Eight pages of geometry
The geometry book is finished.
I’ve been working on this project on and off since 2013. It’s a Japanese Album moleskine, sometimes called an accordion-fold book, of about 50 leaves or panels. At this point, both sides of every sheet of paper in the book are inked with 111 geometry problems in both diagram and text. (technically, there’s space for about three more on the inside of the front cover).
I began this project when I came to the realization that geometry was part of the underpinnings of good design work — that if you could see the key elements of the geometry underlying a project or a design, that the quality of your work would improve because you understood how different relationships were managed between various parts of the project. Because ultimately, geometry is about relationships.
More than that, this project has been about self-discipline. I started the book at one scale, then shifted to a tighter scale after about fifteen panels. Then I stopped for a good long while, somehow afraid that I’d ‘ruined’ it by the change in scale. Then, I picked it up again, and worked all the way to the end of one side of the book, and about seven panels into the other side. There was another long pause, maybe as long as a year. About six weeks ago, I picked the project up again. I couldn’t find the right marker pens that I’d used to start the book. I shifted to different pens (Prismacolor was the first brand, at 0.5mm; Staedtler triplus fineliners the second, at 0.3mm). I got better results, especially on the more complex constructions, with the new tools.
And this morning, I finished. I woke up early, and I came downstairs. I finished the page on ellipses that I began yesterday, and then began work on the page on spirals. The spirals page went far more easily than I expected. It was simple to turn from that to the final page, which is in part about the Golden Section, and the process of laying out multiple proportions. I thought that page was going to be difficult, too, but it wasn’t.
And then I was done.
It doesn’t actually feel like it’s done; that may take a little while to sink in. But the project (except for maybe some unusual problem not covered by the earlier work, that can go on the inside front cover), is now complete.
More than any other project I’ve done, though, I feel like this is the one that lets me say, “I am an artist and a designer.”
Hello. My name is Andrew Watt. I’m an artist and a designer.
The yarn sometimes loses a good deal of the sheen and luster that attracted you to it in the yarn store as you do this patient work of untangling. Your partner will roll eyes at you as you do this work, and even tut-tut at you as you nearly scream in frustration at it. But sooner or later — given enough time, and enough patience — all of the knots and tangles will be removed, and you will have a yarn ball.
