Losing a Wacom and a Wolf

This installation of Black Wolf of the Glacier drawings should probably appear in black, a tone of mourning.
Since I last posted illustrations, I have lost the company of my generously-sized Intuos3 Wacom, the drawing tablet I used to complete all of my illustrations for Lucy's Dance. I never went as far as naming it, but its flat grey countenance had borne the tracing of some of my best current line drawings. It weathered my dropping it, tripping on its cord, and sullying it with foodstuffs enough that like the Velveteen Rabbit, it became real. Then a loose power cord did it in at last. and I watched its blue connection LED flicker away like a fairy, and yes, I did try clapping it back to life. When hope seemed distant, I also resorted to prying it open and looking inside, but it was no use.

My new wireless Intuos4 is pulling its slight weight. The smaller 8x5" surface doesn't feel restrictive, considering I draw primarily from my wrist; rather, it makes each movement more powerful by mapping a smaller space to my monitor. The on-tablet shortcut buttons with customized digital labels came as a delightful surprise.

But I can't quite forget the old model, which still sits in a quiet corner, awaiting possible repair as a backup. Like the wolf Romeo in pages 24-25, it is gone, but its absence is keenly felt.

20-21

 

I have always loved using insets. Deb Vanasse noted that that this illustration should mark the "emotional center" of the book, so I tried to achieve that closeness by showing the feeling of brushing one hand against a wolf's fur.

22-23

This illustration includes real content from a sign posted by the Alaska Department of Fish and game. Actual sign content was much longer and more discouraging, including the following bullets:

• Do not encroach on the wolf.
• If the wolf approaches you, yell and clap your hands to reinforce an appropriate distance between wolves and people.
• Do not let dogs play with the wolf and keep dogs on a leash.
• Do not feed the wolf.

Romeo's favorite pastimes seemed to involve provoking transgression of all but the last of these rules.

24-25

Maybe too many people clapped their hands at Romeo, or maybe not enough, and he vanished like a fairy. When you view these drawings, let your mind's eye supply what else is absent: the washy splotches of paint.

Black Wolf: Meadow vs. Thicket (9-17)

Here's what's happened in illustrations 1-8: 

We know that a Romeo the wolf enjoys roaming the forest, perching majestically on rocks, and breakfasting on small, furry animals. We know that a young girl and her dog live in the area and enjoy recreating on forest trails.

We've been here before. Remember Red Riding Hood? Peter? A trio of pigs? 

The suspense behind pages 9-17 rests on layer after layer of cautionary folklore about wolves. If wolves are at large, and if one owns a brick house, one stays inside and stops up one's chimney. Those brazen enough to hazard the woods alone might find themselves and their grandparents being freed from a canine esophagus by the business end of a woodsman's axe. And that's in the happy version of the story. Those old fairy tales didn't pull any punches.

I can still feel those anti-wolf instincts when I hear even the cheerful part of Tchaikovsky's theme to Peter and the Wolf.

But seasons change--stories, like layers of icy permafrost, melt and shift around. In 1906, the woods lit up. Gold prospectors carried dynamite into the Alaskan forest, and Jack London wrote White Fang, a novel about a semi-domesticated wolf/dog mix. The wolf part of White Fang was still feral, but he had an ungroomed charm, much like his Disney costar Ethan Hawke. The wolves and forest were beginning to win our sympathies as we began to dominate the woods. 

Cut to 2012. In Alaska, wolf populations are modeled statistically, and extensive lawsuits still contest whether we need to reduce wolf numbers by shooting wolves from planes and helicopters. So much for primeval mystique--Peter has a gun and GPS. The dark place that we used to fear is at the mercy of an equation that humans control. We have pierced that dense forest that has frightened us since Disney was a smear of charcoal on a cave wall, and somehow that reality is a bit scarier. Agoraphobia sets in.

Before Avatar or Fern Gully, there was Bambi. Bambi's mother called the forest the "thicket," a word that sounds like a small, helpless animal ducking for cover in the underbrush. And that's what it means. The thicket is a place of shelter and safety that should not be departed hastily. As much as I fear the music behind Peter and the Wolf, Tchaikovsky's darkest chords will never chill me more than the shrill horns, followed by the wide open quiet behind Bambi's mother's prophetic warning. 

"You must never rush out on the meadow. . . out there, we are unprotected."
Unprotected from what?

We are parked here on the fringe between the meadow and the thicket. That's where pages 9-17 take us. Is it safe here for either of us? For wolf, or dog, or human?

There's really only one way to find out. That way is to walk in circles with the wolf a few times and sniff its hindquarters. After thousands of years of evolution, technology, and reactive storytelling, at least some things really haven't changed that much.

DESIGN NOTE
I'm drawing in color here because I might want to change my lines to off-black before printing, and hue-shifting is easier if my lines have some color in them from the start. Also, it's more fun this way.

Romeo Alpha: The Layout Sketches

 

Long and low, a howl pierced the night.  (1)

In warm houses near the frozen lake, dogs perked their ears. A child hugged her dog’s neck as he whined at the window. “What’s wrong?” she asked. Again the wolf howled. The dog barked.  Woof!  Woof! “It’s all right,” the girl whispered. “I’m here.” His cries met only with silence, the wolf curled in the snow. His breath frosted his thick black fur as he slept alone in a sliver of moonlight. (2-3)

When dawn flooded the sky, the wolf stretched in front of a blue-streaked glacier. At a rustle from under the snow, he cocked his head.  With his big front paws he pounced and pounced until at last he caught a small vole for breakfast. (4-5) 

His hunger satisfied, the wolf warmed himself in the s­un on a big rock, an erratic left by the glacier. He waited and watched. Maybe this was the day another wolf would appear. A playmate. A friend. Or maybe a whole pack of wolves, like the one he’d roamed with when he was a pup. (6-7)*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   

At last, I've produced a few initial sketches for Black Wolf of the Glacier, a children's book immortalizing Romeo, the late errant wolf denizen of the Mendenhall Glacier area. I'm attempting to preserve Romeo's feral mystique without terrifying young readers. Romeo's character must toe (or paw?) the line between villain and champion.  As a note, many of these line drawings will be relatively simple to leave room for definition created by my watercolor shapes. When developing characters, however, restraining the urge to define every shape is challenging.  

Here's my current media recipe:

1. Layout sketch

2. Print to watercolor paper

3. Watercolor paint

4. Additional shading with colored pencil as neededI'm hoping the results for all will square up nicely with my sample (pages 4-5). This book has 30 pages; it's going to be a glacial journey.

 

Never Cry Wolf

Let's pretend that you're an unsuspecting pug-dog on a day trip near Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. Let's pretend that you throw caution to the wind and wander a little out of leash-radius without even wearing your hand-knit sweater. Before you know it, you find yourself snatched up in the jaws of a black wolf, carried out of rescue range, and suddenly acutely aware that you are shape and size of a meatloaf. What are your odds of survival?

Odds are pretty good, it turns out, if the wolf is Romeo--the main character of Black Wolf of the Glacier, a forthcoming book by Deb Vanasse. Now you see why I am back from my blogging hiatus.

Black Wolf will tell the true (if somewhat apocryphal) story of Romeo, a wolf who frequented the Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, Alaska. Romeo never appeared with a pack, but fraternized regularly with local and visiting dogs. He was known for approaching people and dogs without menace or interest in food, though he was often provoked and offered snacks. Neither fighter nor scavenger, Romeo was playful and nonchalant, as if the words "I am a wolf, etc.," hung in a footnote from a tiny asterisk above his huge, dusky head.

In spite of Romeo's casual demeanor, a black wolf who emerges in periodic cameos before the ampitheater of Mendenhall Glacier

carries some inevitable glamour. 
Who can resist a lone black wolf in front of a glacier?

Romeo's admirers speculated about his errant behavior. Some claim that Romeo lived in exile from his pack after losing a previous love, a living alternate ending to Shakespeare's play. Romeo reportedly earned his name* after making romantic overtures with the dog owned by Nick Jans, the writer/photographer who originally chronicled Romeo's story.

Or perhaps Romeo the wolf, like the Montague, wooed his enemy (in the rivalry of civilization/wilderness) and paid for it.

Romeo disappeared in 2009, and the prosecution of his suspected murderers has become one of Juneau's most publicized crime stories. Let's not get into that now, though. I have completed my first illustration / character study of Romeo, an action sequence that plays out his typical morning: sunrise, and a vole for breakfast.

I admit, I have never beheld a wolf devouring a vole. I naturally assumed that some blood was involved, so I painted a few globules on the snow. Perhaps I was a bit excessive,

but with good reason. My Black Wolf illustrations will take the form of paintings, and it was easier for me to remove blood from a painting than to add it, so I erred on the gorier side.

My gracious editor at the University of Alaska Press claimed no aesthetic reservations about showing some blood. Author Deb Vanasse questioned whether the vole would have had an opportunity to bleed. Wolf scat, after all, contains bones and fur, trappings of an unfinicky dining experience. Also, I've seen the way a dog can take down a large-ish pizza slice with some frantic working of jaws, especially if the dog thinks there's a chance the pizza will escape. Maybe pizza slices and voles, unlike pug dogs, get a pretty short ride. 

 


I have submitted the above revisions: one with carnivorous traces, and one with . . . well, it could just be the morning light on the glacier.

*Then again, the name Romeo all have been a pun on Alfa/Alpha Romeo. I don't know whether Nick Jans is into Italian luxury cars, but it seems unlikely.

Happy Earth Day

. . . or it will be on April 22. Recent business of life has crippled my blogging effort, but I enjoyed creating this commissioned sketch for Buffalo Exchange's Earth Day Dollar Sale benefiting the Humane Society. Is the squirrel eating the earth or protecting it? This is a question I often ask about myself.

box populi: outrageous infected tampon errors

Box Populi

In North Carolina (my new state of residence, along with denial), springtime apparently arrives in February. Much as I love sitting curled up at my corner desk, drawing aquarium life, and writing prolix, allusive posts, something calls me outside. It could be the Amtrak passenger cars that pass 100 feet from my doorstep, or the strange drumming group that meets every Sunday just far enough away to convince me that my life has the same soundtrack as the film Jumanji. Actually, the drummers are quite good.

Much as I love my snail fallacy project, another idea has been edging its way in. I have long wanted to make my blog and artwork more interpersonal, so I came up with this plan: once a week I will approach and draw thumbnails of four strangers. Before starting, I will ask each of them a question (a new one each week), and record the answer next to a portrait. I'm a bit like those Parisian buskers, except that instead of money, I ask for one semi-personal detail, and I do the asking in advance. Also, I don't draw on the spot. I have only ever gotten as far as noses in that respect, unless the model is paid.

Anyhow, I set out zestfully a couple of weeks ago to question people with a kind of Miranda July spirit about me (people just need to connect!, etc.). It was only after I had arrived at the Green Bean, a local cafe, and had downed half a coffee, that panic set in. I realized one thing: that I don't want to connect. Not really. I want to watch other people connect in a movie written and directed by Miranda July, and even that is sometimes too much awkwardness. Had I really just signed myself up to approach strangers—voluntarily? How would I even begin the conversation? I briefly considered blaming the question on a college sociology course. Those pesky professors, always trying to be, like, experimental in their assignments. 30-year-olds can still be students, right?

Some shaggy-haired people were taking ukeleles out of crates at the Green Bean, so I knew my time for audible conversation was limited. My question was: name something that you've memorized in your spare time (not for an assignment). Over the course of the night, my standard would shift a bit.

My first attempt was a perfect disaster. I never caught his name, which was probably my first mistake. He seemed paralyzed upon my approach, informing me in broken English that my question was very difficult. He then proceeded to stare at my kneecaps for a full two minutes while I fiddled with my voice recorder, which I never actually used successfully. After two minutes, I gently offered to come back later, and he nodded, then vanished as soon as my back was turned.

Fortunately, I had much better success with the remaining interviewees. One of them, Gary, turned out to be a computer programmer/ graphic designer, who drew me into conversations about an elaborate simulation of ancient Rome he had constructed for Princeton University . . . and about his ancestors. How he connected these to the Happy Birthday song, I don't quite recall.

My style, for the time, will remain minimalistic line drawings. I'm continuing my experiments with simplifying shapes and playing with line motion. This may be a fancy way of saying I'm drawing a comic. And the comic shall be called: Box Populi. I liked the name so much that I wrote several emails in poor French to an actual Frenchman from whom I commandeered a relevant Blogspot URL:

http://box-populi.blogspot.com/

Box Populi will be a quick read with large images. I will continue to cross-post images from Box Populi here, often with more discussion. Feel free to subscribe to either/both.

The snail drawings, some of which are for sale on Zazzle, make take another form of publication later. You will, of course, be the first to know. In order to merge my two projects, I tried interviewing snails, but either their answers are too zen for me to record, or they found my questions impertinent.