https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/Recent content in Blog on George SupreethHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usThu, 05 Mar 2026 20:27:06 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260305_how_the_speaking_tree_died/Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:27:06 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260305_how_the_speaking_tree_died/N o one in the tribe could remember who discovered speaking trees first. The squat, ugly tree was the quickest means to get in touch with other tribes. The way it worked was that you spoke into the hollow in its trunk and the tree conducted your voice through its network of roots to other speaking trees across the world. Of course, this meant that anyone standing near a speaking tree could hear you, even if they were not meant to, but it beat running across forests with sabre-toothed predators nipping at your loin cloth.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260226_how_our_community_members_learn/Thu, 26 Feb 2026 10:43:03 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260226_how_our_community_members_learn/I made a cup of tea this morning. I sat down to read the news and something in there triggered a flashback from when I worked at Byjus. A memory of a management consultant telling me that I need to teach drawing1 in the same way another department was teaching math. I wish I could say I gave him a measured and educative reply. Anyway, that made me think of the Penciljam community and how social learning is such a contrast to formal, structured learning systems.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260220_thirteen_years_hundred_posts/Fri, 20 Feb 2026 17:07:32 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260220_thirteen_years_hundred_posts/I’m imagining a secret society for people who have published over one hundred blog posts, and because this is my head space, I name this society The Hundredfold Order of the Indie Quill. I will be carried on a palanquin, on the backs of those who have published less than a hundred, onto a platform ringed with giant braziers, held up by marble statues in the pose of Atlas holding up the heavens and which also incredibly look like me.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260219_a_mindset_for_creating_art/Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:44:43 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260219_a_mindset_for_creating_art/S omeone I know wished to apply for a $50k grant offered to artists by a foundation in the U.S., and the grant rules stated only fine artists may apply. Not illustrators, commercial artists or people who create pictures for a living. Just fine artists. Now this person is an illustrator but she could be a fine artist. couldn’t she? The line that divides these two is thin. Both illustrators and fine artists make art, so one can switch over, and indeed, many fine artists have illustrated for a living, and there are illustrators who have quit to paint full-time.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260216_wallabag_one_year_later/Mon, 16 Feb 2026 23:40:03 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260216_wallabag_one_year_later/Last year I wrote about switching my read-it-later service to Wallabag. A read-it-later service lets you save web pages and blog posts to a personal online repository so you can read them later, when you have the time. I’ve said this before. This type of service is valuable to me, because it lets me create my own little pond of information from the vast ocean that is the internet.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260213_make_many_backups/Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:36:31 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260213_make_many_backups/I almost lost all my data. Almost.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260209_what_is_language_anyway/Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:35:49 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260209_what_is_language_anyway/Monday 9 February 2026 This morning we walked along a beach and discussed A.I. and Language and that bit of news I read about how A.I. researchers don’t understand how these models work. Considering my wife and I aren’t programmers, and what we know about A.I. (or computing in general) doesn’t extend beyond using things like Gmail or Wordpress, or reinstalling the OS successfully (but only on the second or third attempt), our conversation didn’t get very far.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260208_back_to_ledger/Sun, 08 Feb 2026 12:52:38 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_260208_back_to_ledger/I remember reading about the story of a person called Kenge of the Mbuti people of Africa. When the anthropologist Turnbull took Kenge out of the forests and onto a vast, open plain for the first time, something interesting happened. Kenge pointed to a distant herd of grazing buffalo and asked Turnbull what type of insects they were. When Turnbull told him they were buffalo, Kenge thought it was a joke.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_251031_self_assesment_for_non-professionals/Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:53:12 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_251031_self_assesment_for_non-professionals/The majority of the artists in the Penciljam community are not professional artists, by which I mean - their profession does not involve creating art. While there are a decent number of professionals1 such as concept artists, illustrators, painters, comic book artists and so on, most of our group may be described as deeply passionate hobbyists or at least aspiring professionals. I think of it as a gradient. Some Passionate Hobbyists transition to aspiring professionals and some of these eventually become full time professionals.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_251017_practice_to_make_things/Fri, 17 Oct 2025 18:31:02 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_251017_practice_to_make_things/“How do you balance between practice and actually making stuff?” This question popped up on Penciljam’s Discord server. I almost missed it because it sounds rhetorical, but the more I think about it, I realise, the answer isn’t so simple. “Practice makes perfect” is too trite an aphorism. It is black and white in it’s assumption that perfection occurs at a specific point in time. I think perfection is an unachievable goal because every time I believe I have perfected something, the bar I previously set for myself… resets.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_251004_art_supply_vacillation/Sat, 04 Oct 2025 12:31:32 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_251004_art_supply_vacillation/I have this weird problem - I can’t decide on how much art material to carry when I go sketching. I enjoy experimenting when I go on sketch outings. I love trying out different types of art material and playing with drawing styles, so my drawing pouch has all the supplies I need to indulge myself. I use different types of pouches. Sometimes, I pick a small one and fill it with the basics.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250824_drawing_sculpture_at_map/Sun, 24 Aug 2025 20:48:11 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250824_drawing_sculpture_at_map/We jammed at the Museum of Art and Photography today. We come here about once every two months, and on each visit I try drawing with a new medium. I tried Brushpens, and a monochrome palette.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250819_moving_my_website_to_hugo/Tue, 19 Aug 2025 17:59:16 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250819_moving_my_website_to_hugo/Web development can be complex, and for people like me, WordPress hides all that gargantuan complexity behind a pretty U.I. There isn’t much more to do than log in and write. WordPress is convenient that way and I’ve used it for years. In the early 2000s one had to download source code as a zip file, unzip and upload it to the server and connect a database to it, cross one’s fingers and hope it worked.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_weekend_nonding/Sun, 10 Aug 2025 12:25:02 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_weekend_nonding/I have a couple of old computers sitting around, gathering dust, so I decided to do something with them over the weekend. KODI I’ve been curious about what these media servers like Plex and the rest were about. Besides, I have a bunch of old movies, on an HDD, completely sidelined by Netflix and Amazon Prime. So I installed Kodi and indexed the movies on the hard disk and wow!https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_attentional_farmers_markets/Thu, 24 Jul 2025 12:25:01 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_attentional_farmers_markets/In his book, The Siren’s Call, Chris Hayes proposes an idea he calls Attentional Farmer’s Markets. He suggests this as a means by which we may reclaim our diminishing attention in a world that attempts to constantly steal it. On Sunday mornings, I sketch with a group called Penciljam. We are a community that meets to draw on location, and have been doing this every week for a decade and a half.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250722_better_than_a_stack_of_sacks/Tue, 22 Jul 2025 12:25:01 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250722_better_than_a_stack_of_sacks/Greg Newman is collecting entries for the Emacs Carnival. This is my entry on why I prefer Emacs for writing. I don’t know if I imagined this or read it in a story. It’s about this guy who carries a drab, innocuous looking sack with him everywhere he goes. When he’s hungry, he reaches into his sack and pulls out a piping hot meal fit for a king. When he’s in danger, he pulls out magic weapons to defend himself with, and when he wants to charm the ladies, the sack offers up bouquets of flowers adorned with colourful butterflies.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_everything_in_emacs/Fri, 18 Jul 2025 12:25:01 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_everything_in_emacs/In the early 1990s, during my first year at art school, we were expected to take calligraphy classes as a prelude to hand lettering. This was around the time when mainstream print-publishing workflows were still catching up with Desktop Publishing (DTP) and my art school was still years away from updating their curriculum. We were expected to create typographic layouts by hand. So, on the first day of calligraphy class, I became a little anxious when I saw some of my classmates bring out sleek calligraphy pens.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250824_drawing_the_sanhitha_exhibit_at_ngma/Sun, 29 Jun 2025 21:03:30 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250824_drawing_the_sanhitha_exhibit_at_ngma/The National Gallery of Modern Art, one of our favourite locations for group drawing is currently hosting Air India’s extensive collection of artwork. These artwork apparently used to grace Air India’s lounges, offices and even aircraft. Apparently M.F Husain bartered paintings for being able to travel abroad. There is even a piece by Salvador Dali, an ashtray he designed for Air India. What caught my attention of course were the cartoons by Mario Miranda.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_drawing_at_sabha/Tue, 15 Apr 2025 12:25:01 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_drawing_at_sabha/On Sunday, we drew at Bengaluru’s newsest Heritage Space, Sabha. Sabha, the recently renovated heritage space in Ulsoor, Bengaluru, conducted an open house on Sunday. Penciljam was invited to be a part of the event, so about 60 of us arrived there with our sketchbooks. There were different types of musical performances, and I sat in one Baithak of Hindustani Classical Music performed by the sitartist Siddharth Garud accompanied on tabla by Kaushik Bhat.https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_adapting_to_gen_ai/Sat, 12 Apr 2025 12:25:01 +0530https://georgesupreeth.com/web/blog/blog_geo_250818_adapting_to_gen_ai/How I feel about Generative AI doesn’t matter. I may as well hurl toothpicks at elephants for all the good it will do. The market has spoken. Over the past 3 years, Generative AI has gradually upended the market for creative skills. Now illustration, films, writing, code and music can all be generated by AI in minutes, so it should come as no surprise that people from these industries don’t look kindly at Generative AI There has been considerable backlash against AI technologies by artists.