Distracted From My Diversions

birdSketch480I am lately very anti-Toyota: I am NOT driven.

All that, with the coming longer days of grass mowing and gardening, is about to change. But for the time being I am making a point to not have any point to make or project to finish or resolution to reach.

In other words, I’m giving it my best shot to just be plain sorry, and revel in idle hands, no matter whos workshop they are purported to make. I find I make a pretty good sloth, though if I’d listened to HER I would have realized this decades ago.

Exhibit A: doodle with Sketches Pro

I think I started accumulating drawing apps about the time a few years back when I began carrying an iPad to committee meetings for the purpose of taking “sketchnotes.” This is a combination of doodling, note-taking and illustrating that seemed in tune with my visual kind of remembering. [This all came to an abrupt end for actual note taking when I became secretary and had to capture every word at every meeting.}

Sketchnotes seems to get a lot of use among teachers for its effectiveness in both teaching and for student note taking for visually-depicted topics (like history, literature–heck most anything.) I have a long history of doodling in class, though most of that consisted of caricatures of my teachers in high school–some of which were confiscated.

If you are not familiar with sketchnotes, here’s a great starting place at the link below. Also I note that it makes good use of Google Slides which I have never had occasion to use, but will give it a look.

Sketchnoting for Beginners – Google Slides

From this resource I learned about Sketches Pro, which I purchased a few days ago and played with only a while before Sketches 2.0 came out, increasing the app’s usefulness considerably–accept that a few of the new tools are very slow on my ipad 4.

The crummy bird here was the first doodle I didn’t erase using version 1. The free app without the extras is worth looking at.

Sketches Pro 2 for iPad

39317-200Also I think from the same resource I discovered Noun Project’s amazing icon library from which this figure was gathered at random.

So many distractions; so little time.

Share this with your friends!
fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

Articles: 3009

One comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  1. I am convinced that you are beingan excellently lazy retired guy: you haven’t posted in forever! Enjoy this new phase of your life. They all have their good points!