Nikola Tesla (1856–1943)
After he had started his own company, Tesla arrived at the office at noon. Immediately, his secretary would draw the blinds; Tesla worked best in the dark and would raise the blinds again only in the event of a lightning storm, which he liked to watch flashing above the cityscape from his black mohair sofa.
Tesla ate alone, and phoned in his instructions for the meal in advance. Upon arriving, he was shown to his regular table, where eighteen clean linen napkins would be stacked at his place. As he waited for his meal, he would polish the already gleaming silver and crystal with these squares of linen, gradually amassing a heap of discarded napkins on the table. And when his dishes arrived—served to him not by a waiter but by the maître d’hôtel himself—Tesla would mentally calculate their cubic contents before eating, a strange compulsion he had developed in his childhood and without which he could never enjoy his food.
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
“Of all things, I liked books best.”
― Nikola Tesla
“One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”
― Nikola Tesla
#dailyrituals #inktober #NikolaTesla @masoncurrey
Still unfinished.
I keep painting on my sketch pad and not watercolour paper, which means the paper warps when drying. Hence the face being slightly wobbly.
Sketching expression is important to me. I think this one succeeded. More often I miss the mark. Guess that is the price paid for sticking with art through thick and thin.
Like I said getting a good likeness of someone in a portrait is a very tenuous grasp...I start out well...looks like them...hey I captured that...just a little off...Oh Crap! Still, I keep trying.
Neurosurgery has made a real breakthrough in medicine. Latunde Odeku was the first Nigerian neurosurgeon trained in the United States and pioneered neurosurgery in Africa!
First time I draw a woman's face and I don't have the feeling the result it's an androgyny man. Can't say what's the difference, but this time it worked for me.
I am an art teacher with a master’s degree—trained by brilliant professors who believed that art could do more than decorate walls. I offer safe spaces for teenagers to grow—nourishing soil where their imaginations can take root.
And yet… I am assigned to hallway duty.
This is compulsory education, after all.
So I sit—posted like a sentinel—watching young lives stream past.
“Get to class,” I say with a smile and a nudge.
The system wants attendance; I’m hungry for presence.
Armed not with a whistle or clipboard, but with a pen—
my scribble’s soft insurgency.
The hallway stretches out like a geometric hymn.
Columns and corners chant structure.
Teenagers swirl past—half-formed galaxies of limbs and laughter—
their orbits chaotic, their gravity pulling time forward.
I begin to draw.
Not their tardiness, but their motion.
A shoulder. A blur of sneakers.
A tilted head chasing freedom.
Feet flickering like seconds.
Each mark a pulse.
Each smudge a breath.
My paper becomes a seismograph of seeing—
trembling gently through the mundane.
This isn’t about making art for a frame or a feed.
It’s about refusing to leak away in the fluorescent hum of obligation.
It’s a quiet mutiny against the clock.
I do this on long car rides, too (passenger side, mind you).
Letting the lines grow wild, jagged, and unapologetic.
Not for polish—
but for presence.
This is how I remember I’m still alive.
Still growing.
Still watching.
Still choosing to see.
Because sometimes mental health looks like
a piece of scrap paper,
a moving pen,
and the simple, sacred act of
marking time with wonder.
Inspired by the Fremen from Dune. Blizzard white and blue eyes on a face thats been in the grinding desert many years. Painted with Rebelle and Flame Painter
