I had a fun project that I finished today.  A few months ago, I had a custom folding palette made for me by Mr. Michael Balsley of Turtlewood Palettes.  The palette is absolutely beautiful and functions great.  The only thing that was missing was a latch that could keep the folding palette from closing in on itself.  I was struggling to try and figure out the best way to attach a little latch to the back of the palette.
  Today, I was watching an episode of Classic Woodworking and came across a technique that might work on my palette project.  The episode was about making shaker-style boxes and involved using small copper tacks to secure certain parts of the box.  A lightbulb went off and I  realized that I could do this with my palette.
 Previously, I had considered using really small screws to secure the latch, but then the problem is that the screw would go through the other side and I'd have to grind the point off.  The technique that was used on the shaker boxes was to hammer a small tack through and have a piece of steel on the other side to flatten any point that would emerge as you hammered it.
  I used some very small tacks that I had from a furniture restoration project and it worked great.  It showed me that the best methods for my projects might come from unexpected sources.  So I always have my eyes and ears open to see if I can cross-pollinate techniques.

  So many pearls of wisdom in this talk.  Particularly his advice on learning by copying from photographs: "I would never recommend anybody work from a photograph.  Ever, just don't do it ever."  On that point, there's a huge percentage of the viewing public that believes a representational painting should look like a photograph; it's a big problem in the world of representational art, but that's a topic for another blog post..

  I might have shared a link to this video years ago, but it's worth sharing again.  This art of Bunraku has a lot of parallels with academic painting and I'm sure it will appeal to my blog readers.  I believe everything is really interconnected (ecology) and by studying one thing then it will reveal all things.