Our Bodies, Our Bikes: Part One

Ms. Elly Blue, femininst bicycle zinester and awesome small-press publisher, invited me to create the cover for her upcoming book, Our Bodies, Our Bikes. (Just a few days left to fund the project!)

We agreed that it would be inspired by the awesome tricks that bike dance groups like the Sprockettes and the Derailleurs perform.

Having a team of people engaged in the same pose was a great opportunity to allude to diversity of experiences in the book.

Not to mention the themes of interdependence and the importance of supporting each other.

Progress! But wait, is this looking to static? Too well-balanced? Do we need more dramatic tension?

I suggested a twist of Nude Descending a Staircase. Elly suggested a dose of Laocoön. Oh hey, says I, there's this neat French statue of Hercules wrestling a giant snake at the Portland Art Museum right now. Field trip!

Sketched while the baby was awake...

...and then sketched when the baby finally fell asleep.

With that inspiration, the bicycle acrobats are revisited.

Feather boa stands in for the snake, of course. Better! A future post will have the color version--stay tuned.

Baby Hands

Through a combination of innate reflexes and personal style, a baby's hands and arms can be very bold and expressive.

I haven't yet been able to capture the fleeting "jazz hands" reflex when our little peanut is startled, but I do have plenty of chances to draw how she drinks milk with her pinky up, as if sipping tea with royalty.

There is so much personality in those tightly-closed fists, too.

If it weren't for the chilly winter weather, I'd likely be sketching her tiny baby toes as well--but for now, warm socks are the priority. (A project for spring?)

Baby Face (Part Two)

As a new parent, there's a lot of data to gather about the tiny critter that's burst onto the scene. For the first weeks, I was keeping careful track of when she last ate, how many diapers she blasted through during the course of a day, etc in order to make sure all is good and healthy.

Thus, my pocket notebooks have become a strange medley of charts diagramming milk in/milk out, with elaborate baby doodles in the margins.

Not to mention the fact that, when struggling to stay alert for lengthy late-night feedings, sketching on any handy scrap of paper can keep my brain from shutting down entirely. (Sleep deprivation is a great way to loosen up the linework of one's sketches, as it turns out).

 

Whether it's studying her face as she nurses...

 

...or just trying to stay awake in the doctor's waiting room, I've been very grateful to have pen and paper on hand.

Baby Face (Part One)

I gave birth to a baby girl on Halloween morning, and was sketching her right from day one. (I actually packed my watercolor kit and a good squirrel mop brush in my hospital bag--laughable to see me pondering what brush is best for the occasion!--but have nonetheless only done pen sketches of her so far.)

Sketching helps me wrap my head around this momentous event. Who is this tiny human? What does she look like, how does she move?

A baby's face is such an odd thing--familiar in structure, yet with such different proportions than an adult face.

Simultaneously adorable and surreal, bizarre.

It it that it's rounder, taller, wider...? Still can't pin down the exact dynamics that makes a baby's face distinct.

But good job, evolution, on making baby faces absolutely fascinating.

Scribbles from the Past

We're doing some house-cleaning and rearranging of late, and as I go through notes from old illustration projects I'm finding some amusing memories in the mix. Scanning a handful to share here!

This was an illustration project for a paleontology exhibition at the San Bernardino County Museum. The early sketch here is just exploring the general look of brown with white highlights on parchment-toned paper. For some reason I'm totally charmed by this early doodle.

From the good old days when I was drawing a lot of fossilized rodent teeth under the microscope! I focused on projects like these for about two years as an undergraduate, and occasionally revisit that subject matter when researchers start knocking at the door. Something about the simplicity of this pencil sketch, with the grid marks helping me keep in all in scale and the light touch on the shading, makes me happy.

Another undergraduate doodle, again with the rodent teeth (this time it's the chewing surface of a tooth from a vole). Once the graphite draft gets all worked out, I'd do the final illustrations in ink on plastic film with a steel-nib pen dipped into a jar of ink, totally old-school. Each of the little wriggly lines on this scrap is me testing the pen after a fresh dip into the ink to make sure it's not going to leave a big ink blot . (I suspect that's why the partially finished drawing here was turned into a test-scrap--blob attack!)

None of these scraps of paper are terribly important, really; but it's sure fun to look back at them and remember the experience of building up to the final illustrations, scribble by scribble. 

Native Bees and Dance Flies

Some scribbles as I study pollinators that might go with the Wildflower Festival poster this year... * Algunos dibujos informales de mis investiciones sobre polinadores para el cartel del Wildflower Festival este año...

Pinus contorta

The wonderful folks at the Hoyt Arboretum looked up the location of their Pinus contorta specimens for me today. Nice to have the library of trees available in this town! * Que conveniente tener una bibliteca de arboles en nuestra cuidad! Los empleados del Hoyt Arboretum me dirigieron a las especiminas de Pinus contorta hoy.

Sketching Stroll

This trio watercolor sketches are from a walk we did with the "Ten Toe Express" group, who paired up with Muse Art + Design to inject an art theme into their normal neighborhood strolls. It was fun to be out with around 30 walkers, sketchers, and photographers, admiring the neighborhoods of SE Portland at an "artistic pace!"

Elfin Forest in Morro Bay

While visiting Grandma in San Luis Obispo, I biked out to the "Elfin Forest" to go sketching one bright sunny morning. These oaks, while also very old, are much more compact and slow-slung than the trees at the Los Osos Oak preserve I had sketched the day before.

I wanted to hop off the boardwalk and crawl into the snug, shady spaces underneath these lovely craggy trees and spend the day there, listening to the bumblebees and staring at the patterns of the branches...alas that my time in town was so short! But I did get to admire the lovely fractal patterns of the estuary before I biked back into town.

Los Osos Oaks

While visiting my grandmother earlier this month, I took a bike ride to the Los Osos Oaks State Natural Reserve. I'm already a fan of oak trees, but this particular spot simply knocked my socks off--gorgeous grizzled coast live oaks that are estimated to be around 800 years old, and have a ton of character and expression in their branches.

There were so many amazing shapes to explore that I quickly realized it would be good to fill my sketchbook with little thumbnail sketches, to catch as many snippets as possible while I wandered around. In the margins around each mini-sketch, I've got notes on wildlife--lizard behavior, transcriptions of unfamiliar birdsong, etc. (Click on the image to get a zoomed-in version.)

Navigating by the Roses

Ladd's Addition is a delightful neighborhood in Portland that has a complicated arrangement of streets and alley-ways. A colleague recently described the neighborhood as a "cluster-f**k," which seems a bit harsh. Sure, there are a lot of one-way streets and it's tricky to drive around in your car, but that means that it's a low-traffic neighborhood that is really safe for walking your dog or letting your kids bike to school.  I like it.

I will admit that, even as a slow-moving pedestrian with all the time in the world, I still do get disoriented in the neighborhood. One of the joyful things about summer, however, is that the four diamond-shaped rose gardens on the cardinal axis that radiates out from the central circle are in full and glorious bloom. If I find myself disoriented, I just need to look for a brilliant swath of pink petals, and it won't be long until I've figured out what corner of the neighborhood I've wandered into!

Thoughts on Waterfalls

I went on an Urban Sketchers adventure to the Ira Keller Fountain yesterday. This hidden park in the heart of downtown Portland has an astonishing set of fountains that mimic a rugged, rocky waterfall--it's really astonishing to behold.

As I sat there, trying to capture the movement of the water with my pen and watercolors, I could clearly remember a field trip I took when I was in junior high school. We were at some natural monument with a very tall waterfall, and it was impressive to stand at the base of it and look up towards the top of the falls. The roaring noise, the dynamic and shifting patterns of water and gravity, the fresh spray on your skin, the distinct temperature difference in this misty place. I had my little tourist-camera, but it was patently clear to me that there was very little point in trying to take pictures of a waterfall--how could a still picture even come close to capturing the amazement of being there, the overwhelming multi-sensory feel of it all?

With that memory in mind, I entered into this sketch wondering if I'd be totally thwarted at trying to capture the astonishing sound, motion, and texture of this monument to falling water. I tried studying the patterns of how the water behaved at different moments in its fall, and was amazed to see how different the dynamic was on all of these surfaces. Sometimes it flows smoothly and quietly over an edge and then gradually gets more turbulent (and therefore more white and frothy) as it falls. Sometimes it makes a graceful arc that's very regular. Sometimes it dives over the edge in distinct writhing ribbons of water that meld together further down.  Sometimes it's a crazy diagonal splatter, volleys of water-blotches fired out of a machine-gun. The variety was mind-boggling.

I look at this sketch now and I know that I didn't capture it perfectly, that it's just a shadow of the multi-sensory experience of being there in person. But, sitting there and doing the sketch gave me a chance to really look, to really think, about the shapes and patterns and angles and motion. I think that my junior-high self would agree with my current self that it was well worth the time to draw the picture. I may not have been able to capture it as gloriously as I wanted, but I got to spend time really looking at the scene, and that was well worth the adventure.  

kitty

Recently wrapped up a commission to illustrate some fossilized jaws of Smilodon gracilis. Sample of a preliminary sketch above, and detail from one of the finished plates below.

The preliminary sketches were done on the computer, but I inked the final drawing by hand with a steel-nib dip pen. It feels much more satisfying, and (though it seems counter-intuitive) I also feel like I have much better control with a tangible pen.

I did use the computer to do the final edits and touch-ups after the scientists gave their feedback, so the final product really is a hybrid of digital and traditional work.




While I was doing the ink work, I actually experimented with filming the process if stippling. I'll warn you that it's a very slow and undramatic way to work...but if you're curious, here's about a minute of dots falling into place. (And this is part of the reason that I respect well-done stippling so much...it can be so beautiful in its own right, and it sure takes a lot of patience and commitment to make the work happen!)

Letterforms

Nice two-hour workshop at the IPRC tonight with B.T. Livermore, talking about letterforms, sign-painting, different tools for hand-lettering, keeping stroke consistent, being inspired by the past.

Edited to add: One of the surprises of the class was when four of us students at the south end of the table discovered that we all hold our pens & pencils "wrong" in the same way--with the pen braced against the first knuckle of the ring finger, rather than against the middle finger. I've never met anyone else who does that with their pens, to my knowledge at least--though it's not a thing that often comes up in conversation, it could be more common than I know? Anyway, it was a surprise and a triumph to discover that we were a "gang" of holding-pens-wrong-folk, all sitting next to each other! (Gabi was the most awesomely rebellious, because she does it left-handed.) Anyone else out there hold their pencils funny?

Visiting Family

My brother and his family came to visit during the kid's spring break. Some quick doodles I did while we were all gathered in the kitchen, playing board games and reading books.

The younger nephew was really eager to pose when he saw that I was drawing folks; the older nephew was trying to focus on the board game, and only occasionally glanced over to let me keep drawing. I was amused by that dynamic.

Idea-Gathering for Wildflower Festival Posters

It sounds like the official Wildflower Festival posters are going to start appearing around the Eugene/Springfield area of Oregon this weekend! To celebrate, more preliminary sketches from that project--when we were still trying to decide what species of bird, and what species of butterfly, would work best. Ideas, measurements, data, doodles.

Some of those quick drawings of birds singing their hearts out are so funny to me. Makes me think of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, where the song sparrow bursts into a rousing chorus of "On Top of Spaghetti..."

4/22/12 Edited to add: Realizing folks may not have followed the link at the top to see the final poster in all its purple glory, will include that image here. Yay!