The Use of a Monocular

Not many birders use monoculars, for good reason. The three-dimensionality of binoculars gives a much better look at a bird and a telescope gives much better looks from afar.

But as I mentioned in Bird by Bird, a monocular is a great sketching tool, one I’ve used already quite a bit in my daily bird sketches.

I wondered who, though, mostly buys monoculars. Oh, said the extraordinarily attentive salesperson at that fantasy palace of consumerism, B&H, on Friday. Antiques people and truckers.

?

Antiques people so they can look through the cordons on the cordoned-off Chippendales; truckers, so they can read road signs without taking their eyes off the road.

I’ll be interested to see if I ever notice monocular around birders in the next few years. I may be alone.

Moss Graffiti

Offering new possibilities in organic letterforms. I had no idea one could make such a slurry.

Illustration Friday: Geeky

I finally got around to making my radio QSL card, prompted by the Illustration Friday theme of Geeky.

Not shown in great detail behind the antenna is the vegetable garden, now producing in great quantity, including the pink okra which I imagined doomed:

Flourishing

I spent the day in Berkeley yesterday, taking a class in off-hand pointed-pen flourishing. I am saturated in ink, doodles, fru-fru — yet there is something so beguiling in all this. I see the temptation. I resist it on the grounds of good sense and because of my aesthetic training — but it’s so SATISFYING...

Swoosh. Loop, press, release, curl, swoosh.

I have no idea what to do with this. I took the train down and back (no time for lunch, I missed the Berkeley International Food Festival Ron told me about), and returned in a train full of Giants fans who had witnessed the miracle of their team beating the Yankees for the second day in a row.

Swoosh. Loop. Press. Release. Curl. Yell. Loudly.

Anxious Week Ahead

I took a two-day workshop in Spencerian from Bill Kemp in March. I’ll be taking a flourishing class with him on Sunday in Berkeley. Easy enough to get the basics of, fiendish to master. I haven’t been practicing enough: there are no real shortcuts. Mornings are going to be interesting from here to Saturday evening…

QSLing

There is a tradition in ham radio to send out a card in confirmation of a contact with another ham, and to expect to receive one in return. This is called a QSL card. A week-and-a-half ago I received one out of the blue from a ham who I had a contact with in Oklahoma City, and this prompted me to put my own into production. The result is at left; the underlying image is a little watercolor I did three years ago looking west over the field next to our house towards the Vaca Mountains.

QSLing is definitely not as popular as it once was, the blame for such being put on the rise of the Internet, the cost of postage, or just the frenzy of modern life. But it’s a great tradition, motivated in part by the need to document contacts for various amateur radio awards. I’m now sending my own card to recent contacts. And just today, I received another QSL card out of the blue, this time from Pennsylvania — I’m all set with one to send in reply.

Artichoke Artist

Pica draws the artichoke for her series below.

Cynara: Historical Geography of an Artichoke

I sit and draw
the king of artichokes
I couldn’t eat
for pride—

consumed, now, by aphids
that are
herded by ants.
The mighty fall.

It can still maim, though:
the blood flows.
Flowed:
Al-Andalus,
honey and fruit and
artichokes
(and learning and
all that)—
fallen to greed
and stupid zeal, to
swine-eaters.

We don’t learn much.

I hear whispers
beyond the freeway and freights
of fountains, singing.
Past. Mint tea
and tiles and
lemon trees
that shaded
courtyards.

Gone.

The honeybees die
yet
without a thought
the artichoke

blooms.

Going To The Horses

Embedded in many sidewalks around Portland, Oregon are rings for tying up horses. The equine species no longer figuring much in Portland’s transportation plan, these rings were mostly forgotten until artist Scott Wayne Indiana tied a toy pony to a ring in the Pearl District. Thus was born the horse project — dozens of toy horses may now be found hitched up all over Portland.

Sketching Our Way Through Colorado

This trip had always been billed as one where you freeze. You have to get to the leks about an hour before the birds do, then sit there, quietly, while the weather does whatever it’s going to do. (I quickly learned to snag the motel bedspreads to wrap up in for this long wait, the famous Heure Bleue, the time of day when most deaths happen, when the edge of day and night is as sharp as the frost on the windshield, inside.)

And then you hear them, long before you can see anything. In the case of the greater prairie-chicken, here on the right, what you hear is a three-interval boom, not unlike the golden-crown sparrow’s in pitch, but very different in timbre. (Think descant recorder duo versus cello.)

The trick now is to get your hands to work well enough to wield a pen. I made a huge number of sketches in the dark, trying just to capture the essence of these birds. I’d try to work the sketches up quickly at breakfast before we had to saddle up again. You have to work fast and there’s no time for detail…

It was easiest for the greater sage-grouse, since they were so close to the car. We could hear their feet on the ground outside the window. We could hear the intake of air as they filled their sacs, knocking them together in an audible Dolly Parton parody. And as the sun grew closer to rising, we could see the filoplumes on each male’s head, rising and falling with the dance.

Our tripmates mostly had small digital cameras, which they wielded to greater or lesser success through scopes or binoculars. (Our ptarmigan victory salute, for instance, can be seen here ). Paul had a good digital SLR; I’ll look forward to seeing some of his shots. But to learn the bird, learn its lines, its feathers, its stance, its essence, I’d rather sketch: these birds are now etched into my head.