Seeing an Old Friend

We attended a conversation this evening between Teju Cole and John Gossage on photography. Here are my notes.

Zhuzhing Up Your Handwriting

It’s World Sketchnote Week (it used to be a single day) and I attended a couple of sessions yesterday. One was by a Graphic Recording colleague, Heather Martinez, whose fame as a lettering artist is well known in our field and who has taught me in particular a great deal about different lettering styles, effective for writing at speed and at scale.

Her session yesterday was more about spicing up your sketchnoting lettering, which is a much smaller canvas. But what struck me was that she seemed to think that joining all the letters — American cursive — is faster than other methods.

I remember reading Tom Gourdie’s Improve Your Handwriting long ago — I think I was still in college — and it is long out of print, though digitized versions are available through the Internet Archive among other places. One thing I’ve always remembered is his assertion that any handwriting that loses legibility at speed is useless. (Gourdie was a master of Italic handwriting as evidenced in the image. It has gone the way of the dodo in the UK as well as most other places; this book was published in 1978, when there was still some hope of improving national handwriting among British schoolchildren.) But to do this some ligatures must be lost — it’s not faster to join up the letters when to do so makes an awkward and lengthy detour.

I found the image at right where he is excoriating the Palmer method as illegible — though few people under 80 use it anymore, and indeed few American (or British!) adults under the age of 50 do anything at all that could be called “cursive.” Sigh. Handwriting is a useful skill in order to retain information, much more effective than typing. Get off my lawn.

One Tree And A House

In the morning before heading to the memorial protest on Saturday, I sketched this house on A Street. As is my practice in winter, I colored it in with the watercolor crayons when I got home. Pica suggested I get an aubergine crayon; here I try it out in the shadows of the tree and the vegetation. I like the richness the color adds.

Escoda Ultimo

An Escoda travel brush arrived today. It’s the synthetic fiber Ultimo #12, a large round brush that can hold a crazy amount of water but also holds a very sharp point.

I am not averse to using waterbrushes like the Pentel Aquash, but I’m looking for a little more control. This brush seems to be able to handle all kinds of things I might throw at it. More anon.

Drawing Trees

I have, among other things, set as an intention this year to get better at drawing trees. My plan is to draw a tree a day. I feel like I’ve chosen a bad medium — pen is less versatile than pencil, for trees — but I’m going to keep going.

This tree was drawn a couple of days ago in the early morning fog. Here, the pen wasn’t a hindrance. I’ll be posting more as I go.

And I’m writing about drawing because the events in the world are almost too much to bear.

Sketching Between The Rain Showers

There have been a lot of showers these past several days which has made for interesting sketching outings. Yesterday I walked over to the city hall and completed my ink sketch of some tall trees and a portion of the building before heading back home. On the way back I stopped to photograph a mushroom and then noticed a bit of drizzle on the camera. I put it back in its case and then came the downpour. I scurried the block-and-a-half back home. Our weather station recorded a maximum rate of 4.27 inches of rain an hour during the downpour.

The sketch at left is from today and shows a view looking northwards across a playing field towards the Davis Senior Center. No dramatic downpour, but it did drizzle a bit on the page.

Revisiting Old Art Supplies

I do have a habit of accumulating art supplies, which at this point should probably be enumerated in my will. I broke out the Prismacolors this afternoon to do a slow, inexpert drawing of a persimmon we were left as a gift.

I’m much more of a sketcher than a drawer, but you can get so absorbed in the slow, painstaking process of layering different, contrasting colors onto Bristol board that it’s quite a meditation.

I might do more of this. I should also work on my sad watercolor skills. But this year I have another intention too: I want to get better at drawing trees.

Scoping out the Local Golf Course for a Christmas Bird Count

Tomorrow we’ll be participating in our local Xmas count, and we’ve been assigned the Wildhorse Golf Course (and residential streets).

Four Palms And A Gym

We’ve had the miracle of full days of sunshine yesterday and today, although it has been chilly: Pica was even able to wash and block her new jacket today. For my urban sketch yesterday I walked over to the bus circle near the student union on campus and sketched Hickey Gym and the palm trees in front of it. As is now my habit in winter, I colored the sketch once I got back home, testing out one of my newly added Neocolor II crayons, Sahara yellow, on the face of the gym.

The Artist's Way: Week 12

Much to my surprise I’m nearing the end of this twelve-week journey. (I thought it was 13 weeks, so that was like a bonus.) Here are my thoughts:

a) I am much less pissy about writing morning pages when I sketch in them too. Since hummingbirds are almost as present as cats during daylight hours, they get a lot of real estate in these pages.

b) I don’t care that she says these should be three pages of writing only. It takes me the best part of an hour to get through three pages of longhand drivel; at least I can make it more fun by drawing too.

c) Despite myself, I ALWAYS feel better if I’ve written my morning pages.

d) Artist’s dates are fun and I plan to continue having them.

e) I think I will be turning more to the Danny Gregory visual journal idea than morning pages per se, but without making them too precious.

I made a drawing yesterday about my journal ecosystem… missing even from the list of missing items are my knitting journal and my nature journal. I ought to redo this drawing to include them all.