Too Many Words

 

5/11/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Here are a couple of walk-comics that I had made in early May before I discovered haiku comics. Looking at them now, they seem wordy compared to haiku: Could I have said the same thing with fewer words? The one below might have been a haiku . . . if expressed with a bit more verbal grace.

Funny how discovering one new thing makes me see everything I did before that in a different light.

5/12/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

A Pause in the River

6/3/24 Wedgwood neighborhood

After several days of hard rain and wind (enough to cause power outages, flooding and fallen trees in some areas), we got a break on Monday. Still, it was windy enough that when I got out of my car to sketch, a gust nearly took my little sketchbook out of my hand! I decided to sketch from inside my car instead. All of these were made from the same parking spot, one after the other.

Comparing the comics-like page above to the one-off sketch below, I’m pleased with the way the comics tell a more complete story of a sunny but blustery morning in the Wedgwood neighborhood, especially with the addition of the haiku. The one-off sketch is really no different in terms of content or style, but its story feels lacking.

5/20/24 Green Lake neighborhood

It’s much harder now to go back to making the one-offs that I used to do so regularly before – I feel compelled to look around and find one or two more sketches that could complete the story better. I think one definition of a creative breakthrough is when it’s no longer possible to go back to an old way of doing something because my thinking has changed in some fundamental way. I think the last time that happened was during Ian Roberts’ 30-day composition challenge a couple of years ago, which changed the way I see. The overall goal of my creative life is for things like this to happen, so I’m thrilled when it finally does!

Pandemic Nostalgia

6/1/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

During the pre-vax pandemic era, Greg and I walked almost daily within and around a four-by-ten-block neighborhood area. Because we rarely saw anyone walking those blocks, and even car traffic was light to nonexistent, it seemed like the safest route. A bonus were the traffic circles, where I could stand to sketch a safe distance from both pedestrians and cars. (In retrospect, our over-abundance of pandemic caution was ridiculous; many other areas would have been perfectly safe to walk, and passing other pedestrians on the sidewalk was hardly a risk in any case, but it was a reflection of my anxiety back then.)

After we were vaccinated, we widened our walking route, and my walk/sketch fitness program has widened it further. For quite a while, I avoided walking that overly familiar four-by-ten-block area just because I had felt I had literally sketched “everything” there.

Now when I occasionally walk that route again, it feels nostalgic. I’ll pass the same blossoming dogwood trees that delighted us in 2020, and I remember where kids had decorated the sidewalk with rocks painted with affirmations and greetings. There’s the lawn where we had seen a gopher’s movements near its hole (but not the gopher itself, though we waited quite a while for it to pop out). Although these memories are not related to the pandemic itself, I will forever associate them with 2020. Dogwoods, painted rocks and gophers were our daily touchstones of reality in a world that seemed unreal. 

Drink & Draw: It’s a Thing!

 

5/31/24 Project 9 Brewing Co. drink & draw with USk Seattle

Unlike other Urban Sketchers communities, especially in Europe and Asia, USk Seattle has never embraced the evening drink-and-draw as a sketching and socializing opportunity. Although we occasionally have lunch together after an outing (though usually we just chat and don’t sketch – a tradition I tried to change a while back, but I seemed to be the only one sketching!), and small groups often sketch together over coffee, evening pub gatherings just aren’t our thing. Or at least they haven’t been – but maybe they are, and we just haven’t tried it! Last week I decided to correct that, just to see how it would go.

Although I can drink and draw, I apparently can't drink and write haiku -- I had to do that part later in the evening after I got home!

Meeting at Project 9, the brew pub in my neighborhood where I’ve sketched with friends several times, we had a blast! With huge seating spaces, both indoors and out, and two food trucks on busy weekend nights, it’s an ideal, informal venue for groups when we don’t know how many will show up, and everyone drifts in at various times. On a warmish, sunny, Friday evening, the place was lively, yet it never felt over-crowded.

Who says drink & draws aren’t our thing? With all the encouraging comments I received afterwards, it definitely won’t be the last USk Seattle drink & draw, especially on the warm summer nights ahead. And we’ve encouraged all sketchers, not just the admins, to initiate drink & draws in their own neighborhoods by simply posting invitations in the Facebook group.

As someone commented on my Instagram post, there's nothing quite as happy as the sight of a bunch of sketchers with all their art supplies spread out, chatting and sketching together!

Bigleaf Maple and its Guests

 

5/31/24 Ravenna neighborhood

Last summer when I reported on Luma, the endangered cedar tree, I started learning about many other endangered trees in Seattle. In addition, by following several tree-related accounts on Instagram, I’ve learned about old trees that are not necessarily endangered but are fascinating in many ways. One that recently caught my attention was shown in a video by treeswithtaha (Taha Ebrahimi): a bigleaf maple that is one of the city’s widest street maples. Growing in the Ravenna neighborhood, it is distinctive for “hosting” at least two other trees growing from it!

What?? Trees growing from within another tree? I had to see (and sketch) them for myself. An easy mile-and-a-half walk from home, the residential area of 17^th Northeast and Northeast Ravenna Boulevard has many other mature trees, too. Last Friday morning the temperature was ideal for both walking and sketching, so I head out to see this very special bigleaf.

My daily-carry sketchbooks for a long time now have been only an Uglybook and an A6-size Hahnemühle. Instead of a comics page that fits so well on an A6-size spread, I intended to do more of a “portrait” of this special tree. I brought along an A5-size Hahnemühle sketchbook that would give me enough space to capture this grand old tree properly.

Indeed, even the A5-page spread was barely wide enough to show its huge trunk and the lower part of its canopy. Although this isn’t intended as a comics page, I guess I have had comics so much in my mind lately that I found myself making callouts for details in small boxes similar to my comics style.

Sketching this magnificent tree had multiple challenges. The biggest was that the entire trunk was in shade, so it was difficult to visually separate all those branches and mini trunks: Which belonged to which tree? I kept having to follow a single branch with my eyes to spots way over my head to see what kind of leaves were attached to it. Even as I sketched, I interrupted myself many times to walk around the bigleaf’s trunk to understand what was going on (which attracted the attention of a neighbor who asked if I was a tree surveyor).

Since everything was in darkness, and all the entwined trees were basically the same color, how could I draw them to show the “guests” apart from their “host”? Using my favorite secondary triad mixes, I made the guest trunks slightly warmer than their host (even though in reality they were all the same color) to separate them visually.

I saw what looked like two smaller maples growing out from the bigleaf’s trunk, one on each side, but Taha said they are one maple growing through the large maple’s trunk! Another attached tree had entirely different leaves, which Taha speculated was some kind of cherry plum. That one was so close to one of the guest maples that I couldn’t show it well as a separate tree, so that’s where the callouts became essential.

Barely fitting everything I wanted to show on the A5 spread, I could have used a much larger sketchbook – though I wouldn’t have, as it would have been too heavy and cumbersome to hold standing (and walking around) for more than an hour – much longer than I typically spend on any sketch.

Walking home, I felt such appreciation for marvelous legacy trees like this bigleaf and gratitude that it’s still standing on a residential street.

P.S. As much fun as I am having with comics in my Uglybooks, I have been missing my watercolor pencils dearly. This sketch gave me a good fix.

Trash Day

 

5/30/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood

My attempts at haiku comics so far have been loose interpretations of the poetic form, which I’m fine with. But because I’m also trying to draw the comics spontaneously on location, I had been frustrated with the difficulty of relating each haiku line with an image, which I saw as an ideal integration of the two forms.

Seeing the haiku comics exhibit at Push/Pull Gallery, I was liberated by the many different ways artists are integrating haiku with their comics. As with all comics, with or without haiku, the most effective writing avoids simply repeating with words what is already being expressed by the visual image. Without being redundant, words and images should support and augment each other. In addition, the haiku lines do not have to align directly with images (though I saw many examples in which this was done masterfully).

My brain still buzzing with inspiration the day after seeing the exhibit, I took a walk and captured the essence of trash day in Maple Leaf.

So far, my method is to sketch first, then write later. I am neither illustrating haiku, nor writing captions for sketches. It feels more like reflecting on the sketches I’ve made and then commenting on them – with as few words as possible.

Kiss Café Before Comics

5/29/24 Kiss Cafe and Push/Pull Gallery, Ballard neighborhood

As mentioned a few days ago, when Roy and I heard about the concept of “haiku comics,” our brains caught on fire! We happily went to see the show at Push/Pull Gallery with Kim, who had let us know about it. In addition to viewing and reading inspiring works bringing the two brief forms together – comics and haiku – we also discovered that Push/Pull is an intriguing little shop. Specializing in comics and zines, the Ballard shop carries many small and large editions of comic books and other publications. It also sells art supplies. As you can imagine, the three of us enjoyed both the viewing and the shopping.

Before seeing the exhibit, we met at Ballard Kiss Café for lunch (and dessert), where I started this diary comics page.