Pieces of silver

A pair of dead trees above Donner Lake. Their barkless flesh, iridescent in the bright sun, speaks of what they've endured: cold frosts, sparkling snow and the crackling heat of rainless summers. I am up here volunteering with wilderness first responders, play-acting hypothermia, impalements and frostbite. Government officials came here annually to plunge a measuring stick in a snowdrift to get an idea of how much water is coming down to the parched valley. Like last year, not a snowdrift in sight.

Spring can really hang you up the most

My mom sang this song well. She died about 18 months ago, so she won't be around to meet my first grandchild, who's soon to be born. I would never have guessed life would roll out at this rate! When I was little, I was fascinated by the Life magazine photo captioned, “a thumb to suck, a veil to wear”. As it does for old ladies and brides, a veil makes our tiny back yard more mysterious. Nevertheless, the spring-expectant colors pulse through. Still waiting.

Plain Jane

Not-so-sketchy in Philly. It’s nice to work out a storefront design on a background that looks closer to the site’s next permutation than the derelict facade that’s really here. The plain jane storefront is cleaned up and wearing colors amenable to the next occupant. (I should not have included the blade sign; it’s bound to change.) Next up: back and forthing about window heights, visibility, building codes, etc. That's where having a sketch of the bigger context and a site plan helps.

Bring in the fog

Aerial perspectives are a challenge. This detail is from full sheet size, 22" x 30", for a project that's likely to raise a lot of hackles. For conceptual illustrations where there is no architectural info available, the context-obliterating clouds of of Chinese and Japanese landscape style, sansui-ga, from the 15th c. is appealing. Only salient scenes would have to be drawn, with mist intervening where no design info is available. In the 21st c, I have to invent built forms, continuous to the property line, where none may ever be built. The result of can be beautiful and give its viewer a sense of soaring. That's great for fund-raising and approving boards of directors who may operate from a detached position. When no end-user will ever soar, is it disingenuous to sell an idea this way? Does it bridge or exacerbate the gap between end-user and promoter?

2 Barn or not 2 Barn

In a semi-rural setting 65 miles from San Francisco, who needs two barns? How will the new digs look from the driveway with the old barn gone? I gave the sketch app on my iPad another try. Colleague Doug Wittnebel is in love with it; for me it still feels inauthentic, and about as sensuous as scratching my ear with an oven mitt.

Hanging Valley

Beautiful skies in a hanging valley above the Napa that qualifies as wilderness, technically more than 60 minutes from definitive care. Folks at the Napa Land Trust are providing Wilderness First Aid training for their docents, to reduce outdoor misfortunes. As a Wilderness First Responder, I am more than willing to volunteer here with Foster Calm and appreciate another chunk of beautiful Cali.

I wanna get next to you

uh oh! FOV > 60º

Sitting too close to portray on flat paper a scene that requires moving one's head up and down or side to side. Where do we see this? In facsimiles of spaces too small or too large to be readily observed. Drawing on-site under this self-imposed condition, I could not keep the image within the bounds of the paper. Those darn charcoal lines kept extending beyond the paper. I schlepped bigger and bigger paper to the site but was limited to the armpit-to-fingertips size of board I could carry. No whole-body involvement on that size paper! Then there's this kind of drawing. Sheesh. Not necessarily reporting a visual field.