Triangulating San Francisco

This week I’ve been taking a class at the San Francisco Center for the Book entitled “Mapping as a Creative Strategy”. The first half of the class was a look at traditions of mapping, including a field trip to the maritime library at the National Maritime Historical Park to look at many old maps of the California coast, North America, and San Francisco Bay. This latter half we’ve been working on our own projects. Most of the other students are San Francisco residents, and it was interesting for me to try to work with the perspective of being a visitor to the city, and not being intimately familiar with its neighborhoods.

I started out by making a list of the dozen places I’ve been to in San Francisco these past few years, and penciled these in on my street map. One of the themes that came up in discussion was making a map of places you’ve never been. So I came up with the idea of triangulating several of these places to wind up in spots I’ve never been before. The familiar landmarks were the San Francisco Center for the Book, the S.F. Public Library, the Maritime Library, and the Sutro Library (a bookish selection, to be sure). Finding the midpoints between these landmarks, I came up with a set of 4 new locations to go to.

Today I did my grand tour of the city. At each stop I made a sketch on bristol board. I started out north of the Civic Center, headed west to Haight and Lyon, circled Buena Vista Park to Roosevelt Way, then wound up at Noe and 20th. It was a long outing, but it was wonderful to explore the city this way!

Pen With Attitude

(The result of a conversation with a new pen in the afternoon)

The Pen With The Transparent Barrel

Saturday’s outing in Portland was the second such pen show I’ve ever been to. Unfortunately, the pen I’d like to find, though out of manufacture, I think is too plebeian to be at such an event. This was a $6 Pentalic fountain pen that had a transparent cylindrical barrel with a green ink converter inside. This pen had a wonderful nib. I discovered it in college, and went through several of them, either losing or breaking them in the end.

I did find a pretty nifty pen though at the show. This is a Sailor Super Script fountain pen. The nib of this pen is bent back at an angle, allowing one to make lines that are extra fine to bold depending upon what angle one holds the pen. I picked one up for $15—I think it is great for sketching. It too has a transparent barrel.

The Black Pen

As Numenius mentioned, we were in Portland this weekend. We found out after we’d booked tickets that the Portland Pen Show was going to be taking place while we were there. I’m not a pen collector, as such, not the kind that goes looking at the condition of bakelite through a lupe, but I always like a pen that works well.

This one called me from across the room. It was, it is, a Pen With Attitude. It was made in 1910 or thereabouts, hard rubber, but it was the nib that caught me by the jugular, a flexible italic. A contradiction in terms. A hybrid, a bastard.

I started to make lines with it. No, it said, not like that, like this. I want to do more loops, because I’m half copperplate. I felt wrenched by the power of this thing, unworthy to wield it, unable to stop.

Both Dale and the young Canadian red-haired man who was trying to sell me this pen with me were sort of in shock at what was going on. I’m afraid I was oblivious. I said anything, didn’t let the pen from my hand, kept caressing the paper with these lines from Somewhere Else.

I didn’t buy the pen. I have no business paying $125 for a pen, not when I have others in my drawers I hardly ever use. I went out for a cup of tea and came back, almost buying a lesser Levenger item.

But not.

The next day, after that damn thing had yakked at me all night, the insistent patter or scolding or seduction hollering or whispering, we went back.

I now own this pen. Or it owns me. I’ll let you know. Thanks to Dale and Susan (and Masha and Erik) for insisting I go back. I’d have regretted this one if I’d passed it up…

Self?

Me, today, in the garden with Charlie

Me, today, in the mirror. I don’t look like this at all. The face is too long.

Me, today, in the mirror again. I look my maternal grandmother and my father.

Blaugustine and crackskullbob are encouraging us all to do self-portraits, at least one a week for the next month.

Portrait

Every day
I draw
my left hand
the lines
get deeper
the knuckles
grow rounder
the nails
still strong
at forty-seven

Clutching at
illusion
foreshortened globs
my hand says
no hiding

The women
south of here
pay millions for
young faces
but you can’t
botox
a hand…

Paired journey:
one records
the other
is

Submitted for Illustration Friday’s theme: Portrait and prompted by Leslee’s musing on her age today

Skiving

“Skiving” is a word I learned, like so many others, my first term at boarding school in Derbyshire. It means to goof off but there’s more of an element of deception implicit in the term. Like you’re really getting away with a LOT.

This afternoon I skived off from my class in the most impromptu way to go to a baseball game at the newly renamed and surely to be renamed in the future ATT Park. Class itself was skiving off from chores at home which would otherwise have been skived off from by going to Whole Earth or gardening or going for a bike ride or a swim.

Skiving’s good thing to do. In general. And in specificity.

Tomorrow I’ll post a couple of boards I made at my class. What fun that was… [done, Monday May 15]

Doodling in the Morning

Danny Gregory recently did a lot of work on brown paper. I like the middle ground, the fact that this paper is really cheap (so not intimidating), and the fact that you have to find the mid-tone and work up and down from that.

I haven’t done this too successfully, here, but it was fun.

New Medium

Wanting to have a go with painting in a medium other than watercolor, the other day I went to the campus bookstore and picked up the cheapest acrylic set they had there. At left is the first acrylic painting I’ve ever done. The view is looking west from our house, towards Berryessa Gap.

Lakewood Rabbit

Here’s one of the sketches of the cooperative rabbit (and Federal employee) I saw Tuesday.