International Letter-Writing Month: A Zine

I’m kind of keeping up with a letter, or at least a card, every day in February. The recipient is almost random. This one’s for Richard, who has the sense of humor to appreciate it.

Zines are hard to photograph in their entirety…

Explaining a Cascading Metabolic Failure

Working on a drawing for a piece I’m writing… the trick is to be as clear as possible without being wordy. Not quite there…

A Cooperative Dove

While Pica was sketching yesterday at the Arboretum, I went on a little photo stroll, having packed both my macro lens and my long telephoto lens (an Olympus 75-300mm for micro four-thirds cameras). The macro lens is meant for Arboretum outings, with flowering shrubs everywhere, but I have always found the 75-300mm lens difficult to use, especially when photographing birds. The reach is there, but it is challenging to get sharp pictures.

I’ve resolved to practice more with this lens, and a mourning dove hanging around our backyard this afternoon gave me an opportunity. We often see one or two mourning doves in the backyard, not doing much other than pecking occasionally at the ground. I took a few photos, and was happy with the focus on several of them, including this one. I think the key is to have a fast shutter speed and small aperture — I settled on 1/800th of a second at f/8, with auto ISO. But even at f/8, there is not much depth of field to play with at this magnification, so one really has to nail the focus point (the eye and face is preferred).

Sketch Outing to Arboretum

We went to the Arboretum today. It was packed with people getting a quick walk in before the Superbowl, which we didn’t watch. I heard that the Seahawks have always been to the Superbowl the year a new pope is installed, which who knows, but here at least they were successful.

Dutton Hall

For my urban sketch today I walked over to campus this afternoon and settled in to sketch a tree and the north side of Dutton Hall. I colored the ink sketch at home with Neocolor II aquarelle crayons.

Mail Carrier Appreciation Day

I’ve been making a lot of zines lately, a folded piece of paper that is cut in the central portion to allow the “pages” to wrap into an eight-page booklet. Postcrossing is very good about reminding us about events that have to do with mail (for instance, February is International Letter Writing Month, which I’m following more or less), and I saw a notice about February 4th being Mail Carrier Appreciation Day. All these calendared days seem a bit arbitrary but never mind.

I quickly folded a zine up and made a little narrative about a letter on a journey, flying through the air, and thanking our new mail guy. (Mail carriers are under a tremendous amount of stress at the moment, which is easy to spot but they always seem to have a smile and a kind word, at least here.) This note was inserted into our mailbox today.

Central Park Stroll

For today’s urban sketch, I walked a few blocks down to Central Park in Davis and settled down in front of this interesting tree. This was sketched with ink and Neocolor II aquarelle crayons.

Rejuvenation

Several years ago Pica planted a pineapple guava in a bed in our backyard. But then a none-too-astute landscaper hired by our landlady came along and hacked it all the way to the ground in a fit of shrub trimming. Happily over the past year it has been growing back and it is now looking pretty happy. Here is a sketch of it from today done with Derwent Graphitint pencils.

Olive Trees

I rode my bike over to campus today in order to sit and draw the line of olive trees along Russell Boulevard. I’ve been illustrating the borders of my journal and wanted to try series of trees across the top of a spread.

While I was drawing, I looked up and saw two raptors, a turkey vulture next to a much larger soaring bird with a white head and tail: a bald eagle! This is a very unusual bird to see in Davis — in the lower part of the county at all, in fact — and I called Numenius to see if he could catch a glimpse of it from the house (yes, we keep a yard list). He couldn’t, but I made sure to report this eagle on e-bird.

Dinner Shallot

The smaller portion of this shallot made it into our dinner this evening, which was stir-fried green beans and mushrooms over rice. Sketched with Derwent Graphitint pencils.