Issue 0006

Written By G C
From the Editor

It's been A Month™. Hard to believe that we are now into the second half of 2025 and whilst there are many things that have already happened, there are still so many things that I feel I have not yet managed to accomplish yet. On top of that, the world continues to be - to put it EXTREMELY lightly it's barely there - less than ideal.

I've always known myself to be a pessimist, but pessimism does not mean hopelessness. It may be difficult to find the glimmer of hope when things are seemingly in disaster mode, but I do believe that we must at least try. Even if it's not for any tangible hope, at the very least if we can just continue on for one more day, one more hour, one more minute, then we can do something to change things.

Perhaps we can't make a huge change individually, but nonetheless change can still happen with the smallest thing or person. It's this thought that keeps me going -- that even if I can't affect any change immediately or even long term, that at least I can do something minuscule that might eventually snowball into something greater. Hopefully that is something that you, dear reader, can join with me in.

Art Fundamentals

A recent printing issue has reminded me of the importance of colour profiles. Most people are probably familiar with the main ones used nowadays, RGB (Red, Green, Blue) and CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key but I like to think it's blacK). There's a whole lot more involved in the printmaking process, but I'll try my best to break down here why sometimes your photo comes out looking all wonky-coloured from your printer.

You may recall from elementary school art class that red, yellow, and blue are known as primary colours, because most (paint) colours can be mixed using just these three colours: red + yellow = orange, yellow + blue = green, blue + red = purple, etc. But when we adjust the colour settings on our monitors or TVs, we change the red, green, and blue levels. AND YET. Our printers demand that there is not enough cyan, magenta, or yellow ink remaining to print our damn black-and-white essay that's due tomorrow.

So...they're all primaries? Actually, yes. They're just different colour models, where paint pigments (RYB) and our TVs and eyeballs (RGB) and printers (CMYK) are defined as additive or subtractive. In other words, the three primaries in RYB or RGB add up to white, whereas CMYK subtracts from (covers up) white. Again, this is not the precise scientific explanation, but it's good enough for our purposes.

Normally we don't need to care too much about this, especially for when we're viewing digital images that are created and then displayed in RGB to begin with. But when I try and go print my RGB Procreate painting with my inkjet, I sure have to start caring, and it's precisely because the way colours are displayed on a monitor are different than how those colours are mixed on paper. On top of that, we can have way more colours on a screen than we can have paint colours (sadly).

So we do a rough estimation when we print, and converting from RGB to CMYK before printing helps with making sure we get a result that's as close as possible to what we expect. In fact, you can see exactly how big a difference it makes from samples below. The first image is in RGB so they look pretty much exactly what you'd expect to see on your screen.

RGB colour space

(N.B. Hexadecimal colour codes are RGB, where digits 1-2 are Red, 3-4 are Green, and 5-6 are Blue, on a scale from 0 to 255, or more precisely, 0-9 + A-F. There are various games online if you want to have fun whilst learning -- just search for "hex colour game".)

CMYK colour space

For funsies, next time you flatten your cereal box to recycle it, look at it closely. You may notice on some of the flaps that there are registration marks, which are used to check whether the colours are aligned or not.

To make things even more complicated, file type matters when it comes to digital images. The above examples are both JPEGs, because PNGs (and GIFs) are fundamentally incompatible with colour profiles. This is because JPEG is built to be able to save a colour space, so you can tell it that you're using either RGB or CMYK. But PNGs do not store this info.

Some online print services don't even let you upload PNG files for that matter, such as INPRNT (which I have some prints available on, if you're interested). Most of the print-on-demand ones will likely still allow it though, such as TeePublic (which I also have some merch available on, if you prefer my doodle designs), but the conversion may be a lot less accurate. Since INPRNT specializes in art prints where it's pretty damn important that the colour matches what you'd expect, they reduce the likelihood of discrepancies by making sure they know exactly what colour space the image is using. On the other hand, print-on-demand services also have to consider specialized print methods depending on product types on top of that, so they're more likely to be forgiving of colour discrepancies in order to streamline their processes.

tl;dr I screwed up, used RGB instead of CMYK and PNG instead of JPEG, and now have about 260 unusable business cards. 🙃

Books and Reads

Recently Finished

📗 No Plot? No Problem!: A Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days - Chris Baty

Putting aside the debacle of the organization known as National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which is now defunct anyway, the movement of dedicating a month to start and finish an entire novel is something that continues on. I picked this up years ago as a treat for myself when I had to go out for a stressful occasion, but never got around to finishing it. Like with my art, I have several writing WIPs that have not been touched in ages, but I do hope someday to eventually get around to finishing at least one of them. This book at least did have some seemingly helpful tips that might come in handy for if/when I do decide to properly dedicate some time to writing.

📗 Hungry Ghost - Victoria Ying 5/5

I've followed this artist on social media for a long time now, and this graphic novel of hers has been on my wishlist since it was published. Unfortunately it's been tricky to acquire because it's not distributed in the UK, and whilst in Canada I was determined to find it. It was tricky, but I got it! And though it was extremely tough for me to read, it did not disappoint. Beautiful artwork of course, and what an emotional gut-punch. The story is actually very personal to me, so I may do a separate full review of it at a later time, if I find the emotional energy to do so.

If you do want to check this out, please be aware of the content warnings.

Articles, Blogs, & Papers

Total Tangents

Podcasts

Normally this section would be long, but...considering I have been bedridden for almost 2 weeks and then travelling, I have sadly not had a chance to listen to many of my podcasts. However, you know the drill -- I will still rave about Ologies at the very least.

Coming from an Asian culture, seaweed has been a staple in my diet for my entire life. Little did I know how it's actually even more sustainable as a crop than lettuce, until I listened to the Aquaculture Ecology episode! Not to mention, if you are a seafood eater and have always been confused about the wild vs. farmed debate, you should absolutely listen to this. (Spoiler alert: as with most of science, the answer is "it depends".) And for even more about what the heck seaweed is (or isn't), the episode of Macrophycology is a good one to listen beforehand.

Maintenance Phase is a podcast that was recommended to be by my friend Rosie (whose blog you should check out!) and I subsequently binged (pun intended) the entire thing shortly after. The latest episode on Ultra-Processed Food was intriguing as always. Not to mention, the hosts have the best dynamic.

Videos

Thank You!
G C
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