Cream: July 3, 1997 to September 17, 2009

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

I won’t say I’ve recently endured (survived?) any major cataclysms. But I won’t say that these past few months have left me the same, either in direction or substance. It’s funny. I used to dismiss maturity as boring, adulthood as a surrender to monotony one accepted out of either resignation to the inevitable or the lack of energy to fight against it — but now that I’m slowly stepping into the responsibilities of my years I’m beginning to find out that simplicity is the truest form of beauty in existence and that sometimes doing the mature thing takes far more courage and strength than one would imagine.

So there’s also this: learning to discard the inessential, choosing what to leave behind. This domain is one that has been with me for years now, but I thought that this time around a fresh start — one that eliminated all sorts of accoutrements and frills — would be fitting. Here is where I begin to study function underlying form. Where I learn that substance is always worth more than style. Where I choose colors and shapes for their own sake, rather than immersing myself in the trappings of trying to flaunt everything all at once.

The revamps of both Lux Lucis and nakedSingularity began with a WordPress upgrade and then the choosing of a theme, which (for me) is always the hardest part of updating a site’s look. And of course, because my insistence on tweaking themes is the way I keep my conscience from nagging me about how I don’t design my own themes (hah; not that there’s time to learn all the CSS and PHP involved, not anymore), I spent some time changing the colors and generally playing around with the appearance. COLOURlovers was indispensable for this. I used palettes I created in it to change around the colors for the sites:

See? The patterns for the header were also created via CL:

Playing around with patterns is so fun, and so is combining them and seeing what results from the riot of colors and shapes. I think I should do that more often. Some more details — the “Lux Lucis” text in the header is digital calligraphy, done in Inkscape after a lot of other attempts that really would have come off better if there had been more space for a header. Ah well. At least I’m learning how to do digital calligraphy. After a few more sessions I think I can try turning the calligraphy into vectors.

Recently I attended a design conference and came away with a few resolutions. So I don’t forget, recapping (and adding onto) them here:

• Watch the sunset more often.
• Experiment with different tools and media.
• Go out once a month to visit a museum/gallery/etc.

And basically — just allow oneself to enjoy art. To find some sort of happiness in it. It’s true that self-indulgence isn’t something to be desired, but joy isn’t something to be repressed either. Today is the last day of August; tomorrow, the last third of the year begins. Let me set my hope on fire.