I love this model because it's very accurate to the way the ship looked in TOS; the markings and details are actually quite precise. It's a lovely little model in a size that fits, rather literally, in the palm of your hand.
It's a little like having that tiny little metal ship that was in a couple of the episodes, you know, in "Cats Paw" where that witchy chick dangled it over a candle flame and everyone on the bridge got really really warm.
I lusted to have that model. Just as well, as clumsy as I was, I would have just broken it anyway.
One fun little bit of dross I insist on carrying around is a little pulp-style SF ray gun made by Kikkerland. it's a little keychain fob and when you pull the trigger it makes a little ray gun zap sound and flashes a red LED. This, as the Enterprise replica, uses LR-41 cells, and being carried in the pocket, is subject to some wear. I had a couple of broken ones.
So, breaking open the case of the little ray-gun I found three LR-41 cells, which just so happened to be the number of cells my Enterprise needed.
The results speak for themselves.
Cannibalizing a ray gun blaster to power the USS Enterprise is a step above MacGyvering.
As the aspiring artist in any style knows, if you're on your own in learning the craft of art, you really have just one alternative if you have neither the time nor the money nor the connections to learn, at least to get started: the how-to-draw book.
In these days we are faced with an embarrassment of riches of all levels of quality and price. Go to your nearest Barnes & Noble, and you'll see what I mean. The number of art instruction manuals and how-to-do-it guides march up into the realm of the innumerable. Manga? No problem. Cartooning? What style do you prefer? Super-hero? Comic-strip? You wanna do 'em in pencil? Ink? Pastel? Crayola™ crayon?
You can even learn sumi-e (and finally put to use that imported Chinese brush and ink set that you got as a gift several years ago).
As you shop, you will run into a scad of books under the brand/author name Christopher Hart. This is not a chances-are sort of thing; it is a certainty, a destiny, a verity. YOU WILL MEET CHRISTOPHER HART SOMEWHERE ALONG YOUR AUTODIDACTING PATH. And it's not hard to see why: on his bookstore page at his site (http://christopherhartbooks.com/drawing-bookstore/) I count no less than thirty books with his byline (which has moved from a simple Christopher Hart or Chris Hart to the more brand-centric Drawing with Christopher Hart). Fully a third of that concerns instruction in manga styles, specialized into kawaii, chibi, shoujo, shonen, manga fashion, and a few more.
I think it's a fair question to ask ones' self, when deciding how to spend ones time self-learning art (and the attendant outlay of money to acquire the codexes of knowledge), does the method have any validity? Is it valid? Will it not only get me started but also get me going in the direction I want to go in. The size of Hart's oeuvre, which seems to be all over the place (but in a good way), to me, not only begs the question, it fairly well demands it. I own a few of the Chris Hart line, and have had the opportunity through browsing at Powell's City of Books and the Multnomah County Library to see others. and, bearing firmly in mind that I am neither here to bury Hart's books nor praise them but to be respectfully honest about them, I can tell you how I found them.
I have beside me two of his how-to-cartoon books, Figure It Out!, The Beginner's Guide To Drawing People, and Drawing Cutting Edge Comics. The constituencies of both books are obvious by the titles, and once you get a little way into Figure It Out!, you realize pretty quickly that the absolute beginner, likely to be intimidated by the idea of mastering figure-drawing by learning about muscle groups and skeletal structure, will hardly be intimidated by this. It's easy, quick to pick-up, enlivened by illustrations that are incredibly clear and self explanatory; the head is explained as an egg shape, and while the lines for positioning features are placed upon they are not explained as to why they're there; the clear illustrations make explaining that to the beginner rather unnecessary. If you're sufficiently movtivated, after about an hour with this book, you will be drawing the beginnings of a credible realistic-cartoon head. Figure It Out! moves on to the rest of the body by teaching general manikin princples, where the bits of the body are rendered into simple shapes and you draw the poses by arranging them just-so. There is also basic figure diagrams to give the idea of running and how to stand.
The other book, Drawing Cutting Edge Comics, also works very hard to deliver the knowledge in its title. The book follows a logical progression from basics (the head, again … another thing you'll find in aspiring artist-instruction-books, at least as far as my experience goes, that they usually start with the head and world their way down), with plenty of illustrations for you to follow along and try out in a step-by-step way. Hart prefers to lead by example, and the illustrations here, as in the previous volume mentioned, are great examples for the visual learner. Everything makes sense based on the way it's visually presented, and there are innumerable examples for the learner to practice on. This is a book on creating comics for the artist who wants to get started right now, and that's how quickly you'll get the upshot on these visual techniques.
Drawing Cutting Edge Comics takes it further in the second half of the book by exploring how the learner might create their own personal style, first by sharing some thoughts of some working artists from Top Cow Productions then delving deeper into the technical aspects of perspective, inking for an edgy look, foreshortening and page design, and a few other design aspects, and goes out with an interview with an agent (Studio 3's Doug Miers) and a very quick overview of the industry at the time of the book's publication (2001) with Chaos! Comics' supremo Brian Pulido.
Its 144 pages promise to pack a ton of information for the budding artist.
So, are they any good? Are they worth laying down your money on? My impression, after looking the books over is, that they certainly are a good place to start. Hart performs an authentic service to hopeful artists by making everything extremely accessible. His style is light, yet informative, and the thing that's always beguiled me about his books is that you look at the way he lays it all out and he does it in a way that, after a few minutes, you're saying to yourself that's something I can do, and after a few more minutes you're looking for pencil and paper to try it, and as I can tell you, just gettng over yourself and getting started are about 98% of the battle. The techniques are clear, do-able almost no-matter what level of artistic skill you think you have, and friendly.
How friendly? Well, as it happens, Chris Hart has a YouTube channel where he posts how-to-draw demos for instruction and inspiration. I was quite impressed with his aplomb and his obvious confidence with his materials. He every bit the pro, and it shows:
Et voila, a pretty girl character in under two minutes. The man knows his stuff. It's obvious he loves drawing, and enthusiastic artists make the best teachers.
Thing about being a mile wide, though, is that sometimes it feels an inch deep. This is palpable at times in the manga titles, to me; when I did a few faces out of The Master Guide To Drawing Anime (which wears the rubric a bit awkwardly as it's about creating characters from standard archetypes for anime and not actually animating anything) I found it, again, easy, accessable and fun and I got good results, but I felt as though it didn't go deep enough for me; at one point it mentions to use the 'standard eye template' but that template was not defined.
This light coverage gets under the skin of independent online creators who, I'm sorry to say, have not been terribly kind to him. Participants on this threadat ConceptArt.org get quite blunt at times, and this essay by a Deviant Art member can perhaps be summarized best in two words, those words being run and away. And this tumblr blogger actually invokes the name of Rob Liefeld at one place to make his point. I think the opprobrium is rather unfair, though somewhat illuminative. But then, the world of manga is a complex thing: you don't simply learn to draw 'manga style' because as we all know, manga art is a style first, then a state of mind, then a culture unto itself. Teaching tool-kit techniques in order to begin to master this world-beating style must seem more than a little like a local culture enduring a documentarist intoning they are a simple people yet with a culture all their own. In my experience, anyone commenting or touring manga culture and wanting to produce a respectful and respected critique had better be ready to go deep as well as wide.
So, you wanna learn cartooning. Grand. You got yourself a Chris Hart book or two and you're going to learn it. Absolutely. And if you manage to continue drawing and get the hang of it, more power to you; Hart's style will open the door and get the pencil in your hand. And, if you're drawing for pleasure, he'll introduce you to a whole new world you never knew existed and you'll be wowing yourself and your friends with drawings you never knew you could do.
But you'll need to remember; go in with your eyes open. Beginner's techniques get you drawing but they also sometimes teach the habits that will not sustain you. You'll know when you feel it; you'll be wondering is there more? Is this all there is? What new things can I grasp with the talent I've developed now? Then it'll be time to move on, grateful to Hart for the start he gave you, into a big wide world of artistic self-expression. Naturally, the best artist never stop learning and when the student is ready, the new teacher will appear.
If you reached the end of this article, I'm thrilled. I would be sincerely interested in finding out what others, triers and doers, have to say about Hart's instruction. Did you find it interesting? Did it open you up or limit you? PLEASE COMMENT!
Isn't it brilliant when the sun breaks through the clouds and sends shafts of light out? This happened yesterday in the air over the Burgerville at SE 122nd and Stark, out here in Outer East Portlandia:
The weather reports said rain. The weather reports didn't lie.
Major Tom is the mascot of Wolfeangel Press' first anthology effort, No Opposable Thumbs. The effort is for reals, as is the website: http://www.wolfeangel.net. Amanda plans on beginning crowdfunding this very soon, and any one of my faithful interlocutors who stop by this blog can help by spreading the world.
Amanda's a good person with a fierce intellect and a lovely heart, and deserves all the support she can get. And if this goes as big as I hope it does, that means I'll take a step toward one of the things I've really wanted to do with this life:
Art. Being an illustrator. Something I should have listened to my heart telling me when I was a kid.
George Eliot said it best: It is never too late to be what you might have been.
Well, it's not the first time she's rolled by, but it is the first time she's paused to let me take some pictures.
This, in case I've not formally introduced you all, is Olivia. It is part of the VW Beetle Owners' Code to dub your 'Dub with a nickname; they don't take away your VW lover's card if you don't, but they all look at you like Dude, don't you know how to have fun with this thing? Is, like, an intervention in order? So, I thought a while. I loved the fact that this was our little yellow Vee Dub. And, rising out of that little collection of syllables came a tone poem: Our LIttle Yellow Vee DubYA.
Phonetically, that's OLYVYA, but I prefer the classic spelling of Olivia. I also think it's a very pretty name, and wholly appropriate to a cutie-pie, sunny yellow 1972 VW Beetle that just makes me smile whenever I look at her.
Olivia you shall be until your wheels come off, my lovely little happy car.
But, to cases: today, to get the pictures in the previous posting, we stopped in the usual place we stop to take such pictures: the west side of NE 122nd Avenue, just south of the intersection with NE Skidmore Street, in front of Rossi Farms, one of the last (if not the last) working farm east of 82nd Avenue, an area that used to be nothing but small farms, from Portland all the way out to Gresham and around.
Today, the area between the two city centers is carpeted with tract homes and serpentine suburban streets laid out bit by bit between the 1950s and the 1980s, but it was once a farm-dotted prairie. And Rossi Farms still grows flowers and produce … I well remember the colorful lines of kale and the stalks of corn waiting to be harvested then the remains plowed under.
The fall colors are vibrant in a patch where flowers are being grown along Skidmore Street, a literal stone's throw from Parkrose High School. The sunflowers were even trained to the east, eagle-eyeing the rising sun!
Meanwhile, Olivia waited patiently for me to cease the silliness, get back into traffic, and sing along with the tunes on my commuting CD until I got home.
Life's developed some interesting-in-the-wrong-way factors over the last few months, but as long as I have Olivia, I'll be okay for at least a little while in the day. Even if you're running late, it's impossible to feel sad when you're driving a car like this.
I have extensive experience with dysthymia. Believe me, if anyone should know of the anti-depressant powers of the classic VW Beetle, it's me.
It was April when Ole Red met his unfortunate demise, which took a couple of weeks to figure and then a few more days to process and accept.
The total check, it will be recalled, went toward acquiring Ole Red's successor: Olivia, Our Little Yellow VeeDubya. She's a cutie pie, as has been confirmed and recorded, and she now gets me to and from my work.
The last piece of a gestalt puzzle was finally given me this morning with a molten gold sunrise which compelled me to pull over on NE 122nd Avenue in front of Rossi Farms, as is the proper protocol, to snap an atmospheric view of the grand volcano to our east.
It looks very much like a summer sunrise, although it's a few days past Vern and his old equinox.
The reason we've not snapped anything like this since Olivia came to live with us is because, despite the clear and hot weather of late August/early September, the mornings have tended to diffuse the sunlight all over, leaving the peak nearly invisible in the glare.
But today, the air was most kind and generous, and seemed to be made of gold. Just me, the sunrise, all the people on NE 122nd Avenue, and my friend, the green lens flare.
Here's more of a panoramic view:
Oregon does sunrises right. With a mountain like that on the horizon, you know you're in the right place.
It's hard not to share every photo I took there. Here's just a few more of the best, though.
Cupcakes! These were seriously scrumptious.
Lovely little buttons for the collection.
The circulation clerks are like a rock band to me in this photo.
You want information? They got information. At that desk … and all the
shelves and computers beyond it.
Parents and kids, doing all the library things.
You can't not like that.
What was cool about the Aaron Nigel Smith band is what was cool about all
rock bands … the drummer was as unto himself, holding down the rhythm as
though he was taking his cues from a higher plane.
Midland staff: You want it (library-wise), they got it.
A luminous sunset over Midland Park caps the day.
I'm depending on at least 20 more years of awesome from this library.
The Wife™ and me dined at Denny's tonight. She had the beef kebab, and I had a sriracha bacon burger; the burger was superb, I must say.
Then there was some diary prolixtude followed by a bit of drawing. I hauled out a book on manga I had with me and used it to draw this:
I also found out that I should check the markings on my pencil a little better; a lifetime of pencil writing means I have habituated to HB and draw best with that; I drew with a 2B and was bemused as to why my point was dulling so fast.
Well, in some ways I've not had a point in literally years, So There's That™.
In the piece on the Midland Library's 20th, I mentioned the clock tower over the main entry and how nice it was, how it makes me feel just to look at it, and how it's the kind of landmark you can say you can meet someone under, say, Meier & Frank style (you'll get what I mean there if you've been a Portlander long enough).
The spouse and myself went by there to drop off some book returns and it was well after dark; I realized that, lit-up, it was quite pretty, and that I hadn't had a single picture of that. So, here:
Isn't it beautiful?
And a gently hilarious thing. Look just to the right of the word LIBRARY there and you'll notice a white light. That's the OPEN sign.
It's after 9 PM when this photo happened. Why should you taunt me so, library.
But … I love you, Midland Library. I could never stay mad at you.
I did mention that, in my previous missive, there was music to be had. This was a moment of discovery.
I was told it was going to be reggae, but it wasn't, not really, at least not when I stepped in. There was this energetic quartet playing poppy music to a group of parents and kids who were eating it up. The parents were entertained and the kids just couldn't not dance.
This was the Aaron Nigel Smith band, and they were there to please the parents and get the kids happy and they knew what they were doing. I wasn't sure how I would receive the music myself but the style was infectious and pretty soon I was tapping my toe as well. Of course, many many years ago a man wise in the ways of musical appreciation told me there was nothing like live music, and this was one of those moment when I realized how right he was.
Aaron Nigel Smith's “Call To Action” is to get kids and families to sing, dance and play together. In 2002 he founded FUNdamentals of Music and Movement, an arts program which is now the program of choice to over 100 early education centers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, NewYork and Boston. His fun, inspired, and lively show is guaranteed to get the audience off their feet.
That is one seriously gorgeous 5-string bass!
It was all fun and games until the Simon-says.
After that it was fun and games too,
Just slightly more fun fun and games.
The full-fathom four. Seriously? That was some confident musicianship going on.
They were very enjoyable to watch.
This is yet another series of love letters to a place. And it's also an anniversary card. Because it was 20 years ago, 1996 (was it REALLY that long?!?!), that the center of a neighborhood and a landmark of the heart went up on SE 122nd Avenue at the corner of Morrison Street.
Midland Library, then.
The history of the branch suggests that there's been a library branch on this corner for the better part of the last 60 years. Midland branch is the second largest branch in the mighty MultCoLib system and is second only to Central in the number of patrons it service. And, in 1993, amid increasing pressure and demand from heavy Eastsiders thronging the location, plans were set, and in 1996, in September, construction was completed on the current building.
The new building was, at 25,000 square feet, three times the size of the old one, and graced with a modern-design clock tower with a very witty 'OPEN' neon sign in the side, was a true landmark for the neighborhood.
When the new Midland was being built, The Wife™ and I were actually residents of Brentwood-Darlington, what was once called Errol Heights, and we called Woodstock our home branch. Even then we were well on the way to having a tradition of weekly Library Days which were to become the pole star of our week; we even endured through the rebuilding of the Woodstock branch into a much more modern one. By the time we found our home the Mill Park area, the library had been in place for a handful of years. Just getting broken in, you might say. It wasn't too long after we'd become heavy Eastsiders, Bedrock residents, that we'd tried out the new branch.
I can't remember what it was like, the first time we'd walked in, but I'm sure it was love at first sight. When it comes to libraries, we're easy that way. I mean, this is truly a large branch; smaller towns would call it their main library, and this is is the city that's home to the Multnomah County Library system. A branch here is a universe in other towns. And a signature clock tower, the kind you can meet, Meier and Frank-style, under. Just seeing it when we pull in releases the kind of endorphine rush that requires pharmaceuticals in any other happenstance.
Moreover, Midland's a regional branch. There is a library hierarchy, and it goes three deep; Central, regional, and local branches. In the ranking order, branches like Capitol Hill, Holgate, and Rockwood are local branches. Midland's a regional, and you know it the moment you step in. The energy and life in the building is palpable. It's nearly always busy, and it's a good busy. although the slight overwhelm when things like Dia de los Ninos happen is also a good kind of overwhelmed.
Also, there's great mariachi music when that happens. Never ceases to delight me how that comes off.
There was music there this day, but I'll get on to that presently. The real keynote for today was a festive atmosphere and just that ever-present energy, restorative, healing, that Midland always has. We go there to recharge, and there's a reason, and that's it; for me, there's The New Yorker and looking for whatever art books they have for inspiration and motivation in my new drive to draw and cartoon; for The Wife™, catching up on The Oregonian; for me, investigating new-to-me fiction and literature and periodicals; for her, obsessive drilling-down on whatever the current interest is (and food, always food!).
Very restorative.
At the entry there were happy friendly neighbors and delicious cupcakes (with superb frosting, I'd eat a cupcake made out of that frosting, honestly) and a little spin-wheel to take home a little memento from the event. I lucked, and got a legacy pin; it was apparently supposed to be an early logo for the branch incorporating the talking-leaf motif I've commented on in an earlier missive and including the clock tower from the architecture. This'll be a keepsake.
The staff was out in force, doing the all the library things. We've known them all for so long, they're friends to us; we've seen staff members come, go on to greater responsibility, the friends we fondly remember; the staff that's still there now, just getting better as the years go by; the Sheriff's deputy that patrols the place has always become a good pal, and there are some that have gone on to promotions or other assignments that we also miss greatly.
On the right as we go back there was the children's section, doing what it does so well. If smart kids come out of this place, I can show you were some of them got their start.
The theme of the building, as I may have pointed out before, is talking leaves; that's what the Cherokee intellectual, linguist and philosopher Sequoyah called books. The theme is keynoted by the great, large, wonderful acrylic work in the foyer area at the east end of the building, Lucinda Parker's Talking Leaves, complete with a sketchbook-style explanation of what's going on at the bottom of the painting. That's an especially fun thing to look at; I must have looked at it a hundred times, but the vibrancy of the handwriting and the confidence of the sketching never get old for me. Even the outside of the building functions as a sort of book; quotations from literati such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Oregon's own William Stafford form a meta-connection between the contents of the building, the function it serves, and the link between it and its environment. All of that can be viewed at the Midland Library history page. It's a very thoughtful and apt selection.
We love our Midland Library. At age 20, it's coming into a maturity both rooted and vital, still the beloved heart of a community that it loves right back.
On the way from there to here and perhaps back again.
It's busy, but it's the good kind of busy. There's electronic
media and paper media. You're very well-rounded here.
The weekly The New Yorker and Dutch Bros.
It's and excellent job, but someone has to do it.
If you see Gordon at the desk, tell him we sent you.
Juan and Yuriy are just two more of the Midlanders we've grown
fond of over the years. All the the Midland staff are just about the
best friends a reader can have.
Doing what it should be doing, this is the way you library in Portland, Oregon, 2016.
The mighty MultCoLib is at http://www.multcolib.org. May we remind you that ours is the original and genuine? Accept no substitutes!
I've always held a very skeptical view of the affirmation. As implemented around me, I seem to interpret it as people passionately wishing to the aether which contains some immanent presence that answers them if they ask hard or long or passionately or artfully enough.
That doesn't quite work for me. I don't think there will ever be any conclusive answer to the question of is there an animating force to the universe and if so, it'll be different for each and every person who answers. I, however, do realize that we human people seem to be configured with an metaphysics plug-in, so I try to keep it, at least, fed in some way. What I have for a psyche seems to work a little better that way.
All that said, the properly-worded affirmation seems to have a positive effect on the mood. I seem to wilt less in the face of travail that way. So, taking my cue from an 80s song by The Sherbs, and arraying certain tools about me, I acknowledge that I am worth believing in by myself, and it helps.
Yesterday a dear friend shared with me a personal treasure, they'll let me publish it here. It was a delightful thing, something that made my heart sing with joy a little; I want her to add her memory in her words which will make a finished piece of the thing.
Until then, I need to set the table for it. For those of us who still might not know.
Chances are about even, my gut tells me, my faithful interlocutor has only heard of Morrie Turner on his death in 2014 at the age of 90. You heard he was a pioneering black cartoonist who created a strip called Wee Pals, and you heard that he was the first national cartoonist to have a strip with such a integrated (what we said when we mean 'diverse' back in the 70s) cast.
Oliver steps up; Nipper shows him
where he stepped in it.
Shades of Milo Bloom here?
Aspirational, book-smart,
bespectacled, good-
natured and stocky, Oliver
was my dude.
All of which are true. Wee Pals, which ran from February of 1965 (and is still online at Creators' Syndicate) had an armful of characters which represented just about every outlook you could expect to find. The Rainbow Gang included several black kids, a Latino boy, an east Asian boy, a native American, a few young ladies of more than one color who dealt in 'Girls' Lib', and a bookish bespectacled know-it-all white kid named Oliver who, for me as a reader, was my avatar there. There was even a bigoted white kid. The kids lived life, played together, planned and schemed together, and occiasionally smash-talked each other.
It was, in other words, like life with real people.
Morrie Turner in 2005
(via Wikipedia)
Morrie Turner came up from Oakland where he was raised by a Pullman porter father and a housewife mother; learned cartooning via Art Instruction Schools, served as a mechanic for the Tuskeegee Airmen and had art published in Stars and Stripes, was a member of the Oakland Police Dept, and was inspired down the road to create Wee Pals when, the legend has it, he noticed there were basically no minorities in popular comics at the time and his mentor, Charles Schulz, suggested perhaps he should create one. The strip was eventually carried in more than 100 dailies, and in 1972, moved to TV under the Rankin-Bass aegis as a 17-episode season of animation called Kid Power, which was where I came in on it
This was where I came in. I ate it up like I ate up every other Saturday morning 'toon.
And I told you all that to tell you this: there is a moment that sticks with me, and I don't know if it's where something started with me or not, but it must mean something, because at one point, the gang was trying to resolve some situation or other, and Oliver, in his good-natured, smarts-proud, well intentioned way, boasts "We'll find the chink in the armor".
At which point his friend of Chinese descent, George, points out that he should perhaps watch how he throws that word chink around.
Life is a series of beginnings, and in 1972, in whiter-than-white Silverton, Oregon, someone had one of the many necessary beginnings toward the realization that other people of differently-colored skin are people, too; that words matter; that the best intentions don't mean that arrogance still doesn't hurt, and to learn from those casual mistakes. George didn't hate Oliver for it, they came to understand what that meant, and Oliver grew from the experience. It wasn't just that one moment, of course, but it probably is a single thing from which can come much humanity.
Turner did this all while we thought he was just making us laugh with sassy kids. That's why he's important and why is legacy still matters.
Stay tuned to this channel for a splended Morrie Turner memory from a dear friend's past coming up very soon.
