Dragon Paintings, iPad Photography Workflows, and the Passing of Dean Allen

Welcome to this week's edition of our Friday Quality Linkage column. Please enjoy this week’s collection of interesting and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee, find a comfortable place, and relax.

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Using an iPad for Photography Workflows »

In a debut article for our sister site, The Sweet Setup, Marius Masalar — who you'll know as the author of several reviews here on T&T — put together an epic guide for using an iPad for your photo management and editing workflows:

To be practical, an iPad photography workflow has to encompass everything from shooting, importing, culling, editing, and the final export. The ideal scenario is to be able to trust the iPad to replace a laptop as my daily photography companion. It needn’t do so entirely — I’m happy to continue using my desktop-based collection of apps when I’m at home and need their specific capabilities — but I should feel confident taking nothing but an iPad with me when I head out on a shoot or take my next trip.

And I do. ​ Things aren’t perfect yet, but depending on your tolerance for doing things differently, we’re finally at a place where the iPad is a viable companion for the working photographer.

Wonderful guide. Go check it out.

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♫ La de da de da de da de day oh ♫ »

A little while back I wrote about how much I love Bill Wurtz's music videos, even more so than his far-more-viral hits, “The History of Japan” and “History of the Entire World, I Guess”.

His latest song, "La de da de da de da de day oh" isn't quite up there in the pantheon of his best work, but it's certainly catchy enough to be stuck in my head three days later, so.

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5-Minute Sketching Warmups »

Heads up, aspiring artists: Webcomic illustrator "Chekhov" put together this fun little guide on simple but helpful warmup techniques that can help improve your drawing skills in concrete ways:

I made a thing! I was thinking about this for a few days - because I realized that when I was young, I was also frustrated about being given the same advice over and over - without really knowing what it meant!!

Here’s 5 techniques which I have done before which have helped me grow as an artist, which are good for 5-minute warmups or just straight up challenges for your sketchbook!

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Hitofude Ryuu — "One-Stroke Dragon" Paintings »

The link above is for the Instragram of Keisuke Teshima, a Japanese painter who practices the art of hitofude ryuu, which translates roughly to "one-stroke dragon" or "dragon with one stroke". Now technically, it's only the body of the dragon that's done in one stroke, with lots of details added later, but that imperceptible movement that creates the dragon's scales blows me away.

I discovered this whole thing thanks to a Reddit post on r/OddlySatisfying, the video of which seems to have come from a Facebook post by Culture Trip/Eyecatcher, which itself uses footage sourced from Teshima's Instagram. Whew!

Teshima has an online store page where you can buy a dragon painting of your own if you like. Be prepared to drop about $500 to $1,000 though, depending on size.

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Dean Allen, R.I.P. »

Sad news in our corner of the internet this week: Dean Allen, proprietor of Good Web Things like Textism, Cardigan, and Favrd, passed away. I never knew him and most of his work was before my time as a person of the web, so I have nothing to add that hasn't already been said by these guys:

Om Malik:

Dean taught me a lot in life. A rare email from him would often have a recommendation for me — sometimes a book, sometimes a new pair of shoes and sometimes a new place to eat. It was from him I learned about the remarkable comfort of suspenders (vs. belts), the joy of great Crockett and Jones boots, and it was with him I found a tailor in the backstreets of Paris, who makes my shirts. […] We had many adventures together — many of them included fashion, food and of course wine.

John Gruber:

Textism started in 2001, a little over a year before I started Daring Fireball. To say that Textism was an influence on Daring Fireball is an understatement for the ages. Fairer to say Textism was the influence on Daring Fireball. I don’t know what DF would’ve wound up looking and reading like if not for Dean Allen, but it wouldn’t look or read like it did and does. For godsake just read his old About page. It’s so good, and so Dean.

Jason Kottke:

Weirdly, or maybe not, my two biggest memories of Dean involve food. One of my favorite little pieces of writing by him (or anyone else for that matter), is How to Cook Soup:

First, you need some water. Fuse two hydrogen with one oxygen and repeat until you have enough. While the water is heating, raise some cattle. Pay a man with grim eyes to do the slaughtering, preferably while you are away. Roast the bones, then add to the water. Go away again. Come back once in awhile to skim. When the bones begin to float, lash together into booms and tow up the coast. Reduce. Keep reducing. When you think you have reduced enough, reduce some more. Raise some barley. When the broth coats the back of a spoon and light cannot escape it, you are nearly there. Pause to mop your brow as you harvest the barley. Search in vain for a cloud in the sky. Soak the barley overnight (you will need more water here), then add to the broth. When, out of the blue, you remember the first person you truly loved, the soup is ready. Serve.

He sounded like an awfully fun (and weird) fellow to have as a friend. Wish I could've met him.

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Slate: Redesigning the Way We Work »

Speaking of web things: A few days ago, famed web designer Jason Santa Maria wrote about his team's redesign and relaunch of the entire Slate brand:

A little over a year ago we published the results of an experiment: a new article design that didn’t look like the rest of our stories. It had an airy layout that gave clarity to the text, with new typefaces and colors, and it was published entirely outside of our CMS. Over the past year we’ve been using that article design to publish more stories as we’ve developed the complete new look we’re unveiling today. But we haven’t been calling this process a redesign—instead, I asked everyone to call it Redux. That’s because all the while the project has been a Trojan horse.

Slate has been sorely in need of a visual update to bring our look up to the level of our stories, but rather than just focus on a redesign of the website, we wanted to redesign the way we work. Sure, on the other end of that we’d have a new home page and logo, but we wanted to build a process for working together that brought everyone to the same table—editorial, design, development, product, and sales.

The new look is fantastic, kudos to the Slate team.

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Future Freight by Paul Chadeisson »

Paul Chadeisson, a France-based freelance concept artist who has worked on numerous video games — such as Strike Vector EX — has an ArtStation page full of amazing sci-fi artwork. The "future freight" types of things below are particularly interesting because they're quite fantastical but not that far out of the realm of possibility:

I discovered these via Darran Anderson (author of Imaginary Cities), who later had a brief but funny exchange about it with a follower:

@Netrixz_: People see all the technology I see all that pollution and smoke

Anderson: So does Chadeisson.

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Neat Stuff We Published This Week

• Five-volume encyclopedia of bread-making: Modernist Bread
• Measure temperatures at a distance: Fluke 561 Infrared Thermometer
• Always have hot water on tap: Zojirushi CD-WCC40 Micom Water Boiler & Warmer
• A great backpack, now even more outdoorsy: Tom Bihn "Guide's Edition" Synapse 25 Backpack
• Softly light your way in the middle of the night: Vansky Motion-Activated Bed Light

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Got any suggestions for articles, videos, stories, photographs, and any other links you think we should be posting in our weekly Quality Linkage? Please do let us know on Twitter.