a little sketchy

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

2012-02-06T18:49:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-15T19:07:00.000-08:00

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 needed I'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

2011-10-20T19:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

. . . 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

2011-03-05T14:06:00.001-08:00

Box Populi

2011-02-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

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.

Swan Story: The Narrative Fallacy

2011-02-12T06:38:00.000-08:00

It is common knowledge that if a suitor is well-liked by a girl's parents, the girl herself will most likely find him unsuitable. And absolutely: if an infant of mysterious origin appears on an orphanage/farmhouse doorstep and has qualities that set him apart from the other children, he/she is the offspring of royalty, and will one day reassume his/her rightful throne. So decrees the Law of Narrative Necessity.

I stole the term "Law of Narrative Necessity" from Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy/satire series, which frequently parodies popular myth. According to the L of NN, as soon as you recognize the story, you must play by its rules, be they comic, tragic, or Whedonesque tragicomic. Riding the story flow is all well in fiction, but it may be a fallacy when applied to the interpretation of everyday facts. I first encountered the narrative fallacy in Nassim Taleb's book, The Black Swan, which discusses the difficulty in predicting the influence of random events of great (often disastrous) impact, like, say, an movie starring Natalie Portman adopting the same title as one's bestselling book. Taleb claims that the world is relatively unpredictable, not tailored to familiar conventions like those found in tragic, bird-centered ballets.

But there's a reason that a archetypal ballet compels more people than a book about statistics. Certain constructs (Aristotle's mythos, Freytag's plot structure, Campbell's monomyth) have incumbent toeholds in the popular imagination, and very, very few people are immune to their allure. Narratives hand us a hiking stick and point us to a trail at the foot of a mountain. What lies off the path becomes irrelevant. Because this involves simplifying and focusing, stories can warp and exclude information, leading one to cherry-pick facts to suit the story (in the fiction world, this is called editing). Most people prefer the simpler, "good parts" version with an iconic plot. On the other hand, the postmodern reader may prefer stories with no admirable protagonist or clear plot structure, writing that candidly portrays the absurd idiosyncrasies of the dust bowl during the Great Depression, etc. But isn't it the storyteller's job to make some meaning from that dust? Add a little water and you've got a sandcastle. In the literary world, we choose the coherence level according to our tastes. But what about the world of real laws? Lawyers often weave argument and story together to engage juries. Yet this may require dishonest oversimplification, or deemphasis of ill-fitting evidence, unless it is done carefully.*

Stories undoubtedly shape our decisions. That said, are you party to any particular narrative structure? Natalie Portman's unfortunate Black Swan character lives out echoes of the macabre ballet, Swan Lake. I'd wager much of our behavior takes root in our favorite childhood narratives--movies memorized, books reread. Don't be surprised if you catch me plagiarizing scraps of The Princess Bride (I memorized the first five pages when I was twelve), The Phantom Tollbooth, or anything by Roald Dahl, literature that created my early affection for pirates and poachers. I have friends who, knowing full-well the corrupting power of such media, have attempted to shield their daughters from Disney princess culture with its pillow-bustle models for femininity, only to find that, chicken-pox like, it took root more powerfully at an older age. I'm not sure whether this princess appeal is enculturated, or is engineered to be so universally attractive that nothing can resist it, like certain nacho-flavored snacks.

My drawing illustrates Freyag's narrative plot structure, which is really very conveniently snail-shaped. But then, many things in the world are beginning to appear snail-shaped to me these days. Maybe it has something to do with that orphaned sail I found on my doorstep once upon a time.

Just for fun, here's a preliminary sketch containing other notes and doodling.

Sweet Buzz

2011-01-26T17:40:00.000-08:00

In lieu of illustrating another snail fallacy this past weekend, I drafted this hand-drawn logo for a friend's etsy-shop-in-progress. Said shop will sell eclectic, feathery, saloon-chic headpieces and accessories. The moment the shop goes live, I will hastily post a link for your shopping pleasure.

The name, however, has since come under some dispute with the proprietor's significant other for resembling "the name of about four NYC nightclubs in nineties." Personally, I'm a fan of the name, but I could be biased. I decided to post the drawing, perhaps prematurely, because I have developed a kind of twitch that sets in if I haven't posted anything for over ten days.

In between sessions of putzing around with chiaroscuro and striation, I admired the detail work of the woodblock engravings that illluminated Webster's early dictionaries. Thousands of such engravings have been whimsically arranged in Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities. This may be the most humbling collection of illustrative work I have ever encountered. I get exhausted just glancing at the detail work invested in etching a locomotive engine or wentletrap (a kind of shell) into soft boxwood, usually smaller than 1" square.

Many of the engravers went uncredited for their work, and were never really elevated to the status of artists. These drawings show me, more than anything, the etchers' devotion to collecting the world's miscellany, categorizing it, and storing it in labeled drawers. I'm guessing that these men probably did not tarry much in saloons with ladies who wore feathered headbands. I could be wrong.

Editor John Carrera felt besieged by minutiae while deciding how to arrange the images. "But my brain won't quit jumping around," complains the introduction. "In spite of the fact that an image of a hat on top of the Eiffel Tower can also be found on the flap of a Pop Tarts box, it all looks too much like the jumble of the world outside." Is it ironic to take up dictionary-editing to avoid that jumble?

I highly recommend Pictorial Webster's to artists and lovers of arcane and sundry knowledge. As an object alone, the thing fairly glistens.

The Mighty Pathetic

2011-01-18T20:11:00.000-08:00

The Pathetic Fallacy (PF) appears more often in literary textbooks than in philosophical ones. As a sometime fan of the gothic romantic period, I thought for a while that the PF dealt entirely with the weather, especially cases in which weather echoes the emotions of the protagonist. Lightening flashes around castle Dracula. A rainstorm gathers around Heathcliff and Catherine on the moor. The sky clamors with trumpets and heraldry during a quest for a Holy Grail (OK, Monty Python may be more romanticized than romantic).

THE PATHETIC FALLACY: the treatment of inanimate objects as though they had human feelings, thoughts, or sensations. Also known as the anthropomorphic fallacy. Here the word "pathetic" is "non-pejorative" (not disrespectful) and means something more like "empathetic," or "sympathetic."

In an argument, the PF might be used poetically to make nearby objects seem to agree with one's point. For instance, you ate your friend's chimichanga leftovers because the foil covering winked at you. That half chimichanga wanted to be eaten. Spandex might hug your attractive calves. The stapler might nod in agreement with your "Machiavelli in Hamlet" essay. Things in the world make sense if we can relate to them like people. For this reason, personification (of which the PF is a kind) can serve as a mnemonic, making abstract, faceless ideas easier to understand. My friend Aaron sees a person in the notes on guitar strings: Eddie Ate Dynamite. Good Bye Eddie (EADGBE).

The inaccuracy in the PF is that most inanimate objects don't actually have the human characteristics—no man called Eddie died during the stringing of your guitar, hopefully. The PF is unlikely to be a source of major confusion. And if confusion resulted, what would be the worst that could happen? Well, the mistake of supposing that objects have human ears might cause us to break out into an apostrophe, or an address to the object. Some of the best apostrophes begin with the word "O," as in "O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth"(Julius Caesar) and "O Manolo Blahniks, depart thy window" (Sex and the City). I have always enjoyed reading apostrophe, many of which can be found at the McSweeney's online series, Open Letters to Persons or Entities Unlikely to Respond. I believe McSweeney's publishes these letters as a public service, encouraging people to write down whatever they have to say to their bowling shoes or to the 12th Ave. park bench rather than uttering the speeches in public, which might distract police attention from people with actual drug problems. If apostrophe amuses you, you might check out the metafictional graphic novel series, Jack of Fables,† which features a character called Gary who is the Pathetic Fallacy personified. Apostrophe is Gary's friend, or, more precisely, it provides him with friends.

Apparently the definition of the Pathetic Fallacy goes beyond weather to accommodate the anthropomorphism of frosting, shopping carts, gymnasiums, and what have you, as long as the emotions transfer from person to thing. Here was my problem: my illustrations must involve snails. Snails fall somewhere in between people and things. Should the snail play the person here? Should I draw something in the world, clouds perhaps, enacting the emotions of a snail, or should the snail become the object that receives the human behavior? I went with the latter, in part because I'm a little fuzzy on the topic of snail emotions. I could have shown something being slow, I suppose, or afraid of salt. Wait. I think that's true of slugs. Anyway, I settled on ascribing human qualities to the shell, both literally and abstractly, for the shell has the quality of curiosity and observation, looking back at the looker. It has been staring at me for some time, and I'm starting to find it creepy. O, pardon my pejorative, thou piece of sketchwork, but look at someone else for while.

† Bonus: the covers to the Jack of Fables series are drawn by one of my favorite artists, James Jean.

The Moving Goalpost

2011-01-10T21:10:00.000-08:00

The Moving Goalpost fallacy seemed a fitting topic for the new year, when people's personal goalposts are sliding about like ice skaters. People are lacing up, some sailing around, triple-axeling; some colliding with things, toppling, getting up again, or just inching along with a white knuckle grip on the rink edge of aspiration.

Most personal goals are born ambitiously (I will no longer drink mimosas during bubble baths), then wobble a little, moving closer, allowing us to drink two mimosas, which is not as wicked as our usual five, but better than no mimosas at all (unreasonable!). The moving goalpost fallacy usually deals with the opposite: cases in which the rules tighten, goal post moves farther away, for the standard is reset by someone else who doesn't want that goal to be achieved.

The Moving Goalpost is not about building arguments, but about testing theories. It deals more with venturing into real-world testing of claims. How many times must a statement be tested before you'll believe? How large is a decent survey sample size? Do you require double blinds? Litmus tests? Fingerprints? Where is your goalpost?
Everybody's brain has a nightclub bouncer; if an idea doesn't meet his standards, he sends it out with the riffraff, or in with the riffraff, depending on the club/brain. Most bouncers have a standard ID check and once-over. That's one goalpost. But every bouncer has a blacklist, and every mind has ideas that it refuses to accept. No matter how much glitter eyeshadow the scientists wear while they're proving it ten times, your epistemological bouncer shakes his head.

In a classic example, opponents of evolutionary theory point to gaps in the fossil record, claiming that evolutionary lines don't really connect because the record is incomplete. "Show us one fossil of a part-fish, part frog, and we'll be satisfied," they cry. If that evolutionary gap is filled with a new fossil (see Tiktaalik the fishapod), deniers now point to the two new gaps on either side of the new specimen. This prospect of these endless, shrinking targets helped to inspire my snail shell dartboard. Standards of acceptance shrink so that sacred ideas don't have to.

In a classical example, Greek gods were masters of moving the goalpost in order to keep mortals from overstepping their bounds. The mortal Psyche discovered this the hard way while trying to please her divine mother-in-law, Aphrodite. First she had to prove her worthiness to by separating a giant stack of mixed rice into two colors. When that was over, however, she had to steal the wool of belligerent golden sheep. The next thing Psyche knew, she was running impossible errands to the underworld, and that seldom ends well. Probably, if Cupid hadn't interceded, Aphrodite would have asked Psyche to give up mimosas during bubble baths. These tasks were not really truth-seeking measures of character, but obstacles and punishment. Olympian society is not judged based on its rice separation skills. Aphrodite simply didn't like Psyche because the princess had been rumored to be better-looking than the goddess herself. At the bottom of an endless demand for testing is an emotional distaste for the claim itself, an ancient form of procrastinating acceptance of the truth.

To be fair, I think Aphrodite probably never planned to drag Psyche through all those tasks. Moving the goalpost is seldom comfortable for standard-makers or the standard-meeters because no one likes to look wishy-washy. Instead, I think Aphrodite meant to commit the Nirvana Fallacy, in which real world activities (of mere mortals) are from the start held against idealized, godly standards. This way, impossibility is built into the standard from stage one. Maybe the rice separation task was supposed to be elegantly hopeless. Aphrodite just didn't count on Psyche getting help from talking ants, and later, from more divine sources. I think that shortly after Psyche was reunited with Cupid, she invented contracts to prevent that sort of mess. As I was saying in my introduction, this post is about venturing into the, uh, real world...

Regarding my illustration: I stumbled upon the target idea while reading about The Moving Goalpost's more optimistic counterpart, the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, which also involves fiddling with standards after the fact. As the story goes, a man (from Texas?) shot a round of bullets at a barn wall, then drew a target around the bullets. The target image stuck. I settled on the dartboard idea because it allows me to illustrate a series of targets/shell sections that spiral into impossibility. The reward always remains the same, though. Why 4 points? I like the shape of the number 4.

My goal for the new year is to make my artwork a bit more fluid, my drawings more gestural. Digital artwork can become surgical at times, a little like separating a pile of mixed rice. At pixel level, it's easy to lose a sense of line motion that makes for strong illustration. Line motion . . . a moving goal, embedded in a post. Hopefully I can keep this Moving Goal Post somewhere in my memory for the next year.

Authority of Ipse Dizzle

2010-12-29T21:10:00.000-08:00

So continues my project of illustrating the informal fallacies using snail imagery. The argument from authority is important enough to boast two Latin names, argumentum ad verecundiam (argument to respect), and ipse dixit (he himself said it). I prefer ipse dixit because it's nicely percussive, like a swear word.

In my drawing, I wanted to emphasize the symbolic power of authority over a mass of people, but also the delicacy and uncertainty of the matter inside the heads of figureheads as well. I don't mean to imply here that all authoritative figures are full of hot air, but more that we don't always know exactly what's keeping them up there, unless we operated the balloon-filling station. Like a parade baloon, authority grows, dies, and moves slowly, while ideas move quickly, like little particles of helium, and we can only hope that our figureheads remain, well, full of it. Let's get down to brass tacks, so to speak, and puncture authority a bit by weighing the value of its heft in arguments.

The argument from authority is the inverse of the ad hominem argument, which rejects an opponent's claim by defaming the opponent personally. Let's call our authority Calvin. The AFA goes like this:

1. Calvin makes a claim

2. Calvin is like totally the man

3. Calvin's claim must be true

Like ad hominem, the argument distracts from the mechanism of reasoning and truth seeking by focusing on some quality about the person making the claim.

Very often, the status invoked is delightfully absurd and obviously fallacious. For instance, I enjoy when Snoop Dog teaches children to count on Sesame Street—obviously an appeal to his status as a youth football coach. Verecundium that.

Still, are we supposed to assume that children should follow the counting methods of popular artists who probably don't even have degrees in counting? His previous attempts at counting and impersonating children's entertainment figures were a bit more roughshod.

One for the money

And two for the shizzo

I'm lil Goldie Loc that gives a flip* about a hizzo
Three to the fizzo

And five to the sizzacks . . .

Then again, rapping surely requires a sense of rhythm that requires counting, and—dear me! I seem to be giving in to the undertow of his streetwise charisma. But then again . . .

Maybe Snoop actually falls into the second category of appeals to authority, in which the authority is actually related to the topic of the claim. Sometimes these appeals are OK, or even necessary, because we have no greater source of expertise. But then, surely to trust the expert by default at all times is a folly. To quote that infallible authority, Wikipedia:

Experts can still be mistaken, willfully deceptive, subject to pressure from peers or employers, have a vested financial interest in the false statements, or have unusual [or widely criticized] views within their field, and hence their expertise does not always guarantee that their arguments are valid.

Yes, authority figures can be corrupt. Forget that Snoop's Cripped-out person isn't permitted to cross Australian borders (though the UK is now cool with him). You never know what kind of nefarious interest he may have in teaching kids to count to, say, 20 minutes or 20 dollars.

It's important to question even the most bona fide authority figures. What happened there at number 20? What exactly is Snoop doing on New York's Sesame St., anyway? And what's with the hairnet? Really, what do we know about his mathematical background? It seems that he doesn't believe in limits. Sometimes you may find the figurehead better qualified to speak to a different bailiwick. I for one prefer to trust Snoop for nonsense word generation.

Yes, I advise you, from time to time, to pluck medal from the nearest lapel and test it between your teeth. Frankly, though, I'm not touching anything shiny hanging from Snoop's torso area. Nor do I want to recognize all the substances that fill his balloon. I'm not actually that familiar with Snoop's music, so maybe I should be testing his CDs instead. As Eric Cartman famously advised, maybe this will teach me to listen to authority, or one of his many albums, before discussing the authority in a blog entry. For doing so scantily, I might be dead tomorrow, or more likely, ridiculed for not knowing more of Snoop's math-related lyrics. Of course, listening is more fun if the authority is smartly percussive. However, making sense of your authority is another kind of shizzle, as ipse dixit.

*If this had actually aired on Sesame Street, I'm sure this would have been the wording.

Holiday Reflections Sympathetic to the Nutcracker's Villain

2010-12-25T11:47:00.000-08:00

~Nancy

8 oz. of Inconsistency

2010-12-02T03:00:00.000-08:00

When I was seventeen, I filled a one-month vacancy at a historically-themed boardwalk called Alaskaland.* All the shops were housed in reclaimed pioneer cabins, and I was required to wear a very Presbyterian-looking calico frock to maintain historical authenticity. My job was to man the counter in a historically-inauthentic soft-serve ice cream establishment called Frosty Paws. Frosty Paws' owner was a stickler for consistency. Our flavor selection ranged a whopping six flavors, and never more than four at once. The owner required that I weigh my sweet creations after dispensing them in order to assure a standard 8 or 16-oz. serving. Before the month was out, my cone-holding wrist could count to 8 oz. as well as any dealer of addictive substances. Furthermore, I had mastered the symmtrical twirl of the cone to create a regular spiral, an art which later, in the college cafeteria, lent me that charming, robotic air that every freshman covets.

How would I have reacted if Ralph Waldo Emerson had invaded Alaskaland* to inform me:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do."?

I like to think that I would have bartered, fur-trader-style, an illegally-sized swirl cone for a signed copy of Self Reliance, which could easily fetch a month's ice-cream wages on the rare book market. What vendor of standardized food units doesn't dream of having his "great soul" rescued from the food factory by a transcendentalist poet?

Nonconformist scoopers, flippers, and fry-cooks of the world might be dismayed to discover that Emerson rhymed his poetry. While Emerson touted originality and claimed that "imitation is suicide," he also served a form. Maybe he wouldn't want an unweighed 8.4 oz. cone, but rather, a cone that weighed exactly 12 oz. . . . in the shape of a snail. Maybe with ice cream, as elsewhere, rules should be mastered even as they are broken. And yeah, maybe some rules are just for breaking.

I tend to agree with Emerson that we should try on new rules like grocery store sunglasses (though Emerson would require that we build the sunglasses ourselves). I'm pretty sure Frosty Paws would have profited from exploring more colors and sizes. However, there are some cases in which it helps to be able to think like a yardstick, in discrete units. Those cases involve attempts to compare two or more things fairly.

The Skeptic's Guide defines inconsistency thusly:

"Applying criteria or rules to one belief, claim, argument, or position but not to others."
The cited example points out that prescription drugs are heavily regulated, but not herbal remedies and supplements, a controversy that needs exploration, but not here.

Author Michael Shermer discusses the psychological reasons for inconsistent and compartmentalized thinking in his book, The Mind of the Market. He offers the following example:

"You walk into a store to buy an iPod for $100 and somebody says six blocks down the street it's on sale, half off, for $50. Would you make the trip? Almost everybody says sure, of course I would to save $50. If you walk into the store to buy a flat screen TV for $1,000 and somebody says: that TV is on sale $50 off for $950 six blocks down, would you make the walk? Almost everybody says they wouldn't bother."

Shermer discusses how most people construct new contexts for behavior by "re-anchoring" their expectations. In this case, the anchor is a new scale of price range, which temporarily, and perhaps inappropriately, redefines the dollar--and the six-block walk. It can seem to make sense at the time; you measure ice cream in ounces, and a cow in pounds, but 1/20th of a cow's weight is still a lot of ice cream.

New contexts have a way of warping standards. This is why ice cream eaten with your finger has no calories, walking outside of a gym isn't exercise, and that one hair in our restaurant food is unsanitary (while kissing our dog makes perfect sense). My standard vanishes in the sway of an unconventional moment. And maybe that sway isn't always bad if it presents a new, better standard, or causes me to rethink a rule. But I would add: if I'm going to switch from inches to centimeters to the length of my plucked eyelash, I would want to do so self-consciously.

The fallacy of inconsistency requires a consistency to flout. I wanted to illustrate a scenario in which consistency would be expected. Reflections in mirrors and ponds should perfectly invert the actual, unless the gazer is Mary Poppins. or some other character* in late 19th early 20th -century children's fiction. I considered making the reflection differ strikingly from the top, i.e. show a frog instead of a snail, but I liked the deceptively symmetrical effect here. I also required that the top half of the reflection obey the rule of 100% opacity, while the reflection is less constant, more diaphanous. This reminded me of all the rules that Photoshop allows me to break.

I considered drawing snail-shaped ice cream cone, but as it turns out, ice cream makes a poor live model. It is highly reasonable, and perfectly obeys the rules of temperature in my apartment. Said rules state that ice cream must be eaten before it melts.

* Now known, less majestically, as Pioneer Park

* First, I would have needed to shake myself out of the historical boardwalk context, which would lead me to assume from Emerson's historical dress and archaisms that he was a performer from Alaskaland's Golden Heart Revue.

* Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy

Slippery Fish and Other Lies

2010-11-22T00:41:00.000-08:00

The slippery slope fallacy posed an obstacle to my creative process. Someone else has already come up with a memorable, concrete metaphor. I suppose I could have thrown up my hands and drawn a snail at a water slide, but that would have been a cop out. This blog is about (mostly) original material.

The slippery slope fallacy involves predicting that one small move, say, dropping a hook, will ignite a series of actions that lead to whale-sized results. Once you give them an inch, start down that path, open that can of worms, the worms escape and chastise you for your horrible taste in canned food. The fallacy knits causes and effects together as if they are logically connected. If they happen to be logically connected, you don't really have a fallacy. You have a valid prediction.

In the case of my fish, however, fallacy abounds. The food chain doesn't always work in nesting-doll order, from large to small. Sometimes slender lampreys feed upon the skin of larger sharks, and sometimes whales skip all the intermediary fish and eat plankton. And sometimes, you just catch one fish, take it home, and fry it in some cornmeal.

Most events cause cascading effects. Maybe a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane in the U.S. This doesn't mean, however, that we need to regard butterflies as weather gods.

Slippery slope predictions may sometimes serve to influence rather than to predict. Dystopian literature could be viewed as a kind of slippery slope argument, an extreme prediction that hopes that by forecasting a diet of soylent green, it can keep soylent green out of our menus by changing the minds of its readers. In 1931, Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World, a novel that predicted illiteracy, widespread totalitarianism, the worship of Henry Ford, and other social terrors. In some pockets, Ford-worship might prevail, but Huxley's prediction was still an exaggeration by most measures. In 1959, however, Huxley appended his novel with a series of essays in which he made further predictions: "It is a pretty safe bet that, twenty years from now, all the world's over-populated and underdeveloped countries will be under some kind of totalitarian rule--probably by the Communist party." Was his prediction a success? That depends on what the prediction hoped to accomplish; accuracy, or influence. I hope that authors like Huxley continue to make wild, articulate predictions in novel form, and that they continue to be mostly incorrect.

Slippery slope arguments often warn against granting degrees of trust to an entity or group that seems untrustworthy, and the hazards that ensue when said entity takes advantage. Such a scenario is illustrated in such biased children's titles as If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and If You Give a Moose a Muffin, in which furry mammals proceed to make further demands and generally trespass on proffered hospitality of any kind. The mouse and moose communities are currently filing suits against the author, claiming punitive damages in the form of baked goods.

At other times, the slippery slope warns against the dramatic impact that can result from picking up corrupt habits or stepping out of one's social sphere. In one American folktale*, a man catches a fish but cannot bring himself to kill it. Instead, he introduces the fish to the dangerous habit of breathing air. Eventually, the fish takes to walking around behind its owner like a lapdog. Sadly, it doesn't take long for the friendship to end, for the fish falls into a barrel full of water and drowns.

This folktale was the subject of my first and only experiment in plagiarism, which led me towards a slippery slope of my own. In 1992, my keyboarding instructor proposed that everyone in our class contribute a story to fill a novel thing called a WebPage with interesting content about life in Alaska. Most kids contributed stories about snowmobiling or fishing. Most of my fishing experiences involved catching fish the normal way, trying to make PBJ with a fileting knife, and surviving outhouses, or worse, a lack of outhouses. This hardly seemed like appropriate material for a WebSite, so I borrowed material that I considered infinitely superior. The original folktale was told in a delicious Huck Finn dialect, which I keyed in haphazardly, including my own variations, but generally remaining faithful to the voice.

Two months later, my family visited a favorite aunt and uncle in Seattle, a trip I had been anticipating for months. We were eating fish for dinner one night, when my uncle began casually slipping lines from the folktale into dinner conversation. He had discovered my school's website, and meant to praise me for my writing ability. As soon as I realized what was happening, I knew that I had done something horribly, horribly wrong. I tried changing the subject. Thinking me bashful, or perhaps a bit slow, my uncle kept up the oblique references. I couldn't bring myself to own up to the crime which began to take on whale-like dimensions in my imagination. I couldn't sleep for most of the Seattle trip. I kept picturing my aunt and uncle's dismay, Mr. Schwartz (whose name was on the book) indignantly phoning in the crime, police cars pulling up in front of the house, SWAT teams rappelling down next to the windows, ready to clap me in irons. The punishment for memorizing folktales is that it inspires thinking in folktale proportions.

My mother eventually recognized the story (I had told it to my family many times), and I apologized with a mixture of contrition and relief. Fortunately, my slope never descended lower than that point. This was decidedly the end of my plagiaristic forays.

I didn't know at the time that Mr. Schwartz hadn't actually written the story, nor that a common method of transmitting folk tales involves committing them to memory, then retelling them as if from personal experience. I'm not sure the knowledge would have made me feel better, because this was no backcountry swamp; this was a WebSite. And WebSites are for freshly-minted material. At least, this one is.

That is why a snail at a water slide doesn't quite cut it.

* From Whoppers, Tall Tales, and Other Lies, collected by Alvin Schwartz

Topographic Relief

2010-11-10T12:27:00.000-08:00

I have photographed my most recent painting in various stages to show my process.

The title, TOPOGRAPHIC RELIEF, begs some kind of play on words, though I copied it faithfully from my model. I plastered the words on top because I enjoyed some real relief in stepping away from digital art for a period. Of course, it doesn't take long to recall the perils associated with rendering without Control + z. The painting equivalent involves dabbing at things with a moist Q-tip.

I decided on the project with the intent of of gaining knowledge about U.S. geography. I have a fondness for infographics, particularly those that involve midcentury fonts. This typeface reminds me a bit of Vera Humana. I thought about creating a political map, but I enjoy the rippling lines that topographic maps entail, and also, elevation maps take longer to go out of date.

The painting is a very literal exploration of the states through topography. Literal doesn't mean exact here. As I quickly discovered, I'm roughly as likely to paint an accurate topographical landform in acrylic as I am to sing all the words to 99 Luft Ballons in German. Which is not very likely. Still, the proportions are roughly correct. I used a grid enlargement technique that my third-grade class employed to enlarge, square by square, the cover of the book, Basil of Baker Street. Thanks again, Mrs. Pfisterer.

Why not include Alaska and Hawaii? I thought about it, but Alaska has such an awkward shape that I would have had to waste a good deal of room accomodating the Aleutian necklace, or else present Alaska in shrunken proportion to the lower 48 states. But I'm originally from Alaska. When maps make my home state too small, it melts away my candy shell. I'd rather omit the state entirely. And what about Hawaii? It houses more people on one island than does the entire state of Alaska. Yet I would have needed my smallest brush--the one that's basically one bristle--to create a to-scale, semi-accurate rendering. So I stuck with the mainland.

My inaccuracies don't stop there. I endowed the state of Virginia with a few extra peaks in the 9,000 ft. crimson shade for the sake of color balance. I admit, I have reason to be slightly biased in favor of the "Old Dominion" state to the point of flattering its mountains. I recently visited Washington D.C. for the first time* and the landscape made a stellar first impression. As I drove from North Carolina, I was quickly disarmed by the sheer variety of deciduous foliage, not to mention the increasing adorableness of the township names, which seem to involve archaic misspellings. Spotsylvania. Falmoth. Culpeper.

Our nation's capitol was much prettier than I expected. With its rolling green spaces and abundance of white marble, D.C. was classical/neoclassical enough that I immediately began to romanticize. I kept hearing the opening bars of Beethoven's pastoral symphony in my head. I half expected to see little animated satyrs gamboling around, Fantasia style.* D.C.'s only failing was that it lacked in some quarters a sufficient number of delicatessens to serve the crowd of people on the streets. Do all the lobbyists simply pack lunches? Perhaps there are subterranean catering services?

I have now visited the northwest, midwest, and east coast of the United States, but there are many colored blobs on this board that are yet unexplored territory for me in the non-acrylic world. I've never been to California or the northeast. As with my painting process, however, my exploration will have to happen stage by stage.

* For the Rally to Restore Sanity
* And really, with its jubilant atmosphere and abundance of homegrown signs, the Rally was satyrical enough.

Meat Loaf

2010-10-16T23:59:00.000-07:00

Behold Buffalo Exchange's Halloween banner, which references the iconic cover of Meat Loaf's album, Bat Out of Hell.

BuffEx Colorado's proprietor, Todd Colletti, a longtime Meat Loaf listener, requested the drawing.

I redrew the entire piece in Photoshop, tweaking the layout to allow my substitution of the motorcycle with a buffalo. I understand that bison seldom blast fire from their hindquarters, so I tried to adjust the flame to look more like a fiery geyser spewing the ungulate and his rider from Beezlebub's home turf.

As I drew, I tried to engage the spirit of the artwork by listening to some heavy-ish rock selections from my own library. My choices were few and largely inherited from my brother, who co-hosts a semi-ironic metal radio show at the University of Alaska called Larry and Harry's Heavy Hymnal. His name is Andrew.

Me--I wasn't familiar with Meat Loaf's music. However, the name "Meat Loaf" and title of Bat Out of Hell, to say nothing of the typeface, inspired certain assumptions. As I culled a few music videos, I braced myself for roaring voices, guitar abuse, eyeshadow by the pound.

Except for the eyeshadow part, my assumptions were way off. Inexplicably, the artist who styles himself "Meat Loaf" is something like a male version of Celine Dion. It was all tears, pianos, and chiffon-draped ladies with pale skin, just waiting to be deconstructed by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Oh, Meatloaf, you have a powerful voice, and I would do anything for art, but I won't do that.

I guess I had forgotten how sentimental 80s rock could be, with its oaths sworn and broken, tragic betrayals, and absolute language. How this all fits in with a suburban meal of bread crumbs and ground beef is a mystery to me. Also mysterious: that the cover should include a very flattering portrait of the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who, I might add, resembles Meat Loaf no more than a buffalo resembles a motorcycle.

Aside from the motorcycle/bison swap, I made one other major alteration to the original. Behind our flaxen-haired renegade, a bat-winged demon rears menacingly from a tombstone. He (or she) immediately reminded me of Blucifer, whom I decided to draw instead.

Blucifer is the unofficial name of a statue that stands sentry to the Pena Blvd. entrance to Denver International Airport. I've included a few photos to furnish the full effect.

He stands, 32 feet of rippling cobalt muscles, glowing red eyes, and macabre art history. The sculptor, Luis Jiménez, died while building Blucifer when a piece of the sculpture fell on him in 2006. Undaunted, the airport installed the statue anyway in 2008. I'm having trouble imagining a roundtable committee voting to fund public art of this description, especially the red glowing eyes bit. However, Blucifer's uncanny presence fits into an motif of ominous at DIA. The airport also welcomes visitors with murals of men in gas masks and children in coffins.

The art committee must have worried that the creepiness of even these works would wear off over time. To keep things fresh, Annubis, the Egyptian god of mummification, recently made a brief cameo not far from Blucifer's station.

Side by side, Annubis and Blucifer must have confirmed the worldview of many a traveler with fear of flying.

How to explain this artistic choice? Desperate gambit for tourism? Tim Burton as an airport shareholder? It's easy to throw up one's hands and resort to conspiracy theory, and DIA has inspired many: subterranean lizard overlords, Masonic new world orders galore.

Personally, I prefer to think that Jiménez built Blucifer to imprison an evil spirit. Once a year, the fiberglass sculpture becomes animate for 12 hours and unleashes devious plots on the mile high city. His plans might involve the corruption of his nephew, who stands on a chair outside the Denver Public Library as if to remain safe from any floods that Blucifer might provoke.

The foal's rescuer and our defender against Blucifer's machinations is the large blue bear that peers into the downtown Convention Center windows, a similarly-hued, protagonist counterpart.

The struggle culminates at Civic Center Park. Clouds roll in and flicker. Red lasers emit from Blucifer's eyes

(photo compliments of Blucifer's Facebook page)

and ricochet from the modern facets of the Denver Art Museum and the ancient(ish) pillars of the park ampitheater. Finally, the bear seizes the giant broom and dustpan sculpture,

collects the infernal steed, and deposits him at his original perch. Imprisoned once again, Blucifer curses silently and resumes his hateful study of the airport traffic.

That, friends, is what a Meat Loaf video should look like.

Revision Bytes, pt. 2: Dog Familiar

2010-09-06T15:43:00.000-07:00

My earliest character studies contain one character who never showed up in my first draft, who is not, in fact, mentioned anywhere in the text. I doodled a character, then promptly buried it in my imagination beneath a pile of deadlines and revisions.

As I was wrapping up the illustrations, however, I found that I had a bit of that elusive resource, Extra Time, and began flailing about for the best way to use it. What was the weakest point in my illustrations that I could address in a day or two? A few the illustrations felt a bit vacant, somehow in need of more warmth or action. The puppy idea resurfaced, but would it raise new cultural issues?

Naturally, I checked with my cultural consultant before showing puppies sprawling around in the house; not every culture cares to handle that kind of vacuuming. When asked whether dogs were allowed inside, my reference answered, "No, but you should draw one in anyway." So I did.

You can see a few of the other revisions I've worked in here, as well. It feels a bit like a game from Highlights Magazine.

The puppy melds uncannily into each illustration, as though I had tailored space for it into the drawings subconsciously during the first round. Lucy now has backup during her cultural pursuits.

To boot, puppies are just barrels of fun to draw. I love how overly large their paws are in proportion to their bodies, and they way they sometimes stand with their legs impractically far apart, as if braced for action. My Alaskan mom owns between 7-9 sled dogs at any given occasion. She recently bred a litter of puppies with traditional markings, so I used some of them as models. As you can see, the moment they leave their pen, their aptitude for sitting motionless decreases dramatically. "Fun to draw," I say, when one has photos, because pre-pubescent malamutes aren't in the business of sitting for portraits. Not for a plate full of terriyaki moose jerky that it took you four days to dehydrate, which the puppy will probably eat while you are sleeping, anyway.

Revision Bytes, pt. 1: Besodded

2010-08-20T06:10:00.000-07:00

My 1.5-month hiatus has been due to an eyebrow-deep miring in revisions to my children's book illustrations and other projects*. As anyone who has finished a creative project knows, revision work spreads like sticky mud over everything one touches, often binding one in a standstill, while seldom beading into neat, polished units suitable for publication. I will attempt to knead some of this stickiness into a little lump and so give it the value and emphasis it deserves.
I received feedback about my illustrations for the children's book, Lucy's Dance, from my cultural consultant about a month ago. One of the most challenging of the revisions required me to redraw the qasgiq huts that show up at the beginning and end of the book in the historical Yup'ik moments. My reviewer urged me to make the huts appear as though they were made of sod, and not of grass. This request puzzled me a bit at first, considering the definition for sod is grass rooted in earth clumps. It was later clarified that in the winter, sod generally meant clumps of mud.

I had based my original depictions of qasgiq huts on photos taken of replicas at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

I assumed that native consultants had been recruited to see that these replicas could speak for the originals and inform my illustrations. I didn't count on the factor of airborn grasses, which were impertinent enough to invade the ANHC and nestle snugly in to the authentic naked, or at least scantily-grassed sod surface, converting it to a lawn of deception. Smitten with the ANHC qasgiq's grassy exterior, I worked to develop a simplified rendering of the green tufts, which satisfied me greatly.

Then came this request for earthen clumps. The cliche "back to the drawing board" was never more appropriate. I experimented.
I was shooting for something with finer green growth. Drawing soil lumps, malt-o-meal style, felt too . . . mealy. My illustration style involves distilling the composition of objects into the patterns and shapes that compose them, and I wanted the qasgiq to tell more story than a brown blob was capable of doing. On a page, what is a brown blob? Skin? Mud? A melted, oversized, inhabitable chocolate kiss?
At first I thought that the color was the problem, and I resolved to work in some minor greenery . . . moss or lichen that would surely be nascent in the spring.

However, a glance at the historical photos made this feel dishonest. Even if the photos were in color, I suspect they include little greenery in the winter. Besides, none of my moss designs seemed as elegant as my old grass pattern. Sometimes the detail seemed too delicate. Other times, it felt too abstracted or two-dimensional. Something about my old grass tendril-shapes seemed appropriate. Finally, I noticed that some of the huts were composed of mud and topsoil lumps, stacked in almost a brick pattern. I decided to show that stacking pattern to hint at the building process in the image.

*Other projects may include local swimming pools and/or lakes in Helena, Montana, which occasionally reached and exceeded my eyebrows.

Bubble Vision

2010-07-07T15:02:00.000-07:00

The words "We like our bubble" have been appearing enigmatically on the sides of Boulder businesses in stylish vinyl adhesive lettering, an elegant, sans serif act of graffiti. Two Boulderites, Amanda Walther and Kelsey Riley, commissioned the letters from Walls on Words, a lettering studio, and stuck them on the sides of two Boulder businesses without asking permission. The results were varying degrees of appreciation. For their crimes, Walther and Riley could owe 90 days in prison and fines of up to $1000, though no one currently plans to press charges. By strictest principle, I think it's only fair that artists purchase their own canvases instead of using people's buildings--that is, unless I like the graffiti, as I do in this case. One of the two letter recipients, a natural medicine supply called Pharmaca, objected to the phrase because it "did not jive with the company's mission." Said mission involves being "an oasis for positivity and relaxation," which, frankly, sounds bubble-like to me. Pharmaca complained that the statement was not entirely positive, but I think that's actually a matter of interpretation; I read it as gently self-deprecating. Walther and Riley feel that the statement is "true to Boulder," an affluent town known best for its nearby recreational areas and for its University. I'm a fan of both of these attributes; CU Boulder has a terrific Shakespeare festival. I am also aware that this is a fairly laminated view of Boulder, but all cities wrestle with stereotypes. The question remains: can Boulder laugh at itself?

The bubble metaphor isn't that new. Boulder is sometimes called "twenty-five square miles surrounded by reality," a statement that similarly galls some Boulderites. The controversy over the bubble statement inspired Todd Colletti, proprietor of the Buffalo Exchange Colorado stores, to request a bubble-themed magazine ad. With the proximity of so many ski resorts, the image of a snowglobe seemed apt. Snow globes really are fist-sized microcosms of fantasy surrounded by reality. People keep them in the most mundane settings -- desks, mantles, nightstands. So placed, glass-coated objects hold a uncanny appeal for me. It's that specific appeal of aquariums and tumbled rocks sold in the gift shop at a museum of nature and science, a lustre of seeming close and unearthly at once. Boulder is a bauble out of place, surrounded by dusty, ancient things, a geology of bones and rocks jutting out of the earth. In gift shop theory, the tumbled rock and the clay have something in common, but it's hard to tell what at first glance.

The making of this relatively simple drawing was also a bit surreal -- distant; but seemingly close -- like viewing something inside a glass case. I would like to rattle off a list of acquaintances with the Boulder shops on the famous Pearl St. Mall, but I can't. I've been to the Buffalo Exchange, of course, but I'm not really that familiar with downtown Boulder. Denver has bodegas enough for me. I based the shapes of the Pearl St. shops roughly on their Google Map representations, heaven help me. I've hiked near the Flatirons (the mountains below the store), so I know them well enough to know that my view of them here faces south, while my view of the store faces north. I have decided to appeal to the liberties granted to creators of snowglobes, and throw orientation to the wind in the name of eye candy. For the purpose of this piece, the two-dimensionality of the line drawings and the flat color feels appropriate. I think I will enjoy visiting Boulder soon and walking down the street that I have seen in my drawing, the real version of this unreal setting.

The buffalo shown in the illustration is actually the CU Boulder mascot, a convenient coincidence for BuffEx advertising, but also the most playful Boulder statue that my internet research turned up. Surely I'm missing out on bubble-dweller knowledge of other public works. If you have a favorite bust, wind-sculpture, mural, or mosaic in the Boulder commons, I'd like to hear about it. I'm not sure it will make Boulder seem any less bubble-like, but it might give me a reason to leave mine.

A Biased Cartography of 13th Ave.

2010-06-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

My snail fallacy posts can get a bit abstract, so it's nice to have a project that brings me down to earth a bit, or, in the perspective of this drawing, to a hover slightly above earth.

Buffalo Exchange and Beauty Bar Denver commissioned this adjusted rendering of 13th Ave. as one side of a flier for a night of music involving one Garth, influential house DJ of Wicked San Francisco, and one DJ Nedza. Beauty Bar, besides offering a fine combination of martinis and manicures, provides the unique experiences of reclining in an actual 1950s hair dryer chair, and drinking at a counter underlaid with glittered emery boards. I'm not required to advertise here, but I couldn't help but take a few photos at the opening.

Nearly all my work for Buffalo Exchange is referential, and this piece references a famous cover of the New Yorker, depicting New York, specifically, 9th and 10th Ave.s, as the center of the universe.

I felt well qualified to complete this illustration, as 13th Ave. sits a block south of my universe. My studio, Nesbeth, lives on 14th. These are my dog-walking grounds. I frequent its several establishments, some of which are labled here: Buffalo Exchange Denver of course, that purveyor of locally-designed and recycled clothing, and City O City Cafe, with its velvet upholstery and baked goods. The Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art (lower right) houses many classic mid-century works of art and design, and once housed the late Vance Kirkland, father of the Dot technique. Museum highlight: Kirkland suspended himself from the ceiling using a series of straps (apparatus still in place, on exhibit!) so that he could drop perfectly round circles of paint onto his canvases. These small businesses hang together by more than their mortar, so advertising for one of them often means advertising for several.

The gray building in the background resembling a crushed can is the Denver Art Museum, or its Hamilton wing, designed by Daniel Libeskind to match the jutting geological formations that surround Denver. The north wing of the Art Museum resembles a villain's castle from the outside, and is hidden behind the rather large Denver Public Library, which looks like several buildings cobbled together. The large blue bear facing west is Lawrence Argent's sculpture, I See What You Mean, which peers into the Denver Convention Center. I sweat every fond detail that sits outside my vantage -- Kilgore Books, the Molly Brown House Museum, Wax Trax records, and much more. But these may require another map, though no doubt, a similarly biased one.

As I drew this illustration, I read Michael Chabon's collection of essays, Maps and Legends. The essays navigate landmarks of literary culture -- Sherlock Holmes, The Dark Materials trilogy, Norse mythology, comics popular and obscure -- as well as his Chabon's own experience. If you enjoy pop culture and literary nonfiction, I'd recommend reading the book while sketching a biased version of your own stomping grounds. Walking the dog will never look quite the same afterward.

Nausea at Midnight

2010-06-23T17:25:00.000-07:00

The argument Ad Nauseum is not that abdominal discomfort that often accompanies watching commercial television--but it's close. It is a strategy that involves repeating a conclusion many times to urge its acceptance rather than offering proof.

The term Ad Nauseum means surfeit to the point of sickness. For some of us, it calls to mind, unpleasantly, eating too much theater popcorn and before watching the owl attack scene in the movie Thrice Midnight. With such associations, how is anyone sold on this fallacy?

I've encountered Ad Nauseum in three flavors:

First, a brute pummeling of repetition, a.k.a. the supersoaker approach. Here I refer to your filibuster, your parental injunctions to pack an umbrella, and yes, your Hulu commercials that might, through sheer persistence, convince you to back up your files on Mozy.

Second, the subliminal approach. Conclusions may sneak in regularly through a subconscious backdoor. Usually, this happens when they are woven into some other medium, often language, image, or video. To get a bit Orwellian, vocabulary is replete with hidden arguments and attitudes. Any word, thought, or image that floats through grey matter often enough, and with little enough scrutiny, can shape the mental continents. My parents often reminded me of these subtle influences, Ad Nauseum, while discouraging me from watching films like Thrice Midnight.

Third, the attack from many directions. When several different sources repeat the same conclusion, pieces seem to triangulate, to fit together into a coherent picture. Corroboration can lend an idea a certain gravitas. Digg founder Kevin Rose once theorized that people need to hear about an item (say, a viral video) three times from different sources in order to recognize it as a "thing" and act in its direction. The first time, we brush it off. The second time, we've heard of it somehwere. The third time, we sit down and watch the kung-fu bear on YouTube. I'm brushing up against another fallacy here, Appeal to the Masses, but both fallacies deal with the facade of reality, of "thingness" made from quantity rather than quality.

Through its trifecta of force, subterfuge, or popularity, Ad Nauseum can be a surprisingly effective argument for spurring action, but that does not make it valid. Ad Nauseum rains down conclusions without premises. The conclusion may be true (the umbrella usually comes in handy) or false; there's no way to tell, because an Ad Nauseum approach offers abundance rather than evaluation. It's a bit ironic, Alanis Morisette-style; you have ten thousand spoons, when all you need is a knife, or in this case, an escargot crusher.

In my illustration this week I have made the shells slightly transparent to suggest that they are insubstantial, like the Ad Nauseum argument. A beach full of empty or at least impenetrable shells will not feed the hungry seagull. Alternatively, one could also interpret that the seagull has eaten all of the snails from within shells because the snails were trying to convince him not to watch Thrice Midnight. This is unlikely, though, because the film Thrice Midnight doesn't really exist. In spite of repetition, is not really a thing.

Iocane and Incredulity

2010-06-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

The Argument from Incredulity (AFI):

I cannot explain or understand this, therefore it cannot be true.

The AFI is a reactive fallacy, an irrational form of rebuttal to opposing ideas. Arguing from Incredulity takes arrogance, gerrymandering the borders of possibility to suit an incumbent imagination. If it cannot fit my brain, it cannot fit the world, either--a solipsistic thought at best. A special kind of character fancies his brain larger than the world. That character is Vizzini from The Princess Bride.

Vizzini: "He didn't fall?" Inconceivable!"

Inigo: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Inigo wisely sticks to semantics in his response. Inigo dabbles a bit in wordplay, and knows better than to question Vizzini's overall strategy because, well, Vizzini is never wrong.

Genius though Vizzini may be ("Ever heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons."), his hubris and his intolerance for "inconceivable" outcomes brings him down. It is inconceivable that Westley would scale the Cliffs of Insanity by releasing the severed rope in time and jamming his fists into the cliff face, but Westley does. (Not sure I believe that one either, but eh.) Vizzini never guesses that a pirate might be hip to Inigo's "left handed" swordsman rhuse, or that Fezzik will allow himself to lose at hand-to-hand combat rather than to engage in unsportsmanlike behavior.

This brings us to the picnic scene. Before Vizzini accepts Westley's challenge to a "battle of wits," he holds at least a 50% advantage with a knife to Buttercup's throat. He could stall long enough for his employer, Prince Humperdinck, to show up, but Vizzini knows himself for the world's greatest strategist, so if a battle of wits presents itself, why hesitate? The hapless Sicilian dies laughing, unconvinced even in death of his ability to err.

Why is it so difficult to allow for certain outcomes? Experience builds an expectation of the typical: "some local fisherman, out for a pleasure cruise through eel-infested waters" rather than the Man in Black. The Princess Bride deals mostly with exceptional people -- the world's best fencers and fighters, most beautiful women, best huntsmen, etc. It is a fairy tale, but not an unusually fantastic one. Vizzini is the only one of the three kidnappers whose backstory goes untold in William Goldman's book, but I get the feeling that he sees the world as less of a fairy tale and more like a military history, or maybe in something by Machiavelli. He knows which way the wind blows in his world, and judging by his past success, he's usually right. But not always.

In my illustration, the islander also understands the direction the wind is blowing his kite, so the ship bothers him. How dare it follow a contradictory wind!? I have tried to keep the waves impartial on the subject. The islander takes the snail beneath his feet for solid ground. He does not understand that the snail actually moves forward, keeping his kite afloat with its motion like a parasailer. Perhaps the islander will ignore the ship, taking it for hallucination, because it doesn't follow the rules of his "island." And if you try to explain the situation, he will scoff, "Snails of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist."

Of course, incredulity is usually a healthy sign of skepticism, as long as that doubt leads to careful observation. William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride, is famous for testing his readers' credulity with fictional introductions and editorial inserts. I believed the real fairy tale of The Princess Bride -- that it is the "good parts" version of Morganstern's lengthier classic, rather than an original -- well into my college years. Goldman's westerns, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Maverick, are populated with tricksters as well. In the worlds he creates, incredulity is a survival skill. Around his characters, you can't just yell, "inconceivable," then go have a picnic, or iocane might find its way into your wine.

Hearts on Fire

2010-05-31T15:31:00.000-07:00

Before I return to the snail fallacies, let me show a line drawing of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland for a quilt design. Cuddly, no?

I didn't ape any one popular rendering of the queen, though costumes are influenced by engravings of Queen Elizabeth I. Of course, I ran a background check on the Red Queen before starting.

Behold: two red queens populate Lewis Carrol's/Charles Dodgson's literature. The Queen of Hearts of Alice in Wonderland is more obviously ill-tempered, given as she is to bellowing "off with their heads" and cheating at croquet. Of course, she's a dominant playing card, and an allegory to Queen Victoria of England.

The Red queen in Through the Looking Glass is a chess piece who presents an exaggerated evolutionary hypothesis: "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place," or that it takes a constant effort and adaptation to maintain a competitive position. Similarly, "Red Queen" marketing involves creation of a new product or service that fills the role of one that already exists.

Carroll distinguished the queens like this:

I pictured to myself the Queen of Hearts as a sort of embodiment of ungovernable passion - a blind and aimless Fury. The Red Queen I pictured as a Fury, but of another type; her passion must be cold and calm - she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the 10th degree, the concentrated essence of all governesses!

Both the Disney and the Tim Burton versions (actually both Disney, I guess) of the film conflate the queens, chafing Carrollian scholars. However, because both queens are feisty in their own ways, both merit Tim Burton's character name: Iracebeth of Crims.

Her name is taken from the world "irascible," meaning quick to anger, hot-tempered. I associate the term with my intro to philosophy course. In Plato's The Republic, Socrates used the word to designate the competitive or spirited part of the mind, figuring that a part of society with mostly irascible minds should compose the military. In Socrates's ideal republic, the irascible form a middle layer within a hierarchy, governed by the rational, and enforcing governance of the concupiscent peasantry, whose appetites make them dependent on leadership from the spirited and rational. I suppose that in Tim Burton's version of Alice, we could interpret Iracebeth as the irrascible, who has usurped the more rational, beaker-twirling White Queen, Mirana. The bovine concupiscent? Maybe it's we of the audience, munching popcorn and hoping the theater attendants won't make it to the middle of the row to ask that we put our feet down.

Later uses of "irasicble" in literature grew less serious:

O bury the hatchet, irascible Red,

For peace is a blessing," the White Man said.
The Savage concurred, and that weapon interred,

With imposing rites, in the White Man's head.

~ The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

I think that Iracebeth would enjoy this poem, less for the satire of colonialism than for the head severance.

DESIGN NOTES

In a nod to irascibility, I etched the red queen in her namesake color on a cool background for contrast.

Despite its monarchical subject matter, this is perhaps the most democratic illustration I've completed, for I appealed to Facebook friends for advice on two points in the drawing process. I drew two character designs, one of which veered more in the traditional playing card direction (more Queen of Hearts than Red Queen):

but popular vote steered me in the direction of this version, which I prefer anyhow. This face is a little insect-like, definitely possessing a Tilda Swinton factor--more like the second Red Queen, who is likened to a strict governess.

My client requires only a line drawing,
but I planned to color a version graphic-novel-style for posting online. However, a few simple duochrome printmakers convinced me to maintain the line drawing. I decided to create a rough Photoshop selection of my sketch based on color, then to smooth the selection, filling it with solid color. This emboldened wispy artifacts, partially-erased* lines that were invisible before the selection, and gave the design a slightly mussed, printshop look. And my blog title is appropriate one again.

LD Cover to Cover, Draft 1

2010-05-07T13:56:00.000-07:00

LD17: Riming and Court Tape

2010-04-29T22:49:00.001-07:00

LD17 is my final full internal illustration for Lucy's Dance. I have only the epilogue insets and the cover to go, and of course a mystery bag of revisions to arrive from the cultural expert. But back to the illustration. The view echoes that of the opening illustration but is more contemporary, showing small, rectangular structures rather than the qasgiq huts. One of my favorite moments in illustrating Lucy's Dance has been when one student in Stebbins claimed he could point out the location his home on my drawing. Every structure shown here is based on a real one, or at least a structure that stood when my model photograph was taken, so I hope that similar moments arise for others.

LD17's landscape is deeper into springtime than LD1, I assume because it took the village dwellers a bit longer that year to rekindle the tradition. Actually, I thought that a more colorful landscape would better suit the hopeful denouement. The whitecaps on Norton Sound are less rigid. The snow remnants are filmier, now drawn to fit color variations in the watercolor texture, which I burned a little in Photoshop. I would say that in LD1, the coast is blanketed in snow, or maybe smothered. Here, it is merely rimed.

I originally drew Lucy dancing in the sky above the horizon with no special background to bind her to the previously illustrated gymnasium festival. For young readers, though, the effect might have been too surreal. The basketball floor tape has been a common image in my illustrations so far, so I hope that it is recognizable here, in the sunset sky that doubles as a court floor. I won't write an essay on the topic, but I think I subconsciously compared the Curukaq dance festival to a basketball game, for both have their surrounding customs and rules. For this reason, the court tape doesn't strike me as too incongruous with the image of a Yup'ik village. As to whether or not the court tape is recognizable to readers who haven't been looking at it for hours, well, color me curious.

LD16: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

2010-04-24T20:46:00.000-07:00

LD16 shows Apa dancing with Lucy's makeshift version of the Yup'ik dance stick. I use the spine to bisect the image into a left page showing the present Curukaq festival in a gymnasium, and the right showing a past Curukaq occuring in a qasgiq hut in Apa's memory. The temporal comingling seemed appropriate in light of the Yup'ik cyclical conception of time, which would fold together past and present springtime festivals.

I have drawn Apa's face slightly to the side of the spine to avoid interruption by the spine. You may notice that I have also shifted the dance stick to a lower position to prevent visual entanglement with the background.

I encountered one problem: Apa faces away from the people behind him, partly so that he occupies the foreground (I'm hoping that readers assume that people surround him). Unfortunately, no matter how I drew him with his eyes open, he seemed to retain a look in his eyes that could be described as "faraway," and is thus contrary to the text's message. When I drew my layout sketch, I rendered Apa with his eyes closed. I'm not exactly sure why. Partly in order to avoid the "faraway" look, I have decided to leave him this way. With his eyes closed, Apa looks fully immersed in the dance. Although the split image shows him recalling past dance festivals, he is drawing them into his present activity, and is not therefore "faraway" any longer. I have always interpreted the phrase "faraway," as used here, to indicate boredom.

Here Apa wears a red glove on the hand holding the dance stick, though his hand was bare in the last illustration. Just to refresh: the dance stick is considered sacred, so it is held with a gloved hand. It could be that Apa has chosen to don the glove since he unwrapped . . . or perhaps I will simply include the glove in the previous page. The glove is a blatant red, and he wears a glove only on the hand holding the stick. I'm hoping that children will ask why he does this, and in the process, learn a bit more about the custom. We might add an explanation in the back matter pertaining to this point, where a few other artifacts bear concise description.

When it comes down to it, a sacred dance stick is a sacred dance stick, and with the glove drawn in its proper place, I'll sleep a little better. The sticks were supposed to have spirits of their own, often pestersome spirits. Partly to avoid poor relations with said spirits, the sticks were often destroyed after dance ceremonies (Stebbins Dance Festival, xxii). I have a feeling that Apa will not destroy Lucy's gift after he uses it, which means that its spirit may remain at large. Even if we assume that he destroys it, thousands of representations of the stick will emerge from the printing press, sorcerer's-apprentice-style. I'm not sure how to do the math for pictorial representations of spiritual artifacts, but I figure I had better play it safe and draw the glove to prevent the upbraiding of any spirits. Yup'ik mythology may not be my mythology, but I can't speak for the good people in the shipping department of the UAF press.

LD15: Wagging the Wolf's Tail

2010-04-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

Although the comparison is not made explicitly in the story of Lucy's Dance, Lucy's gift to her Apa is a primitive dance stick, arguably the most important prop in the Curukaq dance festival. These words from the Stebbins Dance Festival book recall the role of the dance stick:

"Holding the dance wands, the directors recalled remarkable encounters between humans and animals."

"Each of the three (dance) directors held an eniraraun (dance baton, pointer), also referred to as apallircuun (literally, 'device for providing the verse'), a two-to thee-foot-long wooden wand that the directors moved in time to the drumbeat. Each pointer was decorated with feathers topped with down or rabbit fur that accentuated its movement. Carvers also sometimes appended small, wooden figurines. In some villages the wands held by the two outside directors had crosspieces. The straight central wand, trimmed with a wolf or fox tail, referred to the well-known story of a man who was injured when extraordinary persons in the form of wolves encircled him and beat him with their tails" (xix).

I have to admit: were I encircled by wolves, a tail-beating would would be the least of my worries. Apa's animal encounters here are a bit less graphic, involving a beloved dog rather than a wolf. Lucy's version of the stick is makeshift, but still serves its purpose. I enjoy the fact that the dance sticks, also called wands, were designed both as static illustrations as well as props intended to be moved. I can imagine that the crafting of the wand would ingrain the story of the hunt or conquest deeply in the dancer's mind, serving as the ultimate preparation for the dance, and then reminding him visually of the most important elements in the story as dance progressed.

Traditionally, Apa should have been wearing gloves while dancing with the stick, which is not touched with skin. I may end up inserting a glove, although it is not mentioned in the text. The wearing of the glove might be a nice, familiar gesture to those who recognize it, indicating Apa's respect for Lucy's gift as a sacred object--which I'll discuss more in my next post. To be honest, I've drawn him with a bare hand here because the bare hand is more difficult to draw than a glove, and I'd rather have the more difficult version ready.

DESIGN NOTES

I miss the parka a bit in the final version, but the negative space creates a nice area to rest the eyes, allowing the text to arc down in pockets. With the page division, the content will appear balanced.

I wanted to show a dramatic shift in mood from the previous gym settings. The wand should be a powerful image, bringing a mythological richness to the page. Usually, I keep background colors neutral and drab so that the foreground will leap out, but I decided to go a bit bolder here with crimson. I should clarify, though, that my choice of red has nothing to do with my earlier comparison of a hunted moose to a Target Store. Nothing at all.

LD13 and 14: Ineqsuyugluteng

2010-04-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

This pair of single-page illustrations eases the story of Lucy's Dance into another Curukaq custom: the child's first dance/gift presentation. I quote from the introduction to Stebbins Dance Festival: "A child's first dance was a celebrated occasion, ineqsuyugluteng ('doing something because a child was cute and lovable'), from ineqe-, ('to coo to a child using special words made up for that child')" (xxii). In Yup'ik culture, the child is appropriately shy at first, but comes forward to dance with the support, and sometimes the accompaniment, of his or her parents. Much of this shyness probably comes from a fear that the mother will call the child a certain nickname in front of the child's friends, who will then use that nickname in songs of their own. But maybe I project my own culture too readily.

The story emphasizes the value of Lucy's gift over the other gifts by causing Lucy to present last--or perhaps this is merely the Law of Narrative Necessity at work--the protagonist always claims the final moments. According to the SDF intro, "Dancers entered in the order of the value of the gifts they were presenting, from least to most" (xxii). In the next illustration, I'll show Lucy's gift in its final form.

DESIGN NOTES

These are the first two illustrations in which I have passed on background details. I tried showing a minimal drawing of the gym behind Lucy and Apa, but the lines interfered with foreground, giving the surreal effect that Apa was shooting lasers out of his eyes. I decided: why complicate? Instead of drawing a background, I used the burn tool to add depth to the watercolor background texture, as I did a bit in Lucy's gift-gathering scene. I liked the effect, so I worked it into both pages.

Apa is now hoodless in this illustration, so I began drawing facial lines. Most of my shading has relied upon a uniform shadow layer made with a Photoshop mask of black at 14% opacity, revealed with fairly hard edges. This gives me a clean look, but I decided today to work in some more additional detailed shading lines, keeping the lines parallel. This may be another work-in for prior images.

I also changed the color of the pattern in Lucy's fabric to a more monochrome green -- the prior contrast of colors seemed too busy.

As I read the text for these illustrations, the words "wrapped in newspaper" kicked me in the shins. I previously showed the gift in brown paper bag attire, which, fortunately, I can replace easily. My replacement of choice: a grainy old image of an Alaskan newspaper which shall remain unnamed, but which includes an article about creation of Native-Alaskan reservations, as well as an ad for Rexall Hair Tonic.

Buffalo Excerpt

2010-04-05T08:39:00.001-07:00

This blog banner was a commission piece for Buffalo Exchange Denver. It reminds me of the process of some of my spring cleaning in a smallish, dog-inhabited flat.

LD12: The Necessary Bumper

2010-04-04T12:07:00.000-07:00

In this rendition of the gifting montage for Lucy's Dance, I have added a bumper to my dogsled. Mushing advisors have sternly admonished me that a dogsled is naked without a rounded bumper of some kind. Though my Yup'ik source photo of a dogsled lacked a bumper, my sources assured me that the photo was probably an exception caused by lack of timely repair after one of the photographed musher's dogs attempted to follow a squirrel up a birch tree. How easy it is to forget that labeled, archived, black-and-white photos may contain factual idiosyncrasies. And how difficult to tell when they do.

Also: I have included an image of a gift, Lucy's gift in specific, floating above the Curukaq festivities. Does the gift confuse anyone with its location or its loose relation to the text?

With those two points, I'm off to the park to watch dogs find and eat colored eggs that were hidden a little too cleverly. Enjoy your extended weekend, Easter, fertility festival, or March Madness recovery day, according to your belief system.

LD11: Same Difference

2010-03-26T14:08:00.001-07:00

I enjoy the way that drawing crowd scenes forces me to imagine sub-stories and interactions among the crowd members. In Lucy's Dance, I have, perhaps unconsciously, included in most of my crowd scenes instances of younger children watching older children. This behavior strikes me as an underestimated part of the way heritages continue, carried over in mini-generations, over that four- or five-year gap in age that can make an older child seem infinitely cool. It seems that every community event has a kid like the girl in the yellow shirt, who stares unapologetically at what other people are doing, forming impressions. I have been that kid a few times.

Deb Vanasse's story has explicitly planted many relationships into the scene--the parents slow dancing, the girls line dancing, and Apa's isolation. She also shows a larger relationship--the mingling between the traditional dance (a line of drummers) and more modern dance forms. The girls' line dance loosely resembles the standing arrangement of a women's a fan dance. I love the way Vanasse allows popular American culture to mix with traditional Yup'ik culture in a very realistic way. Rather than make a villain of pop culture, the story shows two cultures blending. A scene showing Lucy's town perfectly enacting a traditional dance might have felt forced and diminished the loss of ignoring the customs. To boot, I think the pop culture references might make the book more relatable and for non-Alaskans, gives less romanticized (but still colorful) view of village life. Preserving a culture often means adapting or mixing it; cultures seldom have one correct, static form. Someone eventually finds out how amazing traditional fry bread tastes spread with peanut butter, and a new custom is born. For an intriguing example of Inuit and African culture merging, investigate the musical fusion group, Pamyua.

I have drawn most of the women wearing qaspeqs in this illustration, while the men wear more contemporary fashions. In "urban" Alaska and in photographs, I have seen qaspeqs worn almost exclusively by women. I heard recently, that qaspeqs are unisex fashion, and that men traditionally wore them as often as women, sometimes in the same patterned fabrics. I am curious as to whether this is the case, and whether any design differences apply for different genders. Qaspeqs often remind me of the standard-issue sweat hoodie of American culture, which I recall being something of a uniform for both genders at my Alaskan high school. It seems that cultures also overlap for purely practical reasons. In Alaska, it's hard to argue with a garment that involves built-in shelter for ears and hands on short notice.

DESIGN NOTES

Most of my LD illustrations have been fairly panoramic. LD11 includes some of my closest views of character faces so far in the book. This raised the question: should I observe the Law of Diminishing Detail that comic artists seem to employ, and show significantly more detail for closer faces than for farther ones? I decided to shade more than usual for the girls in the foreground, but I don't think I can attempt complete realism while preserving a coherent style.

I'm always bothered when an illustrator draws cloned background characters, Acme Man and Acme Woman, differing only in their outfits. In order to avoid cloning, I recalled times when I wanted to draw something the same way over and over, but it always came out a bit different in each instance. Oddly enough, I found that the more I try to draw two things exactly alike, the more natural variety I notice within the shared forms. I have been following that strategy, then amplifying the natural differences that turn up.

LD10: Tricky Shading and the Backspin

2010-03-15T18:34:00.000-07:00

In my tenth illustration for Lucy's Dance, the Curukaq dance festival is afoot in the gymnasium of an unnamed, Yup'ik village. Traditional foods--dried salmon, fry bread, and akutaq--appear on the table. The text emphasizes that the participants lack many traditional dancing artifacts and skills, so they improvise by dancing in their own ways. The row of drummers and the food constitute the central elements of heritage, unless you count the general spirit of revelry.

In past illustrations, I have colored most of the characters' hair (almost solid black in reality) with purple. By request, I tried a more realistic dark brown in LD10. The result: I find it difficult to see any texture in the hair with such a dark color. In the thumbnail-sized image, texture may be indiscernible. Showing texture requires a lighter color, but would be inappropriate to show the hair as a lighter brown, which would convey a skewed image of the ethnicity. I'm still a fan of purple, but it's difficult to tell whether this would seem to surreal or unfamiliar. I'm eager to hear outside opinions on the matter, especially (but not only) from my Yup'ik readers.

Speaking of ethnicity portrayed, I have also darkened the skin tone in this image relative to prior images. In some photos, I don't notice that the Yup'ik skin color is significantly darker than Caucasian skin, though it's difficult to factor out sun exposure that accompanies the subsistence lifestyle. In terms of political correctness, I was unsure whether to err on the side of lightness or darkness. It seems that recently, some illustrators have provoked criticism for blanching out ethnic characters. One article mentions a cover illustrated by Diana Sudyka, one of my favorite illustrators. Recently, Sudyka's depiction of an African-American character earned protest from bloggers for being too pale. I think it's always a bit tricky for an illustrator to depict the "characteristics" of an ethnicity other than his or her own. I admit, it was comforting to learn that an artist whom I admire struggled with some similar issues.

I could approach the problem by listing a string of Yup'ik features, but this approach immediately feels eerie and clinical. I prefer to page through a pile of photos, then draw impressions mixed from what I have seen, working to include variety. Of course, in this particular drawing, most of the characters' faces are obscured or oversimplified due to the angle and distance.

Another small change: in response to a suggestion, I've decided to remove Apa's parka in this scene and instead show him from behind. Wearing it indoors might be disrespectful at a potlatch, and also a little too unabomber-esqe.

In a final cultural note, I'd like to add that I watched at least 10 break-dancing videos to ascertain that the shown backspin and Zulu spin moves are depicted here as they would really be performed by kids who had seen them once on TV.

LD9: The Story Knife

2010-03-05T14:17:00.000-08:00

This week, Lucy faces that childhood dilemma of wanting to give generously while facing a budget that includes household flotsam that nobody wants. It's tough to inspire appreciation for a gift that no one misses when it disappears; like the dance festival, the gift must be infused with a new value. After foraging around the house, Lucy finds that several familiar outdoor elements have found their way indoors. Her resulting bounty: a tip of moose antler, a tuft of dog fur, and a piece of tundra cotton.

We never really know whether Lucy simply likes the objects, or whether she grasps their import to an older Yup'ik subsistence lifestyle. The dog fur, of course, is a side effect of relying on huskies for transportation and/or companionship. The moose antler would signify a great achievement in furnishing many materials for the subsistence lifestyle. A moose might be the subsistence equivalent of a walking Target store.

The tundra cotton, however, I'm not sure of. I'm aware that in a pinch, some Yup'ik people would stuff grass and plants inside their mukluks as insulation, and tundra cotton looks like a more welcoming plant than most others. Otherwise, I can't find any direct online references to uses of tundra cotton. Yup'ik women did weave, but usually the material came from the fur of musk-ox collected from where it accumulated on shrubbery. Any thoughts or ideas on the use of tundra cotton are welcome.

You've seen Lucy's family's collection of gifts, a mixture of the contemporary and traditional. Decades ago, handmade gifts might have included: food, skins and furs, dolls, knit goods, carvings, other tools, basketry woven from grass, parkas, mukluks, or qayaks. While I was researching Yup'ik crafts, I learned about the story knife, which may or may not have been gifted at potlatches. It seems that women passed it down through families, as women hold a special place as storytellers within Yup'ik culture. The knife is carved from ivory and used to sketch and inscribe pictures in the ground while telling a story. I can't help but make comparisons to my Wacom stylus, which is not made of ivory, but still plenty of fun.

I asked the author, Deb Vanasse, why she chose the three elements to represent Lucy's gift. She responded that she chose them more for their emotional resonance than for their practical importance, "because each would have a story behind it." Vanasse added, "In truth, the book is as much about Lucy’s gift as her dance; in essence, the dance is her gift, much as the dancing tradition is a gift both to and from the Yup’ik culture."

Her comment reminded me that drawing the three objects in this illustration was a good deal simpler than drawing Lucy's "larger" gift will be. On that note, I'm headed back to my story knife.

LD8: From the Warmth of My Carhartt

2010-03-02T08:20:00.000-08:00

In recent news, it seems that Lucy's Dancewill be translated into a Yup'ik language edition by one John Toopetlook of the Alaska Native Language Center. Many thanks to John and the ANLC.

Lucy's Dance deals largely with the suppression and revival of Curukaq, the Yup'ik potlatch/dance festival. In not-so-cheerful news, I have recently learned that native dancing has remained banned in certain bush villages until as recently as a year ago. Many Native Alaskans still feel vaguely guilty for reviving the tradition, as the idea that the dancing is idolatrous has been deeply ingrained. Lucy's Dancetouches only briefly on the religious aspect, but the book's message still feels more relevant in light of this piece of news.

Like last week's drawing, this week's is a gift-gathering montage. I spent some time cross-referencing photos of dogsleds. The sled I drew is not a cutout from any one photo that I found, but rather a composite of different common elements -- the flat front, the angled brace in the back, the twine-wrapped joint and handle. Because I wanted to show part of Lucy's father's structural planning, I decided to sketch dimensions around the sled. The dimension numbers are drawn from a particular "how to" guide. The curves of the sled are created either by making the sled from "green" wood, or via steaming. I imagine that finding the right wood pieces has been difficult for the residents of Stebbins, Alaska, who live on a largely treeless tundra.

This image includes a more contemporary artifact of import: the Carhartt "Duck" work jacket. Carhartts are so ubiquitous among central Alaskans that even had I included the logo, it would hardly count as advertising. Everyone in my hometown of Fairbanks knows about them, so it's really just a matter of deciding, at a young age, whether or not warm, tawny canvas is your style. I wouldn't be surprised if the cold-weather gear one day claims a special lighted glass exhibit in the UAF museum, near the qaspeks and mukluks.

LD7: The Bunny Boots of Intention

2010-02-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

There'll be no more further personification of typefaces as NPR-style voices in this entry. You have my word.

The next few illustrations for Lucy's Dance will include gift-gathering montages that focus on one or two characters at a time. This can be refreshing after drawing a large crowd scene, which takes significantly more attention to detail. Here I have more room to play with texture and visual style. Each two-page gift-gathering spreads combines several action scenes that overlap a bit. In each, I show insets of the gift being gathered or earned. Lucy's brother chops firewood with boots floating above his head, showing his intent. The story calls for store-bought boots. I think I loosely and subconsciously based this pair on my dad's army surplus boots, also known as "bunny boots." The boots contain insulation coated in rubber, and are extremely heavy. My siblings and I used to lace my youngest brother into them when he was four to keep him from wandering around.

My intent here, in contrast, is not to hinder children using bunny boots. This book targets a fairly young age group, so I hope that the presence of the floating objects won't be too confusing. I appeal to any readers who have kids ages 4-8; do you think that floating gifts will throw young readers? Showing the objects in some capacity is necessary. For example, the illustration showing Lucy's dad building a dogsled should include a picture of a complete dogsled somewhere to put an image to the word. If I include the sled, part of the drawing must either leap forward in time (to show the finished product), or show intention, so a little bit of abstraction is unavoidable. I'm not really a fan of the thought bubble, which might be even more confusing to a four-year-old. For now, it seems best to let the object stand on its own.

I also show the outside of the house transforming to become the inside of a room; the shared line and colors add coherence to the design. I should point out, however, that the spine will bisect this illustration somewhat, dividing it to create two separate spaces, though the yarn causes some overlap. Hmm. I'll include a divided version to show this.

Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

LD6: Typefaces, Voices and Hair

2010-02-21T13:43:00.000-08:00

The sixth illustration in Lucy's Dance shows Yup'ik Elders directing a meeting to plan Curukaq, the springtime potluck/dance festival that went unobserved for many years.

DESIGN NOTES

The room shown in my illustration is roughly based on the Community Hall in Stebbins, Alaska, but with a few adjustments. I intentionally created a bit of similarity in the arrangement of this crowd scene to that in illustration 2 to emphasize the return of the dance festival tradition. The Community Hall and the qasgiq (of traditional festivals) both serve as gathering places for events of village-wide interest, and deserve some visual comparison.

I may design custom patterns to embellish the qaspeks in this drawing as I did for Lucy's in my previous post, but for the moment, there's enough going on in this composition. The pattern may end up being a way of distinguishing Lucy's character in future images. Here' Lucy stands on the bench in plain clothes. I'll probably dress her in a qaspek for the potluck at the end.

Why do the characters have purple hair? Yup'ik Eskimo hair usually appears to be nearly black. Black is a heavy color against which I cannot draw lines of texture without changing my line color. I've seen both purple and blue used to suggest black in shadows in many other places. The idea is that if a color is used consistently enough, the eye recognizes it as neutral. Everything matches blue jeans -- except blue -- but would everything go with red jeans? In order to sustain this special status for purple, though, I can't really use purple heavily elsewhere in the drawing without upsetting the illusion.

A bit more on type:

A fellow designer mentioned that Futura, the typeface I have used in past illustrations, felt a little rigid. I experimented with a few other fonts and with italic versions of Futura, but ended up coming up with only one "softer" alternative: Adobe Caslon Pro, a friendly, unpretentious serif that could come from the body of a favorite novel.

For me, choosing a typeface for a story is like choosing a reader for an audiobook. After I realized this, I began to wonder which voices best represented the two fonts between which I'm debating. I decided:

Futura: Ira Glass (of This American Life)

Adobe Caslon Pro: Miette of Miette's Bedtime-Story Podcast (a terrific podcast, by the way, for lovers of short literary fiction)

These are very personal interpretations, and if any readers live in Denver and have arguments about the vocal equivalents of these or other fonts, I propose that we discuss it over overpriced coffee.

LD4 and 5: Plane State

2010-02-13T07:47:00.000-08:00

In my recent two single-page illustrations for Lucy's Dance, I've held back a few details to keep things simple. Simplicity doesn't always come naturally when you're drawing a kitchen in use. For a better understanding of the story, double-click the images and read the captions.

1. I nearly drew in a TV on the table in front of Apa, but decided at the last minute to research to ascertain whether TV is actually a utility in Stebbins, Alaska. Stebbins does, after all, call itself a subsistence town. The answer is yes, TV is available (though uncommon), but in the end I left it out because I decided that it would change the meaning of the scene too dramatically. Suddenly, the conflict of the story would have become Curukaq vs. The Price is Right, and Apa's extended, silent reverie loses some enigma; he could be waiting to find out the market value of an RV.

2. Lucy and Apa wear semi-tradtitional clothing. I decided to work a home-grown pattern into Lucy's qaspeq. I thought of drawing curtains made from the same fabric, but then I recalled the dilemma of Andrew Largeman in Garden State:

Dressing Lucy's mom in a qaspeq for a typical morning seemed a bit heavy-handed somehow, so I didn't.

3. The chair is one of my favorite elements and may be repeated on the cover. Admittedly, I would rather look at it than sit in it.

4. Several Stebbins residents have informed me that fry bread is properly and popularly eaten with peanut butter. Thus, the jar in Lucy's Mom's hands.

5. Most remote villages like Stebbins are accessible mainly by bush plane; there are no formal roads. And yes, there are calendars devoted to Alaskan bush planes. I'm not sure I understand the calendar idea. Bush planes are the opposite of my chair; flying in them is great fun, but I'm not sure I'd want to look at them all the time.

6. I thought of coloring the background details here (calendar and frame), but decided to leave them muted to keep the emphasis on the foreground.

7. If you notice my typefaces vacillating a bit, it is because I am undecided as to whether I prefer Futura or Avant Garde. I am also uncertain whether I will have absolute say in this matter, but your vote would still count with me.

8. Finally, I've revised the clouds in the my most recent drawing. My previous clouds were modeled after an actual photo of the Stebbins landscape, and I did enjoy the effect of their odd arrangement, sitting like sliced meringue on the coastal bluffs. When I back away, though, I admit that they are a bit visually confusing. Hopefully, clouds 2.o look more obviously cloudlike.

LD3: Neutral Coloration

2010-01-30T21:30:00.001-08:00

My third illustration for Lucy's Dance treats the delicate topic of the missionaries who visited Stebbins in the late 1920's and stopped the Curukaq festival . . . or rather, tamed it into hiatus. A Jesuit missionary, Fr. Martin Lonneaux, overlooking the support-system of the Yup'ik community, perceived that the gift-giving portion of the festival was costly enough that it left several Yup'ik families destitute. Lonneaux concocted a watered-down version of the potlatch that would involve smaller, church-supplied gifts, but in the process amputated the festive spirit of the festival such that his "pretend kassiyuq" never caught on. For further details, see Stebbins Dance Festival (xxiv).

The wording in Lucy's Dance focuses neutrally on the cultural misunderstanding. It would have been easy to use powerfully-charged language when summarizing this cultural loss. From what little I can find about him, Fr. Lonneaux, SJ seems to have been a relatively tolerant fellow as missionaries go, translating and publishing prayers so that they could be spoken in Native Alaskan languages.

Author Deb Vannasse and I agreed on short descriptions of the illustrations before I began drawing at all. This piece was meant to include a priest in a fairly desolate image of the village. As a visual narrator, I did my best to depict the priest as well-intentioned rather than oppressive. He should, I decided, appear a little disconnected, introspective, and absorbed in his own faith. (Note: I tried to draw all five decades on the rosary, but they just didn't show up from a distance).

I have placed the priest with his back to the small cabins that began to populate the Stebbins landscape as the Yup'ik people became less nomadic, probably sometime in the 1930s. The UAF photo archives provided one image of such a cabin. Kathy Willie, a Stebbins woman who remembers this period, recalls that the first few huts were constructed from logs and scrap wood. Kathy's family used wood remnants from an empty brothel in nearby St. Michaels to build their house.

DESIGN NOTES:

I had a field day drumming up with simplified patterns and textures to depict the water and landscape. From here on I'll be drawing more contemporary, indoor scenes, using similar design elements to keep the look consistent.

For variety, I shifted the view of the landscape a bit from the layout sketch. This allowed me to draw the most expensive and sought-after gift that could be given at Curukaq: a hand-made qayaq. So far, I'm sticking to my formula of making background elements textured and people/foreground relatively flat.

Sadly, the Jesuit garb does not commonly come in the fruity breakfast-cereal colors that I used to add depth to my previous illustration. However, considering that I'm going for stark and somewhat desolate, the muted colors feel appropriate.

The inset in the bottom corner shows dance sticks and drums banished to a closet in the potlatch-free years. One of the dance sticks is a fur animal tail on a stick, which I'm not sure comes across in the drawing, so it may see the eraser end of my stylus.

LD2: Seasickness and Horror Vacui

2010-01-18T14:01:00.000-08:00

Draw, erase, draw, erase. Sometimes the illustration process rocks back and forth, boatlike. I use my digital eraser as much as I do my drawing tip for grooming lines. I spend ages zoomed in, which is incredibly handy, though it usurps my sense of scale. Zooming can be especially dangerous when I'm drawing human limbs, which may appear witch-doctored upon zoom-out. Another zoom hazard is the temptation to fill every inch with detail befitting the myopic scale--simply because you can. Some artists (myself included) have trouble saying done when empty areas still gape on the page. Horror vacui is a fear of unfinished patches, like open wounds, indicating negligence, laziness, or worse, surrender of imagination. My introduction to layout and typography has somewhat disabused me of the compulsion to fill, but the rocking motion of drawing can bring it out again.

This week's drawing demanded that I pack my two-page spread with complexity, both visual and cultural. As I lifted my stylus to begin, an ant-farm of new factual snags poured into my head, and I scoured my books and photos for physical details, often to no avail. How many feathers on a man's dance fan? (Five.) Yup'ik men's hair--how was it traditionally worn? (Not sure.) Did they shave? (Again, nothing.) And that image I took for a men's light shirt turned out to be a raincoat, which probably no one would wear while dancing. Yup'ik men sometimes removed upper layers as the dance progressed, and water-tight seal intestine doesn't seem like the ideal choice for a breathable sub-layer.

I'm currently waiting on several sartorial details from the Alaska Native Heritage Center. In the meantime, I've left the men's upper-body clothing pretty plain, a monochrome, masculine version of the qaspeq, so if it looks as though the men are dressed to watch a favorite team play football after the Dance Festival, that's why. I am working from the following description of men's apparel in a book called The Eskimo About Bering Strait (1900).

I have simplified in other ways, too. After drawing the log-cabin structure of qasgiq (lodge) setting, I switched off the layer and found that I enjoyed the drawing much more when all the focus shifted to the foreground/people. It seemed a pity to omit the inside view of the traditional structure (esp. after the drawing time invested), so I made the lodge lines mostly transparent rather than scrapping them altogether. I have also omitted some of the background figures from the original layout because the qasgiq itself is a smaller space than I realized, and the scale would have been off.

I had planned to draw all of the colors from textured watercolor swatches, as I did in Illustration 1. However, building in all those masked images exploded the document size and slow processing ensued. I decided instead to paint with solid colors to create shapes that I could later fill with the texture if I chose. In the meantime, everything worked faster. The flat colors leapt out from the textured background more powerfully than the cumbersome paper texture, so I left the colors smooth and will try to maintain the look in other illustrations.

Draw, erase, draw, erase, zoom out, zoom in, draw, erase, save. I find drawing very relaxing, but the occasional distraction of audiobooks and podcasts can ward off seasickness. I've recently become a huge fan of the LSAT Logic in Everyday Life podcast, which a friend recommended after reading some of the snail fallacy posts.

Side note:

Author Deb Vanasse informed me that the UA Press might publish a Yup'ik translation of Lucy's Dance. The number of speakers of Central-Alaskan Yup'ik is estimated at roughly 13,000 -- larger than I expected. Lucy's Dance is about preserving and refreshing traditions, and printing a Yup'ik edition would reinforce that message with action.

LD1: A Politic Approach to Landscapes and Lost Pianos

2010-01-07T00:43:00.000-08:00

This week I publish my first pseudo-complete illustration for Lucy's Dance in the form of a landscape. I used to have a marked aversion to rendering landscapes. I pretended that the subject matter was just too traditional and that I was edgier than the plein air crowd, but the truth is that landscapes, as painting subjects, require a very contemporary stomach for abstraction that I sometimes lack. I am an instinctive illustrator, interested in defining shapes clearly. As such, I once twitched a little at the prospect of painting landscape forms (foliage, distant objects, etc.) that I couldn't honestly identify. I preferred to identify all parts of my subject, then render them to my satisfaction, using a ruler if necessary.

I experienced a mix of envy and horror while watching impressionists swab away, working right through the nebula of colors and forms. A blob for a human head, then a similar blob for part of a tablecloth. Was this justice?

I eventually learned that the best way to draw landscapes is to act like a politician at a pre-election debate. The secret is to shape your limited knowledge/observations on the subject to your party line/campaign platform, or in this case, to your preferred style of rendering. If possible, seize the subject and use it to wander off in a direction that you find satisfying.

It's a bit easier for artists to pull off this kind of distortion than for the politician because:
a. It is highly unlikely that if I mistake the identity of some blob, I will receive a curt letter from a resident of the landscape in question, saying, "Darling, that small, ovoid, blackish bit in the lower right, which you drew as a willow frond . . . is actually a derelict pianoforte that has been sitting my my driveway for four odd months. Due to your oversight, no landscape will ever work with you again."
b. Landscape art can sometimes succeed merely by building a charismatic style. This difference of art from politics is perhaps debatable.

In this case, a compromise between fidelity to style and subject is in order. I do have a specific migrant Yup'ik village, Stebbins, to imitate, along with a few artifacts in the form of qasgi communal huts, kayaks, and one yaranga tent. These I have modeled from a composite of photos and drawings, but I have nonetheless taken liberties to depict the artifact and landscape with a similar lens.

The rendering style for Lucy's Dance has grown somewhat from the shapes of Art Nouveau and late-1960s gig posters. I recently discovered that J.R.R. Tolkien was an avid nouveau-style artist, dabbling in ink line-drawings and watercolor paintings. I recalled the appeal of a few of his more controlled works while polishing this illustration. My natural line, I flatter myself, somewhat resembles Tolkien's, so it smarted a bit to read that Tolkien felt he had no talent for drawing. I'm hoping that he did have talent for false modesty.

I have decided to limit the color palette to add a graphic simplicity. This allows me to color with scanned watercolor textures similar to those in my snail fallacy collages, only here I paint in the image from a Photoshop mask rather than swatching it into vector art. Again, I've layered the color in a way that imitates screen printing. I've left the lines a bit sketchy, though -- a habit belonging more to contemporary printers.

As always, I welcome feedback regarding style or any factual inaccuracy; early corrections will save me time scrambling to correct after the cultural anthropologist gets her crack at it in May. Be gentle, though, and bear in mind my artistic license, which is currently printed on tissue paper.

In this case, if you left a piano on the Stebbins tundra in roughly 1903, you should probably let me know.

Blatant Commercialism over Fishtank Tea

2009-12-27T14:01:00.000-08:00

This Christmas, I find myself surrounded with a banquet of non-electronic sources of entertainment, including silly putty, books, family, as well a literal banquet. However, I also find myself without internet for some ten days this Christmas. Today, the withdrawal symptoms have been punctuated with a trip to a local Panera. I feel like an alcoholic slipping down to the corner bar, only my cup contains mango ceylon tea which delivers a fresh smack of fishtank pebbles with each sip. The wi-fi, however, is slicker than I-80 in January.

In a brief (and and slightly overdue) detour from Lucy's Dance, the book for which I will shortly produce my first polished illustration, I thought I'd post a Christmas illustration I recently revised for Buffalo Exchange. Patrick Todd Colletti, the proprietor of the Denver and Boulder Buffalo Exchange Stores (and the spark behind some national BuffEx campaigns) called me late in 2008 with the following request: "I'd like to show a bunch of buffalo pulling Santa's sleigh, which will be driven by a [Star Wars] stormtrooper . . . all drawn in the approximate style of Ralph Steadman." I did my best.

Below is the '09 version, slightly modified from the wheat-paste, copyright-poking version of '08.

Subsequent requests from Todd have included "A buffalo in drag--manly, but pink; you know, a 'buffalo bear.' Put glitter in its beard and give it heels. But not cartoonish." Also, [presents link to 3 wolf moon T-shirt] "Let's do this, but with buffalo." I'll show you that one in a bit.

I finished the original Buffalo Sleigh for Christmas '08, drawing and painting it manually, then scanning it to manipulate the colors to create the near phosphorescence that goes along with many Buffalo Exchange pieces. It may have been that the stormtrooper Santa was just too confusing, or that LucasArts lawyers pulled some strings and Todd awoke one morning with an Ewok head in his bed, but this year we decided to superimpose the hood-blinded Santa alternate that I created just in case. The illustration has since taken the forms of outdoor banner, print ad, poster, buffalo-shaped paperdolls, and I know not what else.

I have given up on my tea, but I have a neglected inbox brimming with French vocab to ignore actively, human interaction to resume, and Valentine's Day to exploit with further watercolors.

A Farewell to Layouts . . . and Hello Cover

2009-12-15T23:26:00.000-08:00

In past weeks my layout sketch allotments for Lucy's Dance have included up to 4 double-page layouts. This week demanded a mere 3 single pages (the final illustration and two covers) . . . and an inset of a dance stick to illustrate the educational postscript. The latter doesn't really have a "layout," per se, but I thought I'd sketch it anyways to get a start.

LAYOUT 17--LUCY'S DANCE:

At the end of the Curukaq festival, Lucy dances at last, hovering over a final view of Stebbins, Alaska. I used Google Maps to confirm the shapes of buildings shown in fuzzy photographs. Lest anyone think I'm lazily echoing the view from illustrations 1 and 2, know that I first rendered Stebbins from an entirely different view before I decided to show the same coast and buildings again. It didn't work out. Not only do I prefer this view compositionally, but I like the way using a similar vantage shows the progression of time. I may shift the angle of one of the earlier shots a bit for variety, but it will still show the same basic coastline and two lumpy hill/cliffs. Another reason this view is appropriate: it allows more sky space for Lucy to show her moves.

FRONT COVER:

I've been mulling about the cover since I began this project, and of course I developed several concepts, but all of them really boiled down to this basic layout: Lucy holding Apa in her hands with her eyes hidden. I prefer not to show anything literally related to a dance. In my first sketch draft of the cover, I drew Apa's face looking much more dejected--heavily shaded and pointed downward, with slack posture. A favorite critic then remarked that I should probably try to convey Apa feeling "bored and maybe a little disappointed in something," whereas I was currently conveying "my dog just died." I agreed.

BACK COVER:

I wanted to find a way to represent the modern and archaic aspects of Yup'ik culture living side-by-side, for it's such a powerful theme in the book. I regretted not including larger pictures of the qasgiq (it always floors me to write a letter q with no u following--and twice in one word! Outlandish!). I thought I'd re-introduce the sod communal huts on the back cover, across from a typical modern dwelling. The traditional structures look a bit fantastic, and would surely grab me by the curiosity were I a stranger to the book . . . that perspective is becoming more difficult to synthesize at this point. I'm curious as to whether any of the old qasgiqs, or their visible ruins, are still present in Stebbins. It's tough to tell from aerial photography, as the qasgiqs camouflage so well. Perhaps camouflage was the point.

DANCE STICK INSET:

The handful of Yup'ik Dance Sticks I've seen have included bone carvings of an animal being killed/harpooned, or of a kayak. Merely drawing a kayak would be dissatisfying. I questioned whether the image of the harpooned whale is appropriate for a kids' book, but why censor a major part of subsistence culture?
Some Yup'ik dance sticks are embellished with only fur, and I may include one of these in the inset.

If you don't hear from me before the unspecified December holiday, know that I'm swimming in existential experimentation with my coloration technique . . . or just playing Apples to Apples with friends in Omaha over cider. I hope you are doing something similar.

Ubi Sunt Waldo?

2009-12-10T11:21:00.000-08:00

In this week's layout sketches for Lucy's Dance, Lucy shyly presents to Apa her homemade gift: a piece of dog fur, a sprig of tundra cotton, and the tip of a moose antler, all bound to a crooked stick with red yarn. The gift is is a child's version of the traditional Yup'ik dance stick, which Yup'ik men adorn with figurines, tundra cotton, and other embellishments that represent their memories and achievements. Inspired by Lucy's gift, Apa recalls the origins of the three gift parts, then launches into an enthusiastic traditional dance, indicating how much he missed participating in the festival of Curukaq.

On previous pages, Apa's character is reticent, withdrawn into his parka. I wonder whether the thoughts in Apa's covered head sound at all like the words of the speaker in one of my favorite
Old English Anglo-Saxon poems, The Wanderer. Below is a modernized excerpt:

Where is the horse gone?
Where the rider? Where the giver of treasure?
Where are the seats at the feast?
Where are the revels in the hall?
Alas for the bright cup!
Alas for the mailed warrior!
Alas for the splendour of the prince!
How that time has passed away,
dark under the cover of night,
as if it had never been! (92a-95a)

Here, the Wanderer uses a poetic device called ubi sunt (Latin for "where are . . . ?"). Ubi sunt almost always appears in the monologue of an individual pining for happier days past, particularly for deceased loved ones and personal triumphs. In The Wanderer, the speaker is an Anglo-Saxon Danelaw viking, probably the sole survivor of his clan, reminiscing about his comitatus. In other words, he is a pirate who misses his days of pillaging, gold, and mead hall afterparties with his pirate king, who was probably called something like Erik Bloodaxe or Ivar the Boneless.

Writing that employs the ubi sunt pathos usually touches on themes of transience and the passage of earthly things, fairly universal messages. Interestingly, The Wanderer and Beowulf are now required reading in many high schools due to the essays and allusions of J.R.R. Tolkien, who was the first to regard them as literary rather than anthropological documents. Tolkien nearly copies the above passage from The Wanderer in one of his LOTR ballads about the people of Rohan.

The device appears in several Anglo-Saxon poems, and its sentiment is echoed in Hamlet's "Poor Yorick" soliloquy, and, according to Wikipedia, in Paula Cole's 1997 hit song Where Have All the Cowboys Gone.

There is something a bit Hamlet-like about Apa, who sits brooding on the peripheral of the activity until these illustrations. Part of the reason that I always draw Apa hooded is that we don't really find out what has happened in his past, or what he is thinking. Perhaps like the speaker in The Wanderer, he holds

that it is in men a noble custom,
that one should keep secure
his spirit-chest (mind),
guard his treasure-chamber (thoughts),
think as he wishes. (11a-14a)

Apa doesn't actually ask "where are they?" at any point in Lucy's Dance, but the visual narration calls to mind the his hunted moose and his favorite dog, whom I imagine to be deceased. It should also be apparent that he missed celebrating Curukaq. Our Viking also longed for celebrations, gifts, and parties of the past. However, Apa comes from a Yup'ik tradition rather than an Anglo-Saxon one, so his version of ubi sunt might have a slightly different flavor.

Traditional Yup'ik beliefs support a more cyclical view of death. Deceased friends and hunted animals return as spirits, objects, or new living beings. The names of ancestors are constantly invoked throughout the Curukaq celebration process; often gifts are requested in the name of deceased relatives as if they are present. People may return as animals, and animals as their own inflated bladders (Stebbins xiii). Often, spirits float around, supervising the behavior of the living, or remain present in the pieces of themselves that remain behind . . . like antler bits and dog fur.

If your late friends are actually still around somewhere, then asking "Ubi sunt?" ceases to be rhetorical, and becomes a practical question. Are my late relatives/pets in the room with me right now? Can they see me eating akutaq with my finger out of the bowl? Perhaps as a result of this supervision, some potlatches included a closing dance in which visiting spirits were "tricked" into leaving the room for awhile (xxii).

Conclusion #1: The answer to the question "Ubi sunt?":
* in The Wanderer: fellow vikings are lost to battle and the inevitable transience of earthly things.
* in Lucy's Dance: in the dance stick.

Conclusion #2: I'd like to see a Lucy's Dance version of The Wanderer wherein speaker's seven-year-old granddaughter takes up piracy.

DESIGN NOTES:

I've noticed that my "rough layout sketches" seem to be getting a bit more detailed as I near the end of the book. Ah, well. That means less work at the very end, which is fine with me.

I plan to draw Apa's dance scene in a bisected view, showing the present of the gym on the left hand and a past celebration in a qasgiq on the right. I am worried that this division will be confusing, so any ideas as to how to make the illustration clear and coherent are welcome.

I based my sketch of Apa's favorite dog on a photo of Waldo, a lead sled dog from the first litter of huskies my mother bred. Waldo died a few years ago, but may now live as long as the UAF press.

Layouts 9-12: Laundromat Gift Idea

2009-12-03T09:01:00.001-08:00

This week brings a third installment of rough layout sketches of illustrations for Lucy's Dance, a picture book about Yup'ik culture by Deb Vanasse. At this point in the book, Lucy's small Alaskan village has decided to host a Curukaq, or potlatch dance festival, in order to satisfy Lucy's demands and cheer up Lucy's apa (grandpa).

Traditionally, Curukaq involves competitive gift giving that requires months of prior handicraft and collecting of materials.

Lucy's family members work to collect and their gifts, but Lucy does not have money to purchase or skill to build much for anyone. Instead, she hunts around the house for gift-able items--beneath her bed, in a closet, in her mukluks, and in her backpack. Lucy finds three items: a tuft of animal fur, a piece of antler, and a swab of tundra cotton. I have always approved the of the practice of poking around the house for anything I can reuse or give away. I have a pesky feeling that there are a dozen different uses for dryer lint that no one has considered, though I promise I have not tried to give it as a Christmas present . . . yet. Lucy's foraging is a fine allegory for subsistence living, for doing what one can with materials at hand. Stebbins, Alaska, the town that inspired the book, considers itself a subsistence town. It began as a migrant hunting and fishing village, and permanent residents still draw a good deal of their sustenance from the waters of the Norton Sound.

The subsistence lifestyle is reflected in the foods at the festival--dried salmon and akutaq, also known as Eskimo Ice Cream, a concoction made of fish, fat (traditionally whale blubber or seal fat, though now Crisco is used), sugar, and berries. The book also mentions fry bread, though I'm curious as to the source of flour for the bread in a subsistence tundra setting.
Of course, I also include 2-liter bottles of soda, because nearly every school gymnasium party in the world, subsistence or otherwise, involves 2-liter bottles of soda.

Debra Vanasse and I recently discovered that Curukaq festivals are not held in the gymnasium in Stebbins as we thought, but in the local community hall (a simultaneous basketball game is now held in the gym during Curukaq season). However, after some discussion, we decided to portray the gym as the festival location anyways, as it might seem more familiar; gymnasiums are often the sites of native arts celebrations.

My visual research for this entry involved break dancing and line dancing, for Lucy's village practices a mixture of modern American and traditional Yup'ik culture. Lucy's brother "spun on the floor, showing off moves someone had seen on TV." Lucy's sister and cousins "made a line, dancing like they’d learned at school." "Story songs and dance sticks," are conspicuously absent from the festival, though the people beat the traditional drums as best they can. Overall, the festival is a scene of compromise, of retaining what pieces of the culture people can remember and merging them with the new.

For the record, the woman in the bottom-most drawing, Aunt Martha, is dancing and drumming on her newly-received set of pots using a spoon. I don't want anyone to think that she's just keeping all the akutaq to herself, though that's not a bad idea.

Layouts 5-8: Peanut Butter and Axes

2009-11-26T13:45:00.000-08:00

So continues my unpolished sketching of illustration layouts for Lucy's Dance, a children's picture book dealing with the Yup'ik dance festival Curukaq. Layout sketches 5-8 show relatively modern settings, but still required some odd research.

TECHNIQUE NOTES:
Two of these illustrations are gift-gathering montages, which I will keep a bit abstract. I tried a few collage elements in the first gift montage just to see the effect. The color comes from an ink wash that I scanned and converted to different hues.

KITCHEN:
On this page, Lucy points out Apa's loss of appetite and sad demeanor, convincing her mother to re-initiate the festival of Curukaq in order to cheer him up. In order to do so, she uses the citizen's band radio, which sits at ready on the counter, like the Bat Signal. I drew two of my original character studies with this page in mind, so I decided to drop them in for layout purposes. When I was sketching Lucy's mom, I wasn't sure at first what to do with her hands. Then I recalled learning how the garnish of choice for fry bread of Stebbins, Alaska is peanut butter, and that gave me an idea.

MEETING:
After the call, the village holds a meeting to plan the dance festival. The planning of traditional Curukaq was quite elaborate, involving the assignment of many ceremonial roles, including the nasquk (head of the festival--sometimes a child). The nasquk was a figurehead, issuing commands while the elders really made all the decisions in the background. According to elder Charlie Steve, elders generally wanted "people to admire them, and they wanted to eat good food" (29). It's difficult to argue with that kind of honesty.

I have placed the elders at the center of the meeting, in folding chairs, to show their role in all decisions surrounding Curukaq.
The setting here is based on a photo of the community hall in the village of Stebbins, Alaska. The most distinctive feature of this small meeting room is the lengthy bingo board that hangs on one wall. Apparently, Bingo games are a custom in themselves in Stebbins. I love the graphic appearance of the justified numbers, and have begun toying with a sketchy way to render them here. If I decide that the board is identifiable to a general audience, and not too distracting, I'll keep it.

GIFT GATHERING 1 and 2:
Once it has been confirmed that a festival will take place, villagers begin gathering gifts that are "ordered" before the festival. As Christmas-y and lighthearted as these illustrations seem, they actually reflect one of the most earnest parts of Curukaq. Obtaining gifts traditionally took months, and seriously affected community status (80). Traditionally, gifts were hunted, fished, skinned, and built by hand. Now many gifts are store bought, but Stebbins still identifies as a subsistence village, so the mix here still seems appropriate.

Lucy's sister knits a hat for her friend. I know just enough about knitting to know that a large loop is often used to begin hats. Somehow, I felt better about the knitting page after I drew Lucy's sister a pair of large, decade-ambiguous headphones. She'll probably need cords for those unless she's much higher tech than I am, but at the moment, she's already tangled up enough in her yarn.

Lucy's brother chops firewood to earn money to purchase boots. I decided that I needed a model to illustrate proper posture for firewood chopping, lest someone get the wrong idea from my drawing and throw out their back splitting spruce. Conveniently, my friend Joe Goodner had just been thoroughly trained in the art of wood chopping, and offered to demonstrate the proper technique and wide-leg stance. I understand that the axe swing is initiated with one hand near the blade and one at the base of the handle. The front hand guides at the beginning of the swing, then slides backwards up the handle to meet the other hand as the blade nears its target. I'm sure this is much more difficult than it sounds.

The same goes for dogsled building. Lucy's Dad builds a dogsled by hand, while Lucy's mom orders a set of pots from "the fat catalog." It seems to me that Lucy's mom has the easier job here. Dogsled building a laborious process involving precise measurements, steam, and bending wood. I noticed that handmade dogsleds in rural villages often have straight-edged fronts rather than the curved front-piece, so I've currently rendered mine that way. Arguments and updates on this point are welcome.

All this festive gifting felt somehow appropriate as I sketched these layouts. I hope everyone enjoys their Turkey Day--or at least a day off. I'm off to do the same.

Note: All page numbers cite the book Stebbins Dance Festival.

The Squirrels that Bind Us: Layout Sketches 1-4

2009-11-19T09:55:00.000-08:00

This week I sketched layouts for the first four illustrations of Lucy's Dance, Deb Vanasse's forthcoming picture book celebrating the Yup'ik dance festival/potlatch. These sketches are meant to be primitive rather than finished drawings. I've included some greeking (sample text) here to show where the story might appear. The wider images will fill two pages. These layouts may have to change a bit later to create a gutter for the binding crease.

The first and third illustrations show overviews of the village, which is inspired by the village of Stebbins, Alaska. My setting studies helpfully acquainted me with a view of the Stebbins coastline. The first view shows the village in its original state, with kayaks, a fish-drying rack, and winter subterranean dwellings called qasgiq and ena.

The opening words of Lucy's Dance mention the potlatch, called Curukaq, so I wanted to show the potlatch somewhere in the first picture. In the book, Stebbins Dance Festival , Yup'ik elder Anatole Bogeyaktuk mentions that his people often expanded qasgiq for the festival by attaching a tent. He recalls, "The huge tent looked like a slice of bread. They would split it open with a knife and allow people to see the dancing"(73). I think I'll show the village at night, in the wintery spring, with glowing light emitting from the tent* opening to reveal the Curukaq festival inside.

The third view shows Stebbins after the arrival of European and American settlers.

The final illustration shows Lucy approaching Apa (Grandpa) to ask him about Curukaq. I wanted to draw Apa with his hood up to mask his face for now, as if he has just entered from walking or doing something outside. I hope to show more detail in all the clothing items in the final illustration. I might try re-drawing this page showing both characters from the front, over the table. Anyone who thinks this view would look better is welcome to vote.

The second-page drawing (dance scene) shows an indoor view of the dance festival, and is by far the most challenging illustration of the book, both in terms of the research it demands and the number of people to draw. I have studied a number of images of Yup'ik dance arrangements, and it seems that drummers usually sit in the back with men holding dance sticks on either side. Women with fans dance in the next row, and then men dance on their knees in the very front.

As I mocked up the dance scene I researched clothing futher. Descriptions of the women's qaspek garment are easy to find, but men's dancing garmets are a bit more obscure. Few of the UAF archived photographs seem to predate 1938 or so. Some of my best resources so far include an 1899 book called The Eskimo About Bering Strait. Another surprisingly useful source is an online database known as the Costumer's Manifesto, which yielded the following fascinating bit:

"In pre-contact times animal skin garments were thought to impart to the wearers the characteristics of the original animals, and garments were often constructed using skin parts comparable to human parts of the body: legs for arms and legs, backs for backs, etc. . . . Contrasting colors of skins were used in a kind of patchwork style to make decorative effects along joint marks which were thought to be the location of souls." I have never heard of this before--the joint as the source of a human soul.

Both Inupiat and Yup'ik men dress up in squirrel-skin parkas.* On these parkas, "The back of the hood is made from skin from the nose section of many squirrel pelts" (38). I wonder whether the squirrel is admired or perceived as intelligent, for people covered their own heads with the virtues of squirrels' heads during special occasions.

My earliest fashion image is a sketch from the diaries of explorer Captain James Cook, titled Inhabitants of Norton Sound. I find the sketch interesting, as I recall reading that there was no European contact with Yup'iks before 1800. Technically, Cook sketched this while standing on his ship without setting foot on land, so I'm not sure whether it counts as contact. Of course, the man in the picture may not be Yup'ik. I'd love to hear more informed responses.

Feel free to send me flattering praise or stern corrections . . . or even flattering corrections. Thank you to my art directors at Stebbins School; Dylan, Paul James, Sidney, and all the members of the 5th and 6th grade. I had no idea that the tufts on the dance fan were made from caribou beard.

* My research of Yup'ik tents led me to this image of the yaranga. I welcome other photos sources.
* I learned about squirrel parkas in a book called Secrets of Eskimo Skin Sewing* by Edna Wilder. I didn't expect to find such a specific book on shelf at the Denver Public Library. There it sat, however, next to a book about making and collecting novelty tape measures-- that is, tape measures shaped like noses, the Eiffel Tower, or--you guessed it--squirrels. The library sells books that no one reads, so someone, somewhere in Denver has been checking out the tape measure book. I'm sorry, friends, but I have now found a new craft, and will have to give up drawing.

Artifact Studies and Random Notes

2009-11-10T23:07:00.000-08:00

In junior high school I collaborated on a project with a small, mostly-female group of students. We were to design a unique, fictional culture and build illustrative cultural artifacts. We would bury said artifacts in a cardboard box filled with soil. Another team would then excavate our artifacts and guess about our culture. After several days of creative deliberation, we designed a pyramid-based matriarchy wherein men were kept underground as slaves, brought out occasionally to build more pyramids. Elvis was God. According to the artifact of my memory, middle school was a confused and hostile culture.

I began this week's illustrations, again, with visual research. I still don't know everything about these artifacts, but my Stebbins Dance Festival book has some interesting statements about them. Part of what I do know I impart below. According to their cultural artifacts, the Yup'ik people practice artful dancing to drums while waving furred objects. They also spend time carving, seal hunting, gift-giving, and telling stories.

FANS
Fans are held and waved about during the dancing ceremony. Men use fans decorated with feathers, and women fans decorated with fur and tundra cotton. Both of the fans I have drawn here are women's fans.

DANCE STICK
The dance stick is the most important object involved in the dance. It is crafted from a wood shaft, carved bone, and fur or tundra cotton. Usually the dance stick is embellished with carven figures representing the owner's accomplishments.
The translation in my book is a bit rough, but the dancing stick is said to function "like a judge and arbiter" (21).
It is also used to command gift-giving and to signal a call for food, and is thus also associated with Christmas (98).

I can't decide whether to depict the tundra cotton as furry or a bit more simplified. The bottom-left dance stick is decorated with an animal tail, a form popular in Stebbins when Stebbins Dance Festival was written.

DRUMS
Drums demand a great deal of respect from dancers. Apparently, if someone carelessly breaks a drum, it is as if the whole village has been destroyed (57).
Thankfully, this statement only applies to people who aren't actually using the drum. It's totally understood if a drum breaks in a fit of mad rythm.

FRY BREAD
Enjoyed by many Native-American cultures in different forms. Possibly evolved into the elephant ear. Currently the subject of controversy between cultural conservationists and nutritionists. Savory versions are often wrapped around meat like a taco. Sweet versions are combined with honey.
Mmm. Note to self. Make sure fry bread in book doesn't resemble a cornflake. Also, further research involving strawberries and powdered sugar may be necessary.

HEADDRESSES
Headdresses are largely ornamental dance attire. I had enormous fun drawing these. It looks as though the wearers' heads are bursting into layer-cakes of flame

CITIZENS'-BAND RADIO
Dubbed the "CB radio" for short. This communication device was popularized in the seventies due to its frequent appearance on The Dukes of Hazzard. It is also popular in villages where phone use is limited.

Setting Studies and the Mythical Gym

2009-11-04T19:57:00.000-08:00

I promised further discussion of the Curukaq festival and its customs, but I've decided to save that bit for later, for there are many entries ahead of me. Also, I appear to have written a short novel in the place of my last entry, and I'd like to keep this installment relatively terse.

This week I continue my study sketches for Lucy's Dance, a children's book by Deb Vanasse that celebrates Yup'ik culture, specifically the Curukaq potlatch festival. I have heard recently that a group of students and teachers from Stebbins, Alaska (the town that inspired the story), may be perusing my blog. I invite them to correct me on any point, or better yet, to send photos of their gymnasium and their general landscape during the months when Curukaq would normally be recognized.

When I first set out to create setting studies, I envisioned myself drawing and naming lots of plants, weather, etc. However, a brief perusal of the manuscript informed me that the better part of Lucy's Dance takes place indoors, with the exception of a few panoramic scenes. In fact, a good deal of the story takes place in a gymnasium, where many traditional festivals are currently held in native villages. I would love to have a photo of the Stebbins gymnasium, but at the moment I must rely only on my imagination.

For my handful of outdoor shots, I spent a good deal of my time conducting visual research of the village of Stebbins and other villages in southwestern Alaska. I was surprised to find that Stebbins sits directly on the coast, between ocean and tundra. Stebbins sits on the "mustache" of Alaska ( just below Alaska's "nose"). The land is riven with waterways, splotched with ponds, and overall very moist-looking. The ground ripples a good deal, but appears flat and treeless from a distance, as tundra should.

I owe thanks to the photographic initiative of gingerann75 on Flickr, who conscientiously documented her visit to the Alaska Native Heritage Center, which, regrettably, I have never visited in person. GingerAnn75 took copious photos of the inside and outside of Yup'ik dwellings, namely the qasgiq (men's communal house) and the ena (women's communal and family house). Both were mound-shaped domiciles constructed of a latticework of wood beams buried beneath a heap of sod and tundra grass. Each dwelling included a "skylight" made of seal or walrus intestine and sometimes a subterranean passageway that could also serve as a cooking space--hopefully with plenty of warning to family at the other end of the passageway. I know that other indigenous peoples, both in Alaska and worldwide, used "mound" dwellings of this sort. As I admire the buildings' shape, I cannot help wondering whether these in particular helped to inspire the depiction of the Hollywood hobbit hole, or our popular conception of the igloo.

From what I understand of the Yup'ik festival calendar, summer was full of frantic hunting, gathering, and building, while winter involved more staying indoors and holding festivals. Although the potlatch technically occurs in the spring, it is on the brumal end of spring. Halfway through my perfection of rendering the local shrubbery, I remembered that most of the ground would probably be covered with snow. In fact, those little green bushes may have to go. I welcome guidance from any readers in Stebbins at this point.

I populated the village coastline sketch with a man who I generally imagined to be the village priest. This raised an interesting factual question that I have yet to answer. The related historical moment involving the priest occurs in the 1920s, and I am unsure as to whether the Stebbins people lived in colonial dwellings or in their traditional buildings at that time. I have found one photo of nearby town, Bethel, which shows some basic development in 1909, but Stebbins is a good deal smaller. In short, tomorrow will probably involve a call to the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

Personally, I'm rooting for the traditional qasgiq and ena dwellings, which are much more fun to draw.

I was originally disappointed at the prospect of drawing a gymnasium, a relatively mundane setting, until I realized what a mythical place the gymnasium can be. For mainstream Americans, gyms are the location of so many athletic triumphs and failures, social rivalries, and holiday bazaars involving cupcakes and haunted mazes constructed from wrestling mats. Maybe the American gymnasium and the qasgiq do have a few things in common. I found a photo of a gym with a domed roof like an airplane hanger (which it may well have been at one point). This gym almost resembles the qasgiq structure in some ways. Say . . . this give me an idea for an illustration.

So much for terseness. :)

Studies of Character and Curukaq

2009-10-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

It seems I will be spending my winter months thinking about Alaska again, for I'll have the pleasure of illustrating a picture book by Deb Vanasse. The book is titled Lucy's Dance, and will be published by the University of Alaska Press in Spring of 2011. I will post scraps of my illustration and the research behind them, trying not to muddle the cultural details too awfully. Mind you, I'm only giving you the chocolate coating of the story. You haven't seen the last of the snail fallacies, but they may enter hibernation for the winter.

Potlatch Raillery, Bingo Ladies Cracking Wise

Lucy's Dance deals with the fading tradition of the the potlatch celebrated by the Yup'ik people of western Alaska. The central character is a Yup'ik girl named Lucy who prods her village to resurrect the Curukaq (choo-ROO-gawk), or the Challenge Festival, also known as the Messenger Feast, or potlatch. Lucy's mother explains that the tradition is no longer recognized because it is "a lot of work." I am currently learning what an understatement this is. In order to inform my illustrations, I'm reading a book called Stebbins Dance Festival, which quotes directly from Yup'ik elders, and may be the definitive treatise on Curukaq.

When I was growing up in Alaska, I had a few brushes with native cultural exhibits and festivals, but never took a great interest. Maybe this was because native culture was often presented with an air of responsibility and reverence which, however appropriate in a post-colonial setting, made the native culture itself appear excessively serious compared to my world of Nintendo and Darkwing Duck. Among the greatest surprises I met while researching Curukaq are the levity and biting irony that color the festival. The Challenge Festival tradition began when one leader converted traditional warfare into a battle of wits, resourcefulness, and ability to get down. I quote directly:

Curukaq in particular began where interregional bow-and-arrow warfare left off. [. . .] The enemy said, "Let us stop fighting each other, but using these let us be antagonists through the dance!" [. . .] Instead of trying to harm each other, people should use their strength and ingenuity to increase their catch. If their catch was large enough, they should invite each other to the qasgi (communal room), using what they had caught to compete and have a festive occasion. The enemy agreed, and from that time on, warfare was terminated and people competed through dance. (xiii-xiv)

Curukaq is the "Challenge Festival" because it involves a battle of dancing and gift giving between two neighboring villages. When I hear the phrase "gift giving," I think of a fuzzy greeting card exchange without too much action. However, Curukaq was meant to be a full substitute for warfare. In order to successfully fill this role, the entire dancing and gift-giving process was infused with "images of conflict" (xiv).

The potlatch game went like this: a visiting guest village demanded gifts in advance, and the host village had to provide them at the festival. The guests could ask anything they wanted from the host village, and the village must supply it to demonstrate their capabilities. To up the stakes, the guests would request scarce and difficult gifts, such as hand-built kayaks. In fact, the guest village sent out secret researchers called kevgat to discover which game and resources would be most difficult to provide. After this research was complete, another set of messengers ordered the gifts months in advance of the festival. Because the demands were always so large, the host village received the emissaries with humorous hostility.

If the messengers were encountered on the trail by host villagers, they were often teased, pranked, or playfully attacked. When messengers reached the host village, they would steal in after sunset and leap dramatically into the qasqi "like an attacking war party." The messengers were always well accommodated within the host village, though the teasing continued, even from the women in the bingo hall, who liked to complain that their requests were interrupting their game (xvi). Of course, I'm barely touching on the intricate customs involved.

Discouragement of the potlatch festival by Catholic missionaries began in the late 1920s. I have heard mixed reasoning behind its opposition. Some passages say that missionaries thought the potlatch was religious and opposed it in the name of monotheism. One source says that a visiting Jesuit noticed that some villagers fell destitute after a round of extreme gift-giving, so one Fr. Lonneaux proposed a less expensive substitute ritual which, though well intended, overlooked many of Curukaq's most important functions (xxiv). The village of Stebbins experienced a revival of the potlatch in the 1970's, though from what I hear, it has again faded in recent years. Lucy's Dance is set in the present, when a handful of elders still remember Curukaq as an essential part of life.

Character Studies

I have mostly limited my drawings to heads and shoulders so that I don't have to address clothing yet. I'd like to do a bit more research as to how often women's qaspeqs are worn casually. When drawing the characters, I'm tempted to focus on traditional apparel. However, these characters are a mixture of contemporary and traditional--that's an important part of the story. For this reason, the brother wears a snow beanie, and Apa (Grandpa) a baseball cap.

I'm at odds about whether or not to include a bit of collage-style artwork in the illustrations. I thought it might add a bit of texture and depth. I gave it a shot in Illustrator, but quickly found that building people from blobs is a good deal harder than it looks. Barbara Lavalee seems to have pinned down a technique that pleases an audience, but I'm not sure that I think in a style that . . . baloonish. If the book dealt more with animals or objects, an all-collage approach might work, but with my current skill set, collage doesn't feel like the best approach for human character development.

After creating a few sketches, I backed up and realized that my drawings looked more like something from an adult graphic novel than from a kid's book. Gradually, I massaged the characters into simpler and simpler line drawings. I'm still considering working in some collage. Now that the faces are simpler, the sketches might create some shapes that I can back with textured swatches. When perusing some photos of Yup'ik women, I've noticed that many of them wear floral-print qaspeks. It might be interesting to work in some swatches of fabric prints if it doesn't overwhelm the page too much.

While I simplified the characters, my eye and hand worked to make the shapes cleaner and more controlled, minimizing the number of lines as is sometimes appropriate for a children's book. Then I confronted Apa's face, where I must create lines. I've been admiring the faces of Yup'ik elders in some photos, with their unique lines and symmetries. I decided to set Apa apart by inscribing his face with heavy lines that are organic, yet balanced.

Next week: setting studies for Lucy's Dance, and criminal justice with percussion.

Ad Hominem and the Carney Lexicon

2009-10-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

Ad hominem is one of the better-known fallacies, perhaps because it is so common. In Latin, it means: "to the man." In American, it translates fuzzily to: "Oh yeah? Well, you're ugly."
Broken down, the ad hominem argument looks like this:

Person 1 makes claim X
There is something objectionable about Person 1 (maybe ugliness)
Therefore claim X is false

Ad hominem is one of the many red-herring arguments, fallacious when it diverts attention from the core argument to focus on some flaw about the arguer.
In creating my illustration, I needed a distracting character, and what character is more distracting than one of those bellowing circus-game people with the rings, bottles, and inflatable dolphin prizes?

I quickly realized my vocabulary lacked a word for a purveyor of state-fair gamery, other than the generic "carney." Perhaps this is because I have never played a circus game, due to my lack of coordination and my dominant interest in spending my tickets on gut-flipping rides. I didn't even know what sort of object is typically thrown in most games, aside from rings. I took pity on the game vendor and drew a sort of child-safe beanbag. Research was obviously in order. After a few entreaties to my internet oracle, I hit upon a bevy of circus lingo. Thanks to this tawdry, peanut-scented lexicon, I know that my illustrated hominem is called an "agent," or a "jointee." See below.
Agent — The one who works a game, especially a game that requires some skill and finesse to sell to the marks, and most especially a rigged game. Sometimes the owner, sometimes an employee working on percentage. Many carnies feel that the name 'agent' implies dishonesty.

From the sound of it, not even carnival workers relish the agent status. The agent's career rests on his ability to persuade, to cajole passing "marks" to throw darts or basketballs or dimes at a target. The agent makes one simple argument: you should throw things at these snails because it is fun, and because it is possible to win a prize. So what has my agent done to provoke his customer's wrath, distracting from the argument of the game? What hand hurls these child-safe objects, and why? I imagine three possible scenarios based on the three different forms of ad hominem.

1. ad hominem abusive - rejection of a claim based on general disapproval of arguer's character
Customer A spends too much time watching cinema wherein villains wear black mustaches and crooked swords. As a result, Customer A believes in an inverse correlation between virtue and facial hair. He spends his token, but scorns the game based on the vendor's mustache, which he views as an badge of rascality. The customer aims his tosses at the offensive cookie duster, hoping to knock it off in an act of moral reform.

2. ad hominem circumstantial - rejection of claim because the source is biased
Customer B realizes that he won't be able to knock down a snail and win the second cauliflower on the right, which his girlfriend has been eyeing all evening. He concludes that the vendor has "joed", or rigged, his snails upright in order to reduce his cauliflower overhead.

3. tu quoque -- literally "you too;" a claim that one's opponent is a hypocrite, so the opposing argument must be false
A moment earlier, a near-sighted agent notices Customer C, a midget with a taco salad. Mistaking Customer C for a child with a catcher's mitt, the agent playfully tossed beanbags at him. Customer C takes the agent's actions as confirmation of his own suspicions that aiming at people is much more fun than aiming at snails. Later, as the security carries Customer C away, he will cries "You did it too! You owe me a taco salad!"

***********************************
It's entirely possible that the agent is a hypocrite and prefers throwing things at people rather than snails. The agent may also be greedy and dishonest, or perhaps his mustache curls with pure malice. However, none of these proves that it is impossible to have fun or win a prize by pitching things at a snail. All are merely distractions from the game at hand.

In other games and arguments, faults in the agent's character may be more pertinent. If the agent touts his skills as a manny or wants to cohabit your 200-square-foot apartment, ad hominem can constitute a sound argument structure. You may then pelt the agent with beanbags all you like. This will either bring out the agent's true and relevant nature, or thoroughly prepare him for afternoons with your toddler.

This week's fallacy deals with insults. If you admire the art of insulting, fallacies be darned, then I recommend you consult the master.

Circular Revisions

2009-10-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

As promised, I've created new revisions of the solar circles artwork. I welcome votes as to which version you prefer.

Solar Digressions: Promises, Forks, and Tomato Soup

2009-10-14T23:13:00.000-07:00

As much as I enjoy the view from my fallacy soapbox, I chose to digress this week in order to work on a project for which I have an urgent demand. I have been building a website for a small, Denver-based design and media endeavor called ECO5280, of which I currently constitute one half. The other half is a gentleman named Jack Farmer, a seasoned graphic designer and Jedi typographer. Many of our visuals rely on photos or video, so I was excited when recently Jack suggested that this concept might benefit from sketched illustration. Cue the trumpets!

The factoid featured in the ad traces back to a scientist and author known as Vaclav Smil, who apparently wrote that the earth's atmosphere, oceans, and continents collectively absorb 3,850,000 of energy in a typical hour of sunlight. Allegedly, this number could have supplied the world's energy needs in 2002. Whether 2002 was an unusually unique or efficient year, I cannot yet tell you. However, the message is generally hopeful.

Solar panels are not yet an area of detailed knowledge for me, but I am aware that their use is currently limited by difficulties in storing the energy they reap. In 2008, an MIT professor claimed to have developed a breakthrough technique for storing solar energy that used the sun's energy to split water into component hydrogen and oxygen. I'm not sure whether panel manufacturers have harnessed this idea yet.

A more obvious problem for solar energy is the cost of purchase and installation of panels for individuals. I have heard multiple ideas about lowering the cost issue of solar power. One friend believes that energy companies should undertake the long-term investment in panels in a larger, less-expensive-per-unit swipe. Another friend argues that the cost of manufacturing might decrease as demand increases, as occurred with the personal computer. Perhaps mass production and distribution are the answer. I heard some buzz a few months ago about Ikea distributing solar panels sometime in the next five years, and I've got my fingers crossed.

It seems horribly ironic to be surrounded by such an abundant energy source while lacking the means to harness it . . . like wielding a fork over a bowl of creamy tomato soup,. We're assuming here that the bowl is fixed to the table, and that putting our chins in the bowl would be far too impolite. Although energy companies currently rely far more on wind than on solar energy to meet their renewable energy requirements, I'm secretly rooting for solar for its sheer plenitude and reliability. If sunlight stops reaching earth, humankind will face more serious problems than how to power our photovoltaic Priuses.

Hmm. The view from the environmental soapbox includes a good deal more circuits and government reports. Perhaps, with a bit more research, I can write in greater detail about solar energy and its teasing whispered promises. At the moment, I am at loath to abuse facts. As Max Müller wrote, "The mischief arising from promiscuous use of technical terms is very great." I prefer to make my daily mischief by ignoring measurement quantities in cookbooks.

The ad itself remains a work in progress. Feel free to check obsessively for its final revision at our new-smelling website, www.eco5280.com. Feel freer still to offer feedback on the site. My favorite piece currently populating our pages is the greyhound ad on our page about septic safety. I am partially biased, however, as I sourced the photo for this ad. The greyhound's name is Nonna--of that fact, I am relatively certain.

Ad Ignorantium: Unsafe Gaps and Parking Spots

2009-10-06T07:17:00.000-07:00

I have realized that newcomers to the blog may have found the last few entries a bit strange. I plunge into diatribes about the informal fallacies, peppered with food metaphors, then attach drawings of snails as if the two are obviously connected. Let me explain: I am creating a series of drawings illustrating the informal fallacies using snail symbology. Also, writing makes me a bit hungry. You see, it's really not crazy at all. If you wonder where I get the urge to lecture in this way, I'll let you in on a secret: I am my own target audience. I'm lecturing to myself, mostly, because I've always wanted to learn more about the fallacies, and I've never really liked writing on index cards, so I blog instead. Blogging is a bit cheaper.

This week's common nonsense is the fallacy known as ad ignorantium, or the Argument from Ignorance. I prefer to remember it as the Argument from Uncertainty, as uncertainty seems more relevant to the definition. The fallacy occurs when I try to prove my argument by pointing out that no one has proven it false. The flamingos in my yard are real until they melt in your bonfire. This fallacy is very much like shifting the burden of proof . . . it's taking the benefit of unproof, twisting doubt in your favor when neither side can really make a solid case. I always suspect it must take a face like Ben Kingsley's to commandeer uncertainty in this way and take it for a pleasure drive. I just saw him in the 1996 Shakespeare-based film Twelfth Night. I thought for the first two acts that his character was an an eccentric nobleman. As it turns out, he played the role of the Clown. Maybe Kingsley's stage presence lends him authority by default, though one could also argue that Shakespeare's clowns have the best lines.

The Argument from Uncertainty is one of the fastest ways to win an argument using almost no effort at all. My favorite example comes from The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. A young boy named Milo wishes to enter the city of Dictionopolis, but the guard at the gate forbids Milo entrance unless he can presnt a reason. Milo hasn't prepared a reason, so the guard takes pity and slips him a little medal engraved with the words "WHY NOT?" then lets him in. The point is fair enough; although your argument may be weak, it may still be the better of two. Better, however, does not equal proven.

The problem with steering ambiguity in this way is that it's a bit too easy to get comfy in the leather seats. Win too many arguments by relying on lack of disproof, and you may never have to produce your own reasons. It's easy enough to sit there cultivating ignorance, pointing out that people can't disprove you rather than constructing a real argument. If someone relies heavily on the Argument from Uncertainty, there's a good chance that like Milo, they haven't got many bricks in their own foundation. For example, take ads that feature "baffled scientists." Miracle treatments advertised in the very back pages of Travel and Leisure are fond of claiming that their product has baffled scientists, but not very fond of citing studies that support their own safety and effectiveness. In reality, I imagine scientists spend a lot of time being baffled; it comes with the territory. If only their bafflement was always the result of true miracle cures, we'd have trumped with cancer long ago. Proving and disproving things, getting past the point of bafflement, is expensive, like 3 x 5 index cards. To demonstrate, here are a few things I cannot afford to prove:

1. I really do remember getting splashed by the whales at Sea World when I was two years old.
2. The color magenta looks the same to everyone.
3. Jane Austen would have preferred the BBC adaptation of Pride and Predjudice to the Kiera Knightley version.
4. Major international disputes could be settled constructively with scat jazz singing showdowns.
5. There is one man alive who looks better with a mustache than without, and that man is Tom Sellek.
6. The towing company that guards my day-shared parking lot has gotten a bit lazy, and I could probably park Friday afternoons with impunity.

How quickly using fallacies turns us to the dark side! I would get to park until proven illicit. But then, once those towing people catch you . . . not even Ben Kingsley could sway their sympathies. My point: the world hands us plenty of uncertainty to manage. We cannot always take advantage of another's confusion and use it to sell "therapeutic" copper bracelets for $100.

Another classic problem with the "why not" fallacy is that if you use it enough, someone (like the people at Lyons Towing) may actually offer disproof. It's an especially bad idea to use the Argument from Uncertainty to defend that pet superstition or belief or yours that you wish to remain cloaked, or even stylishly jacketed, in enigma. I advise avoiding the fallacy especially if you hang out around skeptics or scientists, who might interpret the phrase "prove me wrong" as a job offer. Since the industrial revolution, most Christian apologetics have wised up a bit and avoid the old millennia-old strategy of finding God in the unexplained, in the gaps, so to speak, because those gaps have a way of closing up. For a belief or opinion to endure, it takes an argument more substantial than "How else do you explain it?"

Of course, your not-disproven opinion could be correct, but I wouldn't ask for disproof unless you don't mind seeing your belief sliced into a pie chart. It In defense of my own irrational beliefs, I prefer the following approach: "Yes, you might be able to plot this with the help of Texas Instruments, but that won't really capture its full meaning." This phrase takes you out of the realm of truth, and into the realm of phraseology and meaning. It will keep you safe around scientists, who are unlikely to claim dibs on "full meaning." Not on the job, anyways. Watch out around nihilist fiction writers, though.

If your argument truly has merit, you can probably find some real reasons tucked in there somewhere, and needn't be dodgy in the first place. Who knows. The pie chart might actually work out in your favor.

My snail probably won't be so fortunate. As long as he remains tucked safely inside his shell, the mother bird will warm him and care for him, for she cannot prove that he isn't an egg. This argument will keep him warm for a spell, but eventually the other eggs will hatch. If the snail shell does not produce a hatchling, the snail inside may find himself in an awkward position when there are little beaks to feed. Mother birds, I hear, are less forgiving to invaders than urban towing companies.

Argument from Final Consequences, feat. Jack White

2009-10-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

In the SG definition, "Such arguments (also called teleological) are based on a reversal of cause and effect, because they argue that something is caused by the ultimate effect that it has, or purpose that is serves." As the White Stripes put it in their song, "Effect and Cause": "first comes an action, and then a reaction, which you can't switch around for your own satisfaction." Another fitting example from the song: "if you're headed for the grave, don't blame the hearse."

I've decided to be a bit abstract in my interpretation of the fallacy. Normally, the negative space, or the space around the snail shape, is an effect of the snail. In this drawing, I have shifted the negative space to the foreground, allowing it to cause a shadow. I have effectively cut out the negative space and placed in front of a telescope. The fallacy is sometimes called the "teleological" (end/purpose) fallacy because it makes effects, or ends, seem closer, earlier, or more important than they really are. I like to think of it as the telescope fallacy, magnifying results rather than underlying causes.

One impulse to treat the effect as the cause may come from an urgent need to place credit or blame on the nearest event, as when I kill or reward the messenger.

The reversal may also arise from a confused perception of order, as in the idea only smart people study, or only people who purchase diamonds become rich. As with correlation without causation, we may see that cause and effect have some connection, but we get the order backwards.

Another source of this fallacy may be our ambiguous use of language. In some cases, when we discuss the "reason" an event occurs, we don't mean its true cause, but rather its grander purpose, its "ultimate reason for being," which is really an effect. I might say that I'm eating a sandwich because it fills me up, when really, I'm eating a sandwich because I purchased it(hopefully) and put it in my mouth.

The fatalist takes the problem one step further, believing that the universe has intentions, and all events to occur for the sake of final effects. The string of causes that happen along the way are merely trappings, side effects rather than necessary steps. This view can give the world a nice feeling of organization . . . and terrifying enclosure. Shakespeare knew well enough how we like to see a fated effect control all the mounting action in a play and finish in the spotlight. Or he would have, if The Globe had used spotlights.

Certainly, visualizing ends and intentions can be a powerful motivation to action, which creates effects. The mistake comes when we say that the house guided the construction crew, when we really mean the blueprint.

Bringing the effect before the cause is fallacious because the two have an order in time, and that order cannot be artificially reversed . . . unless you're making an intentionally fallacious and impossible picture of snails.

In some real-life cases, the effect actually does lead back to the cause, which creates a feedback loop of events. The seed grows a plant which drops a seed that becomes a plant, and so on. This can lead to the problem of "circular cause and consequence," which is also listed as a fallacy. Building loops of cause and effect into thought patterns (I consume biased media, which increases my bias, which makes me crave more biased media) or into institutions (one cannot get insurance if one has not had insurance in the past) creates closed systems that exclude new input or new members.

Circular cause and consequence is truly a separate problem from the one I set out to illustrate. However, the feeling of circularity and isolation was also an inspiration for the circles surrounding the snails, forcing them to travel in loops.

For a refresher on the Argument from Final Consequences, I recommend you listen to the White Stripes song. A word of warning: Jack White's vocal stylings can resemble those of a deranged alley cat to those hearing them for the first time. However, after a few plays, his voice grew on me a bit, which made me listen to him more . . . Oh, dear.