I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew

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If your car has to break down in the middle of the desert on a summer’s day someplace you don’t get any cell reception, a national park is a good place for it to happen. Instead of dying of dehydration or getting stranded for the weekend, you can get federal employees to make phone calls and bring you ice water. If you’re lucky, a kindly family of Dutch tourists will invite you to share their picnic lunch under the ramada.

A fast sketch of the Eldon Ruins

A fast sketch of the Eldon Ruins

After a productive week on retreat (15,000 words, 47 layout thumbnails, 5 blog posts, and 3 book reviews, and 1 workshop plus the side trip to the Grand Canyon), my husband instructed me not to come home too fast, so he could have a chance to clean up the evidence of his bachelor lifestyle before I arrived. I decided to check out the Eldon Pueblo before I left Flagstaff. It’s an extremely accessible site compared to a lot of Sinagua ruins, and fairly extensive, and also more pleasant to visit than many, since it’s in a grassy and wooded area rather than on a barren, treeless hill.

From there, I drove 50 miles to one of my favorite places on earth, Montezuma Well, which houses another lovely set of ruins. This is where my car stopped working. Eventually my car and I were towed to a garage, where I spent a cheerful 4 1/2 hours sitting outside (they didn’t have any AC!). Staying true to the spirit of retreat, the first thing I did was sketch my sad, broken down car, sitting in the parking lot, next to some agaves. You can also see the back end of a horse up on the hill.

 

The view from the Beaver Creek Auto Service Center

The view from the Beaver Creek Auto Service Center

Mainly, I just tried to stay hydrated and calm and trust that everything would be OK as I drew, read, and wrote. I was lucky to find a decent mechanic willing to put in the overtime to make sure I got home on a Friday afternoon! I was lucky to get an extra 5 1/2 hour adventure in the American southwest. It could have easily been much longer, and much more expensive.

 

Dimensionality: Still Life with Pachyderm

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It seems like some of my difficulties with perspective stem from the condition of strabismus exotropia, which I’ve had since childhood. In short, I have no depth perception. Drawing dimensionality can be a challenge, but modeling seems much easier. Taking a break from writing my last night on retreat, I decided to go 3D with Sculpey.

The fruits of my labors. The quarter is for scale. I didn't have a banana because I made pancakes out of them.

The fruits of my labors. The quarter is for scale. I didn’t have a real banana because I made pancakes out of them.

Since the protagonist of my graphic novel is so influenced by turn-of-the-century boys’ colonialist adventure novels (this week I’ve read The Son of Tarzan and King Solomon’s Mines) an elephant seemed like the obvious place to start.

Look at his little tail! And his little tusks!

Look at his little tail! And his little tusks!

Besides, elephants just make people happy. They’re so big! But they’re smart! And social!

The other side of the elephant

The other side of the elephant

My little tusker is a proud bull, bearing the magnificent ivory appendages of his people.

There are plusses and minuses to working in miniature. I tend to feel more comfortable with small detail, but it’s so much easier to screw up, particularly to screw up something you’ve already gotten right. His tail must have fallen down ten times before he went into the oven, but it’s standing up pretty well now.

The banana is a bit lumpy for my taste. Maybe it's organic or something. I learned how to coil pots like this when I was a little girl.

The banana is a bit lumpy for my taste. Maybe it’s organic or something. I learned how to coil pots like this when I was a little girl.

Once Tantor was finished, I felt the motivation to continue, but with something simpler, so I went for an apple, which quite naturally led to a pear and a banana. From there, it made sense to coil a little fruit bowl.

Still life with modeling medium

Still life with modeling medium

I’m not ashamed to say it: Kawaii! Squee! Little tiny things!

Well, I wrote 3500 words today, meaning I’ve drafted approximately half the story this week. I’d hoped to get further, but 15,000 words is not a bad output for 4 1/2 days’ work.

 

Here’s a Spectacular Hodgepodge of I Don’t Know What

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Finding myself without any pithy observations regarding art, writing, or the intersection between the two, allow me instead to offer a completely random assortment of recent-ish images.

Let's call it a snake in the grass

Let’s call it a snake in the grass: torn paper mosaic from 2013

I’m pleased that today was a good day, writing-wise. Got about 3500 words out on this graphic novel script, which is nothing to sneeze at, although I could have done a few thousand more words if I’d been stern with myself.

Have a pointy mandala why not?

Have a pointy mandala why not? This one puts me in mind of a compass rose. It’s quite skewed.

I also read and critiqued a friend’s essay and discussed it in what was essentially a one-woman workshop. As an old veteran of Iowa-style workshop (I’ve taken 10 of those suckers, 6 at the graduate level) I can offer pretty good feedback. Would that I could read my own writing the way I read others’.

October 2013

October 2013 I apparently cut out some weird looking pumpkins. The one in the center is by far the saddest jack-o-lantern I have ever created.

This bulletin board is one I didn’t like well enough to put in my original gallery of bulletin boards, but it’s OK. Eventually, I’ll get them all up. The quote, if you can’t read it, is from Percy Bysshe Shelly: “There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky.” Since I have space considerations, and my target audience is on average, 8 years old, I often use small segments of quotes. This one continues,  “which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!”

Stories Start with Characters

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Got 3000 words written today, and hope to get another 1000 before bed. Also finished reading Will Eisner’s Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, which is among the most delightful instructional manuals I’ve ever read. Eisner had an intricate understanding of not only drawing and writing, but of human psychology, and this last was effective to two ends: it allowed him to tell compelling stories about believable people (even if those people were caricatures of regular people, or more amazing than regular people), and it allowed him to tell those stories in such a way that readers remained interested in the work.

Eisner's "Contract" with the Reader

Eisner’s “Contract” with the Reader

Above is one of my favorite panels from this book, illustrating the contract with the reader: the artist may safely assume that the reader lives in the same reality and shares many of the same basic understandings of the world. This allows the art to work as a form of shorthand: i.e., you don’t need to explain to your reader that a coconut released from a tree will descend in the direction of the earth’s core, or that coconuts grow on trees, or that trees drop seeds.

This book has vast quantities of things to recommend it, and even if you’re not interested in drawing or writing or storytelling or human psychology, some of the reprints will certainly be worth your time: Eisner’s beautiful new ending to Franz Kafka’s bleak The Trial, and an example of “compression” by R. Sikoryak comprising Dante’s Inferno retold in 10 Bazooka Joe comics were my favorites.

If you’re here for my art, and particularly if you’re here for my dragons, never fear. I’ve got a couple of compelling characters for you right here:

Sophia Violetta Regalia, a heraldic dragon

Sophia Violetta Regalia, a heraldic dragon

Obviously, there need to be as many, if not more, girl dragons than boy dragons.

Pentalara, a serpentine dragon who could probably benefit from some orthodontia, if she could find an orthodontist willing to work on a dragon's mouth.

Pentalara, a serpentine dragon who could probably benefit from some orthodontia, if she could find an orthodontist willing to work on a dragon’s mouth.

These lovely ladies certain exude personality.

Side Trip to a Big Hole

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My traveling companion wanted to meet up with an old friend she hadn’t seen in 30 years. He works as a singing cowboy on the Grand Canyon Railroad and she is interviewing people about the intersection between art and culture. Normally, I wouldn’t spend that much time away from my desk on writing retreat, but this promised to be a special sojourn.

Singing cowboys for the win! The one on the right is my friend's friend, and he was very wonderful.

Singing cowboys for the win! The one on the right is my friend’s friend, and he was very wonderful.

My friend’s friend got us on the train for free, for which I was grateful. It’s a pricey experience, even at the lower levels of luxury, and the train takes about 3 times as long as it would to drive (135 minutes to go 65 miles). Since we were friends with the cowboy, we got some freebies and were able to hang out on the back of the caboose and watch the track peel away behind us, which I have wanted to do my entire life. (Yes, it was everything I envisioned.)

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No picture of the Grand Canyon does it justice, which basically makes my attempts to sketch it kind of futilely hilarious.

While my friend went off to reminisce about the old times and do some preliminary interviewing, I walked along the rim a bit and did a little writing and a lot of sketching. The problems with sketching the Grand Canyon are a) it’s huge, b) there’s a lot going on visually, and c) the shadows change every 15 seconds.

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Sorry about this reproduction. I very seriously considered bringing the scanner with me to Flagstaff. I would have used it! But I was afraid it would get hurt/broken.

The Grand Canyon is an impressionist’s fantasy. It’s all light and shadow. It was hard to render in pencil. When I did try to focus on the dark parts, the clouds kept moving, so the dark parts kept changing. I’m not dissatisfied with this attempt. If I had kept at it longer, I think it would have improved. The digital drawing tablet might have rendered better results, but the sun shone too brightly to really use the computer.

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The shadow knows…

After I got frustrated with the first sketch, I mailed some postcards to my nephews and sat down in a different place, thinking of focusing on a smaller section of the landscape. Before I started, I noticed that the tree above me cast some interesting shadows on the paper, and I decided to just draw the shadows, as an easier exercise. My sketch is not quite as awesome as the shadows were, plus you can see through to the next page. Oh, well.

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A few details

Then I decided to focus on one tiny canyon, which you can see in the middle, before getting distracted by some interesting trees. The trees are not bad for the time spent.

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Tiny details

Here I try a couple views of a squashed pine cone and a bit of pine that fell on the walkway. All in all, I’m really glad I went, but maybe I shouldn’t have walked so much. I could have gotten more accomplished.

Drawing about Writing

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Living alone, incursions into the writing space were few and far between, but with a family it can be hard to find those broad, uninterrupted swaths of time in which to think of nothing but art. For the last couple years, I’ve had to rely on writing retreats, some taken solo, and some taken with other like-minded artists. Today, I’m on retreat in Flagstaff, working on a new book, and it may not come as a surprise that I’ve decided to try my hand at the graphic novel medium.

Three useful texts

Three useful texts

Lacking the time or money for a low-res MFA in graphic storytelling, I’ve been reading voraciously on the subject. The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil has by far been the most useful resource on the subject, answering many questions about how to draft a script, and how words and images relate to one another in this format. Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics is massive and detailed, offering excellent advice for artists. I’m still working on the Will Eisner book; although I’ve not got very far into it, it definitely offers a very different perspective and set of advice. Eisner basically invented the modern graphic novel format.

The Stan Lee book is probably most useful to those who have already learned quite a bit about figure, landscape, and perspective, and just want to know how to translate that into drawing Marvel-style comics. I’m still looking for some old copies of the books that everyone seems to recommend for those wishing to learn more about figure drawing, which are any of the “Dynamic” drawing books written by Burne Hogarth. I could order them from Amazon, but I have $125 credit at a local used book chain, and I’m still hoping to find what I want there, since their stock always changes.

One useful piece of advice from the DC book involves the use of “suggested layout” sketches, normally visual notes from the writer to the artist. While I do intend to do my own penciling, the idea of generating storyboards seems a good way to communicate to myself (the artist) in the future, while visualizing the book to myself (the writer) in the present. These panel mockups may change, but presently, they correspond with the script, which is divided, per Dennis O’Neil’s advice, into pages and panels.

Suggested layouts corresponding to the script

Suggested layouts corresponding to the script

Comics tend to start on the recto, or right hand page. My pages are marked R and L so I can keep rector and verso (left hand page) straight and ensure that 2-page spreads or splash pages, and pages where deliberate mirroring (pages 9 and 10 above) will actually be printed facing one another.

Sort of a Sad Story

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It’s been a couple years, but this still gets me.

Everything is complicated.

The Dissertation Mandala: everything is complicated.

Just deleted an 800 word post, because it didn’t say what I meant it to say.

The story of this mandala, in short, is that I had a friend for 17 years, a close friend, a woman I considered one of my best friends. Although there was a parabolic pattern to her love for me, I always loved her. However, we fought with increasing tendency, until she eventually told me, in no uncertain terms, never to contact her again.

Of course, there’s more to the story than that, but the story of this mandala is that, maybe six months or a year after she broke my heart, she emailed to say that she still never wanted to talk to me again, but she did want to hire me to edit her Ph.d. thesis, and for various reasons, only one of which was money, I accepted.

It was a hard edit. The dissertation was hundreds of pages long, and its quality didn’t come close to her previous work that I had read throughout our friendship. It took a couple weeks to make a single pass on the manuscript. She seemed satisfied with what I’d done and paid me; I haven’t heard from her since, although I miss her often.

This mandala depicts the layers of emotion and complexity I felt while reading her work.

A Rainbow for the Dark

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If this onesie looks small to you, don't worry. Rainbird is available in a wide variety of sizes and on many products.

If this onesie looks small to you, don’t worry. Rainbird is available in a wide variety of sizes and on many products.

Throw off the burden of darkness and feast your eyes upon this updated version of my original design. Rainbird still believes you can make your own magic, but it’s more of a tacit message.

The thought still holds true, but the shirt seems better balanced without the text. Live and learn.

As pictured, this onesie cost $18.04. You can buy it here. You can also find it in kid and adult sizes all the way up to 3XL and on tote bags, pillows, phone cases, stickers, of course, and also paper. See all products here.

Time to Learn and Grow

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At least, it’s time to learn and grow if you’re a small child living in southern Arizona, where school gets out in May and starts up again as early as late July. I missed my beloved bulletin board, but we are reunited once again.

I feel like, if kids have to go back to public school, the lease I can do is instill in them a sense of magic and wonder to the process.

I feel like, if kids have to go back to public school, the least I can do is instill in them a sense of magic and wonder about the situation.

This one took 8 hours: 1.5 hours at school on Monday putting up the background and outlining the butterfly, 3 hours at home Tuesday night cutting out the letters, and 2.5 hours Tuesday creating the “spots” and putting all the pieces together. For whatever reason, the school was only stocking 3 colors of butcher paper, so my background choices were black, brown, and yellow. I typically save the black ones for Halloween (for added creepiness) and the winter holidays (to make the idea of lights pop out).

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These letter are hand cut (obviously). I just Googled “magic font” and this was one of the first ones that came up.

The quote came later that night, after I had settled on the butterfly. Typically, I pick a keyword, or a few keywords, and look for quotes that suit the idea, although sometimes I start with the quote or message and choose the illustration based on that. In this case, the keyword was “beginning.”

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I use a ruler to draw guidelines so the letters are all the same height, then sketch and cut freehand. However, when the same letter comes up more than once, I use the first as a rough template to ensure that they look more or less alike.

I had an apprentice for this piece, and she’s finally reaching the age where her help is, in fact, helpful. My stepdaughter wanted the bulletin board to feature school supplies, which I originally vetoed, since I had already settled on a butterfly, but then I realized that the butterfly could more easily have a school supply pattern on it. Originally I intended to just make a torn-paper mosaic, but this was much faster and more beautiful.

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My apprentice gets hands on.

In the past, she’s always wanted to help, which usually resulted in things taking four times as long, but she’s finally big enough to understand and follow directions. She applied the rubber cement to the paper and passed it over, which allowed me to assemble the collage more quickly. She also colored the tips of the pencils, applied the ovals to the crayons, suggested color and placement choices, and helped rip the paper.

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My apprentice feels a sense of accomplishment, and possibly wonder.

I also dropped and broke a stapler in this process, so now I owe the library a stapler. However, I did manage to unjam the one I broke last May, but we’re still down one stapler.

Update 7/31/14

I think I’m off the hook for the stapler.

Old School Dragons

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This is a photocopy of the original, of course.

This is a photocopy of the original, of course.

Totally forgot about these: my first-ever art commission! I think I made $25 for these 2 drawings in 1993. The situation was similar to the one with the Javelina Happi Coat: I had randomly shown a woman some of my sketches and she offered to pay me money to draw something she wanted drawn. I forget where the originals came from, but she specifically wanted these particular dragons, and I specifically wanted $25, so it worked out well.

A little worse for wear...

A little worse for wear…

Wonder what became of them. Do they still exist? I recall they were to be given as gifts. Did the recipient treasure them?

There will be some newer stuff this week, although my dark cloud of “at least it will be over Monday” has been extended to “at least it will be over Wednesday.” In reality, it’s one of those things that will never be over. But this phase will. I hope.  Anyway, my stepdaughter and I went to the elementary school and started a back-to-school bulletin board (my district goes back July 31, if you can believe it!). So there’s that.