When I was growing up, one of my fondest memories was my mom talking on our landline phone, a pencil dangling from her hand. My sister and I were home-schooled, so when my mom was on a call, it meant we could sneak a few minutes of playing with a toy or fooling around.
My mom is also a wonderful artist. Her first bachelor’s was in textiles, she’s an avid painter and sketcher, and she loves doodling when she talks to people. My sister and I used to fight like crazy over who got to keep her work, whether a finished oil painting or a cartoon girl plastered boldly over old printer paper.
As I grew older, I picked up this habit myself. I would sketch delicate designs in blue pens over my notebooks in class. Endless flowers filled the margins of arXiv pdf’s. I practiced shadows and proportions by drawing pens, students, and professors.
A lot of the practice that took me from infantile sketches to professional-grade work (I’m now an actual artist) occurred during astrophysics research meetings, extended phone calls with family, and law school.
So it deeply saddens me that the pandemic killed it. With everything moving online, there are a lot more meetings and conversations, many of which are long-winded and social. It’s the only…
