Roundup Reboot

Ferdi Z.’s Drawings Newsletter — Issue 012, August 2021

Published in

Ferdi’s Drawings

10 min readAug 19, 2021

You may have noticed that we skipped issue 11 of this roundup newsletter, here at Medium. Well it’s still online at my Revue archive. Issue 11 essentially just announces that I had paused this drawings roundup newsletter. And with Issue 12, this issue, I’m announcing the drawings roundup rebooted as a Medium publication, published here at medium.com/ferdis-drawings.

It’s been a few months since I last did a roundup back in June so this issue has 16 drawings, a bit more than my previous usual three…

The Drawings

Magical Tools of Problem Solving

As the old joke goes,

“You only need two tools in life, duct tape and WD-40. If it’s not stuck and it’s supposed to be, use Duct Tape. If it’s stuck and it’s not supposed to be, use WD-40.”

Fun as it may be though, not all life’s problems can be solved with duct-tape & water-based lubricant. Nevertheless it is useful to have both around, because you must admit still so many problems can be solved with them. They’re handy, almost magical even.

This drawing is also notable because at the time it was my first Pixelfed post in over two months (since late June), and my seventh Pixelfed post in all of 2021. Before 2021, the last time I posted to Pixelfed was in 2019. I don’t know if I’ll continue posting to Pixelfed but we’ll see.

not-Cubism

Ello | Instagram | Twitter | Tumblr

Aka. “Fleamarket-class faux-Mondrian”. As I described it at Ello, “Instead of just ‘sitting there’, I decided to doodle a bunch of boxes just now… somewhat meditatively.”

This one was drawn after the WD-40 x Duct Tape drawing, but it’s not as significant as that one, in my personal opinion. And so I’m putting this as the 2nd drawing.

Burden of Messages

Drawn in about five hours on-and-off, from initial idea to published Instagram post. I had aimed to make this drawing as low-effort as possible while still looking more than just drawn off-hand.

Sometimes we feel pressured by a message, pressured to respond. As if the burden of the whole world was on our shoulders. But sometimes responding to the message, replying to the message, does nothing to relieve the burden. And yet the messages keep coming…

Stab (sketch-study)

Ello | Instagram | Twitter | Diaspora | Mastodon

Wanted to try drawing a knife as it was being stabbed into my face. Not exactly successful, but I think it kinda-sorta looked the way I’d wanted. I’ll do better next time.

This drawing had gotten so few interaction & feedback when I posted it on Instagram (zero interactions, no comments no likes no reshares at all, in the 1st 24-hours) that I thought I was being shadow-banned by Instagram. Heh. 😏

Butting Minds

Ello | Instagram | Twitter | Diaspora | Mastodon

I redrafted this twice and I still didn’t like how it came out. So much so I published this on Instagram without any description, not even a title. I still want to pursue the topic though. The clashing of hard-headed minds. How frustrating it is to just not be able to have a meeting of minds.

Button Pusher

Instagram | Ello (1) | Ello (2) | Twitter

This is just a single hand pushing a single button, but previously I had been thinking of (quote) “An army of button pushers, pushing everyone’s buttons.” Rows and rows of button pushers, seemingly going on & on to infinity.

The infinite Button Pushers (plural) will have to wait for next time. For now though, Button Pusher (singular).

Rabbit Hole Abstract

Another low-effort drawing that I made to unwind & have something published. Was thinking of drawing a ‘rabbit hole’, like the kind Alice fell into on her way to Wonder Land. I liked drawing this though, it felt meditative. I also liked how it turned out. A few readers on Ello & Instagram seemed to like it, too.

Bearded-Face Inking Study

July 12, 2021. Done with only one brush, one color, and one layer. And when I erase lines instead of using an eraser tool I used the erasing color. This experiment made me notice that I do wish for a shortcut key in Autodesk Sketchbook for switching between the current (normal) color and the default invisible color. It would be useful I think. Also painting in “line-art style” like this was fun, I remember feeling at the time.

No Viral Posts

Instagram | Ello | Twitter

Initially drawn for Instagram because I grew unnerved by the warning label Instagram kept affixing into any pictures or posts, including Instagram Stories posts, that are detected by Instagram’s algorithms as “Covid-19 related”, regardless whether or not it had Covid-19 in the caption or as one of the hashtags.

I’m not protesting the practice, but I will say that it was jarring to me because each time this happens I would get a notification on my phone from my Instagram app. To the point where it felt as if Instagram is telling me, “No viral posts!” That said though, this virus drawing didn’t get a warning from Instagram when I posted it.

I later reused this drawing in Ello when I wrote a rant of sorts when daily new active cases in Jakarta hit 38,000 in July.

Beds & O2 Bottles

I was inspired by Covid-19 discourse around June & July regarding medical oxygen shortage and bed-occupancy rate in India and other countries to draw beds & oxygen tanks as a drawing subject. The subject became even more poignant to me as oxygen & bed shortages also hit Indonesia mid-July as daily confirmed cases went past 54,000.

Nonetheless this drawing remains a sketch though, per time of publishing. May (or may not) finish the sketch some other time.

Bleeding-Heart Romantic (sketch)

Ello | Twitter

I was thinking of representing ‘romanticism’ by portraying a balcony restaurant with a view of the sea (Mediterranean sea, perhaps) And the ‘bleeding heart’ I would portray as a superimposed heart literally stabbed & bleeding.

Still in this sketch form by the time I posted it to Ello and Twitter. Didn’t bother to post it to Instagram. I still want to develop it into a full drawing though. And I will…

Abstract Eye

I had initially wanted to draw a purely abstract, unidentifiably-shaped drawing, but it eventually became an eye and I just went with it. I like how it turned out though. Even if I have done like a hundred eye drawings by now…

Luggage

Instagram | Ello | Twitter | Diaspora | Mastodon

Was thinking of mental baggage, social baggage, discourse baggage, and all sorts of virtual & physical baggage when I drew this one. It was a quickie, but I liked how it turned out.

PPE Frustrations (sketch)

Ello | Instagram | Diaspora | Mastodon | Tumblr

Another concept inspired by Covid-19. This one inspired by PPE shortages: surgical masks, gloves, eye protection and hair covering. I initially just wanted to arrange the PPE items into a frustrated pose, but then I notice that the pose also somewhat resembled that old ‘white monkey alien / persian cat room guardian’ meme pose…

Toppled Statue

Twitter | Instagram | Diaspora | Mastodon | Ello

Joan Cornella is well known for his provocative, borderline morbid & ‘deceivingly naive’ drawing style. I remember when he published his drawing on Twitter it was at the height of the Black Lives Matter statue-toppling trend in Europe. It kind of inspired me to topple Joan’s statue for myself…

National Monument

Drawn ‘quickly & casually’ on the 494th birthday of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia and my birth-city. It portrays the Monumen Nasional, more commonly known by its name-as-abbreviation, Monas.

Monumen Nasional is literally National Monument when translated to English. I had always found it kind of funny-in-a-good-way from when I was a little kid.

Miscellaneous tidbits

Meta & Administrativa

So the Drawings Roundup Newsletter lives on. Quite a mouthful for a name, isn’t it…

I won’t be deleting the (quote-unquote) ‘old’ archives though at my Revue account, and hopefully I can copy over most of what I’ve published there over here to Medium, before it disappears or disaster strikes or something.

Going forward I’ll be posting my roundups to this Medium publication. I’m planning on doing ten (10) drawings per month instead of three per week. I don’t know if I’ll make 10 by the end of August but I’m hoping to. I’ve only done two so far… 😅 I’ll also be publishing one roundup per month, instead of one per week.

And unfortunately this Medium publication is not an email newsletter; you can’t subscribe to it via email and have a copy sent to your email inbox. You can however ‘Follow’ this publication if you have a Medium account, and you can also go to your Medium settings to receive an email alert whenever I post a new issue here. This publication will remain open though, meaning you won’t need a Medium account to access it.

Maybe I’ll consider mirroring these roundups someday to SubStack (which has online comments unlike Revue), and maybe I’ll mirror them — and individual drawings — to my mind-Dumpster blog at WordPress dot Com. But for now I’m just focusing on regrouping my efforts to this Medium publication, and to get back into a regular drawing rhythm again.

Web-links to news, essays, webcomics etc.

Why It Breaks Your Brain to Take a Compliment — New comic by Matthew Inman aka. The Oatmeal, Aug. 6th. Matthew is making new Web-comics, yay!
Lottie files (lottiefiles.com) — Lottie is an open source animation file format that’s tiny, high quality, interactive, and can be manipulated at runtime. The top 500 apps on the Apple App store now use Lottie to engage users and enhance conversions. I am intrigued by this open source vector animation file format. And I got the link for lottiefiles.com from an Instagram Stories advertisement, of all things. I got the ad on August 14th, which is only four days ago at time of writing. Note to self: learn more about Lottie files.
Blog post at the mind-Dumpster thinking about Afghanistan, Aug. 2021 — I actually wrote & published a new blog post, yay! First blog post a month, and third since January. (No, the ‘Ping’ post doesn’t count.) And no I do not make light of the humanitarian crisis currently unfolding in Afghanistan as we speak. But I do have some hot, spicy takes though. And by ghod if I can’t publish them on my personal blog then where can I post them, right? Right..?
Project Bluesky, Twitter’s decentralized social network project, finally has a leader — The Verge, Aug. 16th. Bluesky, the Twitter-funded effort to create a decentralized social network standard, has finally found a project lead — the creator of Happening, Jay Graber. Bluesky and Graber have also begun hiring for the project’s first developers, meaning the slowly gestating project might finally become a bit less “blue sky” and a bit more real.

My socials etc.:

Twitter: @f_fz
Instagram: @ferdiz_draw
Ello: ello.co/FerdiZ
Mastodon: @FerdiZ@mastodon.cloud
Diaspora: joindiaspora.com/u/ffz
Medium: ferdifz.medium.com
Ferdi’s Drawings roundup at Medium: medium.com/ferdis-drawings
Ferdi’s Drawings roundup at Revue (‘defunct’): getrevue.co/profile/ ferdiz_draw/
Tumblr blog: ferdifz.tumblr.com
Personal WordPress.com blog: minddumpster.wordpress.com

If you’re reading this on the Web, please consider sending me feedback by commenting here on Medium. Alternatively you can also hit me up at my socials. Feedback & constructive criticism really helps and would really encourage me, and it would help me grow my editorial & current-affairs drawings & illustration skills to get feedback.

Thank you for reading. 🙏