defined, illustrative lines. Soon after, he complemented his prints with expressive, imaginative sculptures, inspired by Japan’s tradition of raku ceramics. It was only later that he combined woodcutting with his urge to paint, resulting in deliciously textured surfaces whose every crevice is streaked with translucent colors.

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https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/23/artist-creates-fantastical-woodcuts-and-engraved-paintings-suited-for-fairy-tales-interview-shared/

Explore Hundreds of Exquisite Botanical Collages Created by an 18th-Century Septuagenarian Artist via Colossal [Shared]

At age 72, Mary Delany (1700-1788) devoted herself to her art practice, taking up a form of decoupage to create an exquisite collection of botanical collages from dyed and cut paper. She interpreted many of the delicate specimens she encountered in Buckinghamshire while staying with her friend, the Duchess of Portland, through layered pieces on black backdrops. From the wispy clover-like leaves of an oxalis plant to the wildly splayed petals of the daffodil, the realistic works are both stunning for their beauty and faithfulness to the original lifeforms.

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https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/22/explore-hundreds-of-exquisite-botanical-collages-created-by-an-18th-century-septuagenarian-artist-via-colossal-shared/

#plants #flowers #leaves #botany #botanical #print #art #artwork #garden #gardening #science #painting
#illustration  #vintage #shared

@altbot

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/20/politics/hegseth-second-signal-chat-military-plans/index.html

This gets even better! #WhiskeyPete #shared #military #plans on a second #Signal #chat! And they talk about #leaks! #MAGA world is the #pits

Librarians are dangerous: A public service announcement by Brad Montague

Dear Enthusiasts,

I write to you today as a concerned citizen.
Many aren’t brave enough to say it, but the time has come. So, I will say it:

Librarians are dangerous.

(Dramatic music should be playing in your head right now.)

You thought they were just keepers of the quiet. Guardians of the “shhh.”
The ones who handed you a dusty book and pointed to a beanbag chair.

Wrong.

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https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/20/librarians-are-dangerous-a-public-service-announcement-by-brad-montague-shared/

Mysterious Creatures Emerge from Recycled Materials in Sculptures by Spencer Hansen via Colossal [Shared]

Long-legged creatures don otherwordly masks in sculptures by Bali-based artist Spencer Hansen, whose work explores identity and connection through a cast of uncanny characters. Using primarily natural, found, and recycled materials like wood, metal, bone, plant fibers, and ceramic, he draws inspiration from surrounding environment and frequent travels. Originally from Idaho, he relocated to Bali where he built a workshop that houses studios and live-work space for a team of skilled artisans who help to bring the pieces to life.

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/18/mysterious-creatures-emerge-from-recycled-materials-in-sculptures-by-spencer-hansen-via-colossal-shared/

10 most interesting books that enter the public domain in 2023 via eBook Friendly [Shared]

The 2023 public domain book list is highly attractive. You can find here Franz Kafka’s Amerika, Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Pomes Penyeach by James Joyce or Ernest Hemingway’s Men Without Women.

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/17/10-most-interesting-books-that-enter-the-public-domain-in-2023-via-ebook-friendly-shared/

#books #free #publicdomain #2023 #Reading #read #shared

Repair and Remain: How to do the slow, hard, good work of staying put by Kurt Armstrong

Let’s say time comes to gut and renovate your bathroom: I can help you with that—demolition, framing, reworking the plumbing, moving some electrical, installing some mould-resistant drywall, maybe some nice tile for the floor and some classic glazed ceramic three-by-six subway tile for the tub surround. Should take a month or two, depending on what all’s involved. And as for you, hey, for the sake of your wife and kids, I think you better quit the flurry of furtive late-night texts to the sexy young co-worker and cut back a bit on your recreational drinking because wine is a mocker, so goes the proverb, as if those Facebook posts of you at the bar last week weren’t proof enough.

Repair and remain. Work with what you’ve got. Sit still for a moment, take stock, make some changes. Big changes, if necessary.

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/16/repair-and-remain-how-to-do-the-slow-hard-good-work-of-staying-put-by-kurt-armstrong-shared/

The 4 Types of Luck by Sahil Bloom [Shared]

The 4 Types of Luck
In 1978, a neurologist named Dr. James Austin published a book entitled Chase, Chance, & Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty.

In it, Dr. Austin proposed that there are four types of luck:

Blind Luck
Luck from Motion
Luck from Awareness
Luck from Uniqueness
Here's how to think about each type:

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/15/the-4-types-of-luck-by-sahil-bloom-shared/

Start with the Jar: How to understand your capacity via Turtle’s Pace [Shared]

Optimism is dangerous, especially when it comes to planning our goals. If we underestimate the effort of an endeavor, we set ourselves up for failure. When we fail to meet our expectations, we can succumb to cynicism.
We must learn how much we can process to avoid the hope trap.

Domain, Duration, and Dimension

Imagine you have thousands of marbles to carry on a plane, and airport security released a new regulation that limits an individual to one jarful. If you don’t know the jar's capacity, you won’t know how many marbles you can bring and could risk losing your precious orbs!

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/14/start-with-the-jar-how-to-understand-your-capacity-via-turtles-pace-shared/

#schedule #scheduling #planning #capacity #life #work #career #advice #shared

@altbot

Curiosity: The neglected trait that drives success via BBC [Shared]

On 7 January 1918 at New York’s Hippodrome, the incredible illusionist Harry Houdini unveiled one of his most famous tricks – the vanishing elephant – in front of thousands of spectators.

The beast in question, Jennie, reportedly weighed 10,000 pounds (4,536kg). She raised her trunk in greeting, before a stagehand led her into a huge cabinet and closed the doors behind them. After a dramatic drum roll, the doors reopened – and the cabinet was now empty. To the thousands of spectators, it seemed that she had vanished into thin air. 

How could Houdini have managed to hide such an enormous animal? No one at the time could provide a definitive explanation of what had happened, though there is one predominant theory.

http://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/11/curiosity-the-neglected-trait-that-drives-success-via-bbc-shared/

Why Stupidity Is More Dangerous Than Evil via Lifehacker [Shared]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew more than you or I are likely to ever know about about the line between stupidity and outright evil. The Lutheran pastor and theologian had a front row seat as he watched the Nazis—history’s evilest stupid people (or stupidest evil people)—ascend to power and come to rule through terror during the 1930s and ‘40s.

In a letter to his friends, family, and followers written while he awaited execution at Flossenbürg concentration camp for his role in the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Adolph Hitler, Bonhoeffer detailed his thoughts on the root cause of the moral and intellectual infection that resulted in the Third Reich. His conclusion: It’s the stupidity, stupid.

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/09/why-stupidity-is-more-dangerous-than-evil-via-lifehacker-shared/

The different kinds of notes by Baldur Bjarnason [Shared]

The post where I outline my general theory of notetaking for all to disagree with

At the end of my last post, I mentioned that I had switched to pen and paper notetaking in the early 2010s, after years of serious digital notetaking using plain text files.

I wrote about how much more enjoyable the analogue notetaking was but what I didn’t mention was why I abandoned my plain text system. Nor did I write about my first foray into serious notetaking.

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/08/the-different-kinds-of-notes-by-baldur-bjarnason-shared/

#notes #notetaking #advice #method #paper #journal #shared

@altbot

How To Be More Intelligent 101 via Nicholas Bate [Shared]

1. Read staggering amounts, regularly returning to the classics both fiction and non-fiction.
2. Write your own notes of your daily learnings aiming for super concise summaries. In that way you must squeeze and reveal the essence of a subject.
3. Stay active during the day. That’s not just ‘go to the gym’. Stay active; you’ll notice the ideas flowing so much more quickly and easily.

Plus 100 more!

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/07/how-to-be-more-intelligent-101-via-nicholas-bate-shared/

Lessons on How to Draw by Hokusai via Kottke [Shared]

In 1812, Japanese woodblock print artist Katsushika Hokusai, who would later become famous for his iconic Great Wave off Kanagawa prints, published a three-volume series called Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing. All three volumes are available online: one, two, three. Even if you’re not in the market for drawing lessons, the pages are wonderful to flip through.

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/06/lessons-on-how-to-draw-by-hokusaivia-kottke-shared/

#art #drawing #education #rendering #lessons #Hokusai #artist #shared #books

@altbot

Chronophoto: A Gasme to Guess the date of the photos

Guess the year depicted in the photograph. Each round is 7 photos with a higher score the closer you get to the date.

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/05/chronophoto-a-gasme-to-guess-the-date-of-the-photos-shared/

#game #photo #photography #date #dating #chronology #Time #web #app #shared

@altbot

My personal bundle bags and Eagle fan, one rattle and the other is a pipe with its medicines.

Vanishing Culture: Punch Card Knitting via The Internet Archive [Shared]

Punch cards are a fascinating binary data storage format that aren’t just history—they’re still used by knitting machines today! Thanks to the Internet Archive and other collections, we still have access to historic punch cards, but there are some technical challenges to using them in the format they’re stored in. Meet a few folx working on those challenges. 

http://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/03/vanishing-culture-punch-card-knitting-via-the-internet-archive-shared/

#knit #knitting #tech #technology #punchedcards #cards #programming #arts #crafts #history #shared

@altbot

‘Cockeyed’ Map Shows Both Glamour and Margins of 1930s Hollywood Via Atlas Obscura [Shared]

The humming of 1930s Hollywood street life almost bursts off the page—this is the age of the talkies, after all.

A vignette straddling Beverly and Vine sets the scene: A slightly cockeyed map of that slightly cockeyed community, Hollywood, executed by that slightly cockeyed topographer … John Groth. Chicago native Groth (1908–1988) was a cartoonist who became art director of Esquire in his 20s. He would go on to have a brilliant career as a war artist for the Chicago Sun. In 1944, he rode the first Allied jeep into newly liberated Paris. If he’d been any closer to the front, “he would have had to have sat in the Kraut’s lap,” joked Ernest Hemingway.

https://welchwrite.com/blog/2025/04/02/cockeyed-map-shows-both-glamour-and-margins-of-1930s-hollywood-via-atlas-obscura-shared/