Honda Indy 5K Race

Right. This exercise was to draw your daily newspaper. The Sun is not - but temporarily - it is one of TWO newspapers we are now getting at the house. The Sun, no doubt is a Ying to the other paper's Yang.

The drawing itself is rubbish in spots (where the top page is smaller than the bottom one) and quite pleasing (how the car is rendered on the top page). Such is most of my drawings ... a mashup of good and bad.

In any event - what made this drawing particularly useful to me was the Honda Indy pull out section wherein I could memorialize this year's Indy. Not for the car race but for the 5K run. The "run" consisted of runners, walkers and wheelchairs - all travelling around the Indy course.

The race was a little disorganized but a perfect race is devoid of interesting stories and memorable images. Yes ... I will never forget being sent forward with the rest of the runners to get to the 5K start line. The lead car was confused to the actual start line. Then we could not hear the start gun. Then, we looked behind and saw wheelchairs barrelling down the track towards us. Great fun!

The course itself is the Indy Track. I cannot believe that race cars go around such a narrow, turny track. No straight aways. Just turns and narrowness. Lots of narrowness. It was narrow for me at about 9 km/hour. The indy cars go at about 240. Hoo.

Often races have fun things to do - expos with give-aways, swag-bags and whatnot. This race had air-brush temporary tatoos. Triple loved that. I got a lion on my forearm. Let me rephrase that ... a big ass black and orange lion head. It is still doing well and I confess to pampering it with a light touch and delicate dab drying.

The run itself was a stinker. 38C humidex. I need a minimum oxygen saturation in the air I breathe to be effective. I suspect I could have been faster (and happier) with cooler temperature. Having said that - the sun did go in for our run and that was quite lovely.

Best piece of swag was a pen with a carabeener clip.

Most interesting encounter ... the Hooter Girls ... I had never seen one before. They were the "hostesses" at the mustering point. All writers must be open to new experiences - to see new life forms and new civilizations. The HGs classify. For the record, they appear to have very strict dress codes (ie there is a McDonald's/assembly line - type consistency to their outfits - not even the slightest variation in outfits). This I found interesting ... mostly because it means (as in so many areas of commerce) the Brand Rules.

Second most intereseting encounter ... we got lost and found ourselves in the middle of the Indy display set up. There was a car ... an Indy or F1 car ... on a pedestal. It had very specifically focused spot lights and was sitting on an angle wherein a thin plane of water was streaming under the car (to give it sleekness and light bounce). There was a guy (it's always a guy with car detailing ...) in his bare feet, standing in the water and polishing the polish on the highly polished polish. I was worried he would wipe off the shine ...

The only thing this race makes me want to do, frankly, is to run it again next year.

Glass Fish

Glass is notoriously difficult to draw. I've made a has of it, I think but th image does look "see through" and you can see the base is a base.

Tangentally, how do you draw something that is see through. Isn't that impossible? How do you draw invisible?

In any event - here's the fish. Aquamarine Blue and Burnt Sienna - two of the most useful colours in my pallet and two of my favourites.

Drawing is hard. Watercolour near impossible. I lack control and the precision to convert what's in front of my eye via my brain down through my hand onto the page. Writing is easier. Maybe ... or maybe I just have more practice so it feels like I have more control.

I did a race yesterday and have not recorded the rich details yet. I feel this pressure like a headache ... I must write it all down before I forget.

Clematis - through my neighbour's fence

My next door neighbour is a gardening maniac. I hate her intensely, of course, because she can grow roses and I can't. She and her husband (both retired) put in a $25,000 water feature that makes me crazy on the principle of misdirected expenditure of funds. Having said that - Mother Nature is my Avenging Partner. She regularly sends herons in to eat their ornamental fish.

That said - I am shameless in capitalizing on her floral escapes and will draw whatever bloom makes its way to my side of the fence. The clematis is just such a character.

Alrighty. This sketch is not what I would call a masterpiece. And yet ... I really do like the way the flower came out - and the anther/pistil (lower left) is really exotic looking up close. I love how the pistil looks like the boom-part of a fireworks. Not overly fond of the leaves but - hey - not every bit is a winner.

It occurs to me from time to time that I should have separate journals for seperate types of sketches. The botanicals for sure would have their own book. I image that would be a terrific single-theme volume. I would love to see that, frankly. Every page its own lovely flower. Lots of colour - lots of detail. I still might just scan them all and convert it. Won't be quite the same, however. Original watercolour (or original anything) has a magic all unto its own.

But here's the problem with having multiple books. You end up with mulitple books. And knowing me and my predisopositions - more than one book would lead to a cascading of problems that I really don't need. Do I have the right book for what I'm going to sketch? What happens if subjects straddle more than one topic area? How do I pick which one it goes in? Do I then make 2 sketches, one for each? Or copy / paste from one into the other? I can barely keep track of things as it is ... what happens if I *lose* a book? That would be horrifying.

I had two books a while back - one for sketches and one for watercolours. Different paper weights determine proper medium. I found it distracting in the extreme. Every time there was something to draw, I was utterly conflicted about how best to render it. Pastel? Ink? Watercolour? Marker? Bleh. The important thing is having the sketch DONE. I ended up focused on the pastel sketches and then never went back to more than one book at a time.

Having just one book is easy. Do a sketch. Turn the page. Repeat until finished. There is a certain simplicity to that routine. There is also a certain freedom ... it is implicit that there will be good and bad side by each ... no one book will be reserved for the gems. Maybe that's why it's hard to have two books ... the fear of ruining one with a single bad effort.

Bad efforts, mistakes, misses, and messes should not stop the show. If it's bad, just turn the page and do another. I am regularly surprised by my own work in this regard. A crap sketch here, turn the page and I do something decent. Turn the page. Keep going ... it's the forward motion that counts.

Mai House ... sticks and stones and i-beams

This is my house. I'm pleased with the sketch ... so much so that I did not draw on the back side of this one. I do on every other one ... so more pictures to a book. But this one is special ... it is a place with history. It is my house.

At work, we are doing several major constructions and I get to participate in the big build meetings. Over the last two years, I've met project managers, architects, designers, property managers, real estate experts and the odd builder. I've learned three important lessons.

Lesson #1 ... holy permits, batman. You cannot do anything - not dig, pour cement, pass go to the next step until you have a permit allowing you to do so. There is a permit for everything. Zoning is also important. You won't get a permit to do anything that hasn't been reviewed first by the Zoning Gods. Permits granted can also also conditional. You can submit plans but they can come back with changes and / or caveates. One of the sites had to be moved 10 feet to the left because of an endangered lizard. Apparently lizards have the right-of-way in some municipalities. Their safe travels to and fro have the ability to hold up multi-million dollar constructions. No one puts a shovel in the ground until the gekkos are safe!

Lesson #2 ... details matter and in a build, there are about a zillion details. Caveat: every detail requires a decision. Some times highly paid people debate way too long about the stupidest details. I have unfortunately been in some of these meetings and have contributed to the debate with such passion that - in retrospect - I still think was worth it. Having said that - all I can recall is the desk-pounding. None of the actual content remains. This is beside the point. It is the passion that matters. But to give an example of the minutae ... I have been in meetings wherein the entire time was spent talking about way-findings, signage and "floor palette". Yes. People actually get paid to think about, design and create colour schemes for floors. You'd be amazed at the liveliness of the discussion, too.

Lesson #3a ... designers and architects have terrific printing. Seriously ... it's all that fabulous blocky stuff that goes really fast. They use roller ball pens - disposables - in funky colours sometimes. Green. Purple. It looks beautiful - so light and airy and legible. My printing and my handwriting is all scrawly and indecipherable. If you have a creative type in a meeting and they are not getting their point across (and even if they are), they often sketch out what they mean. I love those sketches. I wish I could tear off corners of some of the plans and just keep the doodling. It's so clean and simple and *right* - perpsective, line. They may even do shading while you discuss. Everything they touch is art.

Lesson #3b ... designers and architechs are the funkiest dressers. The designers mostly so. They wear with complete aplomb and style stuff that would look positively ridiculous on me. I so love them for that. It makes me keep my face straight when they riff on the importance of door colours and review their three-page colour scheme they have in mind.

I look at buildings differently now. There is so much to think about. So much to see ...

Lavender

Another botanical.

I have a bunch of lavender in my back garden. Smells divine. Much of my garden is scented. What doesn't smell perfume-y is eye-popping colour. It's a good combination, I think.

Often when I am out surveying the landscape, I will brush my hands over the leaves to activate the scent and then bring the perfume up to my nose. Ah. Lovely and calming.

I used to make lavender wands. I still can - I haven't lost the knowledge. I just haven't done it in a while. One or two of my drawers have wands to keep away the moths. I should probalby refresh them. Trouble is ... there's only one time of year that the lavendar is suitable for wand making and I fear we have passed that point. Lavender in full bloom now. Oh well. Maybe next year if I think of it.

This is done with a .5 pen nib. Too thick and the images have ended up kind of clumpy and heavy-handed.

I really love the orange throat to the florettes. Not something you expect from a purple flower. Also, I love the complexity of how the flower unfurls ... there is sort of a sting-ray formation for the little florette pods (second from R).

One final random note about lavender. I have a hell of a time spelling it and calendar. The words are almost identical but one is "ER" and one is "AR" ... for reasons that remain completely obscure to me. Having said that - I can never remember which is which.

Hm ... didn't put the latin down for this one, either. Science work is never done ... ! ...