15 September 06
A Fortnight-long Sketchcrawl
Going to Europe—including a wedding—with no camera raised a few eyebrows on both sides of the Atlantic. But sketching our way around Madrid, Segovia, from trains, from benches in three countries allowed both of us to connect with our surroundings in a different way than a digital camera would have.
For a start, anything’s fair game, subjects that would not have been “worth” photographing. My new shoes. The top of the head of the balding man in the seat in front of me on the plane. The half-drunk glass of sangria on a table, an old wooden door, Jennifer and Harald’s boots. Sure, we did sketch the grandiose—I did two sketches of the aqueduct in Segovia, for instance—but there is much pleasure to be had in tracing lines that outline the simple, the mundane.
Blogging for us grew out of our log book, a journal with pen and a few sketches about our dwelling-place. Sketching for me at least has in turn been influenced by blogging, in that I chose where to go in, say, London, in part by what sketching opportunities might be had.
(I should probably fess up at this point that I did shell out an enormous sum to go up the London Eye precisely for this reason, only to succumb to vertigo and possibly regret, but then I made up for it in far more prosaic settings along the South Bank, such as the kid who was bungee-trampolining with a grin on his face almost the size of the pods revolving slowly above and to his right.)
We had different trajectories, Numenius and I. We mostly sketched independently. And, at night, we’d look at each other’s books and get peeks into each other’s days and glimpse alternate universes and our courtship from years ago, a slowly unfolding narrative conducted at a slight remove of time and a considerable remove of space…
Try it, I urged a Canadian tourist whose brother-in-law had invited me over to their table across from the Museum of Garden History, having caught a glimpse of the fish-lampost I’d just rendered quickly in pen and ink. Your life will be changed.
She did, right away. She drew a sketch of me. It was rudimentary and she was embarrassed but I urged her on, because this is important.
I really do believe that.
[Postscript: Doc Rock’s comment reminds me that I should add a link to Danny Gregory’s site and urge readers who’d like to find out more about this kind of thing to see his books, Everyday Matters and Creative License. I certainly did end up telling quite a few people about Danny’s books while I was away.]
14 September 06
Ribena and Friends
As a remedy for my cold I was introduced to what was basically a Swedish version of Ribena. Not that I knew about Ribena before, but mixing this black current syrup in a cupful of hot water makes for a beverage that is very therapeutic, especially before bedtime. I looked for an equivalent yesterday in the Davis food coop, and came up with black cherry concentrate. It too is a success as a hot beverage!
13 September 06
Back on a Bike
We got back late last night, jetlagged and disoriented. There are many sketches to upload, still.
We somehow made it to work and we both rode our bikes. We were impressed with how many cyclists there were in London, not just the courier professionals but ordinary commuters.
My favorite? The Museum of Garden History, an oddball gem tucked in behind Lambeth Palace. I’ve never seen a dodo’s head before, for instance.
My own garden is in need of serious attention, but not tonight—if I were a cartoon my eyes would be x’s.
6 September 06
City Mouse-Country Mouse-City Mouse
I think our plan to recuperate from the rigors of a Madrid wedding by heading to our friends’ 150 year old farmhouse in rural Småland, Sweden, turned out to be wise. At least I’ve had a chance to recover from this cold probably picked up at Gatwick last week (where every variant of the common cold in the known universe passes through) and have had lots of therapeutic sketching sessions in garden, yard, and forest. Today we went on a little outing to Eksjö, famous because a large section of town still survives as all-timber wooden construction. Tomorrow we’ll be ensconsed deep in central London—are we ready for the change of pace?
4 September 06
There, and Here
There was Madrid. Growing fast, unrecognizable, a chaos of consumerism and people coming back from their month at the beach. There was the sun, the fans whipped out the minute any woman over fifty broke a light sweat. There was the metro, now pristine and on time. There was the queue—a queue! in Spain!—at the bus stop.
There was the wedding, chaotic again and multilingual, fans handed out to both men and women and which my goddaughter and I used to scoop up rosepetals. There were the foreigners in Madrid, the ones I grew up around, some still there though creaking now.
There was the new anti-smoking ordinance.
Here is the green. The red barns. The opulence of conifer forests broken by fields with huge granite boulders that would turn a plough into splinters. The wind and the draughts and the need to take your shoes off before going indoors, no matter what.
Here, finally, is some decent tea.
We are filling sketchbooks…
27 August 06
Packed and Ready
No kitchen sink, either. Some twenty-one hours after we leave the house we should be arriving in Madrid. My book to read on the plane is The Canterbury Tales, though part of me is just saying wake me up when the journey’s all over.
26 August 06
Hope's the Thing
A submission for the Illustrated Poem Marathon (thanks, Crack Skull Bob).
I did this one a few years back by freehand-tearing some construction paper which I then exposed, along with the calligraphy, on photo-emulsion for silkscreening.
The poem is Emily Dickinson’s.
25 August 06
Poor Pluto
At least for the time being, poor Pluto has been demoted from planethood, though not without controversy—there is evidently a large contingent of astronomers that believe that the vote a couple days ago at the International Astronomical Union was “hijacked”. I understand well the classification difficulties the astronomers are getting into, but the demotion is still a bit sad. I’ve never seen Pluto—it’s a 14th-magnitude speck that though well within reach of my 7” telescope, I think I would have to be in a lot better skies than in the soupy air of living at 45 feet elevation in the Sacramento Valley to do so. Planet or not, I’d still like to see that speck someday.
24 August 06
Fall Migration
We’ll be hitting Sweden at a good time. I’m not sure how many birds I’ll be able to identify without my Leica Duovids, which have gone off to be repaired (cracked right eyepice), but I’m taking a small pair of Minoltas that work just fine.
I’m hoping for common choughs outside the Alcázar in Segovia, plus perhaps a black redstart. Maybe long-tailed tits in El Pardo plus green woodpecker and hoopoe. And who knows what on the train to Segovia. The ever-elusive capercaillie will probably not need binoculars, however good or bad.
Travelling with hand-luggage only means severely restricting the number of books that come along, particularly bird books. I picke dup the Pocket Naturalist card of Birds of Britain today. No good for hoopoes or common choughs but some kind of reference for birds we might see on our travels.
23 August 06
Packing Light
This is going to be entertaining. We just came up with the challenge of getting everything I need for our upcoming two-week trip to Europe in one slightly largish day pack. Such a feat will certainly make the logistics a lot simpler, if it’s possible. The bottleneck (emptied of all liquids, of course) is flying through the UK, where we are currently allowed one carryon measuring 45×35 x 16 cm. I’ve got my art stuff figured out though—it all fits in my Pajaro field bag. And hey, my pack will be two pounds lighter because I won’t have a full water bottle, like I always would carry before.